Thinking about language

[theatokos]

Adam is a little annoyed with me. Not really annoyed, but I get his point. While living in California I kept meaning to learn Spanish. Adam speaks fluent conversational Spanish, nothing sophisticated, but he's quite competent. Bennett now responds equally to Spanish and English. I've always liked Spanish, preferring Central American Spanish. Don't know why. I know it's considered 'low class' or something. But I find it musical, fun and more than a little sexy. I have just enough Spanish vocabulary under my belt to follow along with Adam (he speaks slower, thank god, than a native speaker), but I can't really say anything. After learning to read French and Latin (and forgetting it all) it seems to me that the parts of the brain that comprehend language are different from the parts that formulate and speak.

Anyway, I never did learn Spanish. Adam and I didn't make much effort. It's odd because California is a bilingual state..... unofficially. It's like there's a whole world under the surface, white world. Whole neighborhoods that like a foreign country. All the food service workers are Central Americans. But I was a white, educated, middle class woman, not working in food service, and so.... I let it pass me by.

Here, Welsh is everywhere. Spanish is the second most spoken language in the world (after Mandarin and ahead of English). Welsh has something like 600,000 speakers in the world. Did you know that are several thousand Welsh speakers in a region of Argentina? Here, it's truly bilingual. In fact, my eyes are still getting used to making meaning out of forms and signs. I sometimes think it might be easier if everything was just in Welsh. I mostly hear older people speaking Welsh on the streets or in the shops, but families and children speak it too. It seems easier, more accessible and useful to learn Welsh while I'm here. Plus, there is something neat about learning an obscure language. I kind of like the idea that Bennett and I could hold a conversation in the US that no one would be able to understand! And, he's going to be bilingual if we stay here for any length of time, so I may as well learn to count and spell and recognize the colors with him!

I'd like to actually get conversationally competent in at least one other language. My classical voice training has given me a vocabulary in about 9 languages, but a lot of good that does me! My French and Latin have withered away to nothing. My Spanish is about as good as Bennett's.

On top of all of that, there is something about wanting to bolster the world's tiny languages. I saw this article on the BBC this morning. Languages like, people groups and animals, also evolve and go extinct, so I don't think we necessarily need to save every single language - especially if that people group no longer exists. However, I do think that as languages die, ways of thinking and expressing and relating to the world die, and that is sad.

Maybe I'll learn Spanish to get around the rest of the world and I'll learn Welsh to learn something of an older smaller culture.

hrafntinna, my obscure linguist, what do you think?

Comments

[amyura.livejournal.com]

Count at least one vote from a linguistics BA for Welsh!

Central American Spanish is "low class" the way American English is "low class." That is, it's not. There are educated middle class speakers of both English and Spanish in BOTH hemispheres. And there are "lower class" (a term I'm not really crazy about, as I suspect is the case with you) speakers of both languages in both hemispheres.

I know everyone thinks of my part of the state as the "Irish Riviera" (and indeed, I believe there are as many people here as in Ireland with Irish ancestry), and that if you're not Irish you must be Italian, and that's true to a degree, but it's really interesting to see the vestiges of various ethnic communities in street names and the like. There's a street a few miles away called Suomi street (Finnish for Finland), and up in Jamaica Plain, where there's a sizeable Ukrainian community centered around the Ukrainian Orthodox church there, there are streets named after places and people in and from that country. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not surprised in the least to learn of a Welsh community in Argentina. It may be the most European of all the South American countries-- my great-grandfather lived for some years among the Italian community there.

[bravenewcentury.livejournal.com]

I think the death of languages is a sad thing, inevitable as it may be. You can't write poetry the same way in two different languages. A lot can survive even when the original native speakers are gone, but usually confined to universities and not always completely understood anyway.

I've felt a strong draw towards the Celtic languages for a while, but I never seem to get very far in trying to learn them. I suppose learning Welsh would be a lot easier with constant opportunities to read and hear and speak it though- I hope it goes well!

[hrafntinna.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who did fieldwork in the Patagonian Welsh community. She's got fluent Welsh and Spanish.

Learn Welsh. Why not. You're in the perfect place - not just Wales but Lampeter, where there's a summer bootcamp-style language course. Uff, now I'm getting envious. Take some kids' books out of the library.

Why is Adam annoyed?

[ewigweibliche.livejournal.com]

Because I never learned Spanish. And that's what he speaks and he doesn't care about Welsh. There's a good adult evening class that starts in January, and my one friend here is a first language Welsh speaker.

Screw Iceland next summer. Come learn Welsh with me! For your honeymoon! WOOT!

[hrafntinna.livejournal.com]

Learn Spanish when you're not living in a Welsh-speaking area. Tell him he can be annoyed at you for not having learned it while in a bilingual area OR not care about Welsh in another bilingual area _but not both_. Plus which he had better care about Welsh when his son starts picking it up.

Besides, he should enjoy the cognates: caballo = ceffyl. Language rules.

Oh hey

[hrafntinna.livejournal.com]

http://www.cainteoir.com/Geiriadur/Search.aspx?Text=yn+Gymraeg&Lang=GA&HighlightGA=hwn

Re: Oh hey

[ewigweibliche.livejournal.com]

Excellent! Thank you!