THE “BEST” LANGUAGE
Maybe I have my head in the clouds a bit but I recently imagined someone asking me what I, as a professional linguist, officially regarded as the “best” language in the world. Now… although I think it would make for an interesting conversation topic – certainly among those in the translation community – there’s just no point to it in real terms; and yet it’s something I find thought-provoking. The thoughts it has provoked are discussed below. Enjoy reading.
Now, as a forethought, I can admit that there are people who are fluent in more languages than I am fluent in, but I know I have proven myself to be a talented linguist from a very early age, and that that is due to just plain linguistic acuity more than anything else. Still, you could say that I take the utmost pride in being able to express things in way which has nothing excessively subjective about it. And I wasn’t the first person to suggest that study of a foreign language can teach a person more about their own; just look at Lauren Cooper’s French oral exam skit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV1zK8zRCPo and go to 0:34. And if translation is not a matter of “making sense in absolute terms between languages” – and having a wide vocabulary is by no means the only prerequisite for achieving this – then what is it about?
But how does a “best” language even exist? What criteria are to be applied in the judgement of the same? Here’s a starter: what about the range of vocabulary that a given language has – like, the more words it has, the easier it is to discuss any topic with confidence, conviction and clarity (if you’re intelligent enough)? As it is, the English language has more words in it than any other, which is no doubt a result of the many significant influences on it throughout human history. Not that I’m boasting about how English is my mother tongue.
A second idea might be how “easy” – I put that in quotation marks because I use that word loosely – a given language’s orthographical system is. The English language, using the Roman alphabet, has only 26 letters in it, but with Chinese and Japanese it’s a very different story. The written form of Japanese – kanji – has all syllables represented by individual characters, whereas you need only read any part of this article to realise that, in English, one syllable is often represented by a lot more than just one letter / character. Indeed, the word “through” is only one syllable, while the word is seven letters / characters long; while the word “story” has two syllables despite having only five characters / letters long. Apparently, Japanese people don’t know all kanji characters, from my own experience. I must admit I’ve never stopped to imagine what life would be like if I never knew all the characters of my mother tongue – and would mostly likely always need to be coaxed into it even after having said that.
To move on, I would say that the English language has plenty of exceptions in it: irregular forms of verbs in the past tense / past participle i.e. no “-ed” ending; and “ough”, while found in many individual words, is certainly not always pronounced the same way; and then there’s the humorous quip about the word “fish” being spelled “ghoti”. (It can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.)
But I’m a professional translator. Of course people say what they think all the time – just look at old Trumpy – but surely a professional translator worth the name, when saying what they think, thinks about what they say. And when you do what I do you learn to think about what you say at a whole new level, and by that I mean often in non-typical ways i.e. ways that are hitherto not conceived. From your own perspective, at least. But there’s something special about agreeing that you’re successfully regarding something in a whole new way on someone else’s behalf, especially when you had specifically resolved to do so. And you soon break out of expressing yourself in clichés and PBAs (Precedent-Based Assertions – and yes, that is an expression I invented).
Now… like I said earlier, I’m not in any way boasting that my mother tongue is English, as if people tend to be proud of their mother tongue for reasons best known to themselves (whether or not such “reasons” make sense – no offence). Even so, it’s worth bearing in mind that language – any language – is called upon and cherished as a means of basic expression – which is not (necessarily) the same as self-expression, but that only reinforces the point of how big a “thing” an individual language really can be to the individual.
I would suggest that one might think that the best measure of a “good” language is how easy it is for those who can’t really speak it to speak a confident pidgin version of it, but I just can’t speculate on everything in this regard because it depends on what the language is and what the mother tongue of the person who cannot speak it is.
Here’s another idea: it’s certainly easy for me to agree that one of the greatest frustrations people have in connection with learning a new language is the ambiguity factor: you get words that sound the same, and sometimes words that are spelled the same as other words (e.g. in English “lead” as in “to lead a team” + “lead” as in “lead piping” etc. etc). This can make it harder to learn a new language, with the potential to discourage some people. But it’s pointless to seek someone to point the finger at when that happens. Maybe this is why Japanese writing has characters for every syllable unlike English as discussed above. Just a thought.
What may be evaluated from all this? I for one do regard it as a topic too niche and sophisticated for most people to be inclined to discuss over a friendly pint down at the pub, but I will say this: however far you hope to progress in language-related study and / or interests, you won’t get there without the fundamentals: acquiring a wide vocabulary and the grammar necessary to express yourself with some kind of appreciable confidence whatever scenario you may find yourself in. And I don’t know about you but I would suggest that the methods used for learning these things – whether properly identified or not – tend to always be the same and always work. It’s not like the sciences: random situational factors may have a bearing on the “proper” meaning of words, and even the words that a person uses (whether pending a conscious decision to do so or not), but it doesn’t impact the basic structure and components of any language. There is no possibility of change to these methods (or at least seldom one). You’re more in control about the things you choose to seek to remember, and may note an increasing level of confidence as you find that you don’t just achieve this “somehow”. If anyone has ever described a language as a “good” one – rather than a “beautiful” one, whatever that’s supposed to mean – because it’s easy to learn… it’s probably that which they are talking about. Imagine being able to be in control of what you could forget and remember about something… even imagine being a psychic amnesiac: a person who knows in advance what they are going to forget.
To summarise: I aim to say what I have to, always in a way that works (and not merely “should” work) on anyone’s terms, with an attachment to anything and everything that will avert accuracy, frustration and confusion in my own verbal expression. And this is the point where I hereby state that the article that you have agreed to read has now reached its end; that said, I will finish with a declaration of thanks for reading it, hoping that it is has proven every bit as edifying and entertaining as I hoped for.
See ya.