Talkin' About Talk Date Archives

Was German Almost the Language of America?

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The official language of America was almost -- German? A few months ago I heard a businessman say that to a group of language teachers, and it's not the first time I've heard it. It's not true, but the myth about it never seems to die. According to the legend, German would have become our official language in 1795, except for a single vote in the U.S. House of Representatives. Frederick Muhlenberg, Representative from Pennsylvania and Speaker of the House, has been credited with failing to cast that fateful vote. It's true that a group of German-speaking farmers from Virginia petitioned for a German translation of some American laws. And, yes, Muhlenberg argued staunchly that German immigrants should assimilate and learn English. But the cliffhanger vote that saved English? It never happened. So if anyone ever tells you that story, tell them the Five-Minute Linguist told you it's just plain fiction.

But where did the fear that German might supersede English as America's language come from? It's not quite as far-fetched as it might seem. Germans began immigrating to the U.S. as early as 1683, and from then until the First World War, German was the most prevalent language in Pennsylvania after English. Not everybody was happy about that. Listen to what one senior statesman from the Revolutionary period had to say about the Germans: "Why," he asks, "should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and [who] will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion?"

It might surprise you that these disturbingly racist words came from the pen of none other than Benjamin Franklin.

Anti-foreign feelings like those expressed by Franklin persisted through the nineteenth century, but German continued to flourish in America. Waves of English-only attacks, aimed at wiping German from the American landscape, were countered by public displays of German identity. In social clubs and societies all over the country, German-Americans celebrated their heritage. All of which ended with the First World War. Although it was ruled unconstitutional in 1923, during the war most states eliminated German from their schools. In some states, it was illegal to speak anything but English in public. Even German foods came under attack. Sauerkraut wasn't outlawed, but it was renamed "Liberty Cabbage".

American anti-German reactions during the Second World War weren't nearly so harsh. And yet for decades Hollywood has used German accents as a kind of shorthand to represent evil. Ever since the 1940s, in scores of films, from Casablanca to Raiders of the Lost Ark to Saving Private Ryan, it's always the bad guys who pronounce their W's like V's. There are, of course, a lot of exceptions to that stereotype. After all, Marlene Dietrich's sultry songs derived much of their sexy appeal from her German accent. And Arnold Schwarzenegger's Austrian tones have become part of the American cultural landscape.

It's really astonishing how many people of German heritage there are in America. Most of us could probably identify the Pennsylvania Dutch as a linguistic island in the US. Those folks aren't Dutch, by the way; "Deutsch" (which sounds like Dutch) is the German word for "German." There are so many people of German ancestry in the U.S. heartland that the states from Ohio to Missouri and from Michigan to Nebraska are sometimes known as the German belt. In 1990, the so-called "Texas Deutsch" emerged as the third largest ethnic group in the state. And there are pockets of German speakers in the Shenandoah Valley referred to as the "Valley Dutch." In fact, according to the 1990 Census, more Americans of European ancestry claim German descent than Irish, English, or Italian.

And German has given us marvelous terms -- from Autobahns to Zeppelins, from Frankfurters to Fahrenheit, from Wienerschnitzel to Wanderlust. And even though German never seriously challenged English as the primary language of the U.S., the ties between the two languages are long and deep. So I have to wonder, in the year of languages, shouldn't we be paying more attention to German?

That's the linguistic thought for today, which comes from my colleague Dr. Nancy Nenno, Professor of German at the College of Charleston. And this is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. If you'd like to ask a question about language, go to our website at www.cofc.edu/linguist. If we use your question on the air, we'll send you a membership in the Museum of Language. In the meantime, keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do... language makes a difference.

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Posted by: Robert L. Bishop at March 16, 2006 09:19 AM

How do Babies Learn to Talk?

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"Goo goo gaa gaa" might be what you think is the beginning of how babies learn to talk, but you'd be wrong! Language learning starts well before babies utter their first words or babbles. Once babies can hear, they respond to sounds. There's no question that babies in the womb jump in response to noises, such as fireworks. Even before they're born, they eavesdrop on their mother's conversations. They don't recognize words, but they recognize their mother's speech patterns. At first, language is only like a melody for them, but they enter the world prepared to learn any of the world's 7,000 languages.

With the melody imprinted, the first problem the baby faces is finding the units in the speech it hears. Where does one word end and the next begin? By 4 1/2 months of age, they're well on the way to finding words in the stream of speech that washes over them. They start by recognizing their own name compared to a name with the same number of syllables or stress pattern. So if your name is Irving, it has stress on the first syllable (IRving) and is two syllables long. When babies are given a chance to listen to Irving versus say, Wilson, a name with the same pattern, they prefer to listen to their own name.

Your name -- and other frequently occurring words -- are an anchor in the mass of sounds coming at you when people talk an unknown language. Research tells us that at 6 months of age babies can recognize a word they hear after their own name. The word "momma" serves the same function -- helping babies find words in the speech stream.

Next, they need to figure out what words mean. Of course, some of the first words babies understand are "mommy" and "daddy." Research tells us they attach the word "mommy" to their own mom and not to just any woman. Likewise for "daddy." But learning what words mean is complicated. What does the word "rabbit" refer to? While it seems obvious, think of yourself in a foreign country. Someone says the equivalent of "rabbit" as a bunny hops by. What could it mean? Maybe the whiskers that are bobbing up and down. Or maybe the white fur. How do we know when words refer to the whole object and not to the properties of the object (say, white) or the rabbit parts (like, whiskers)? By 12 months, babies seem to interpret words as labeling objects -- and the whole object as opposed to its parts or features.

Now, after babies find words and know some meanings, they have to learn how words go together to make sentences. They know more about their language than what they can say -- just as you could understand more in a foreign language than you could speak. So while their first spoken words appear around 12 months of age, they may already understand hundreds of words. By 18 months, they can understand 5 and 6-word sentences.

Picture an oversize TV screen. On one half of the screen, babies see Cookie Monster hugging Big Bird. On the other half they see Big Bird hugging Cookie Monster. They watch with rapt attention. When they hear "Where's Big Bird hugging Cookie Monster?" they look more at the scene that shows this relationship than at the other one. Amazing. It means that babies are already using grammar, or the order of the words in English, to figure out who's doing what to whom -- even if they aren't saying much at all.

So here's a paradox: Babies can't tie their shoes or be left alone for more than 30 seconds, and yet they're like sponges when it comes to learning languages. The next time you're tempted to think of a newborn baby as a vegetable, think again! They're paying attention -- and they learn languages better than their older and wiser parents!

That's the linguistic thought for today, which comes from Dr. Roberta Golinkoff at the University of Delaware and Dr. Kathy Hirsh-Pasek at Temple University. And this is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. If you have a question about languages, go to our website at . In the meantime, keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do... language makes a difference.

Can Monolingualism be Cured?

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When was the last time you studied a foreign language? Some of us think about that experience with pleasure; others think of it as something like root canal. If you're over 16 and trying to learn a new language -- or thinking about learning one (and I hope you are) -- remember that adults learn second languages in ways very different from children. Children learn language as part of learning about the world. It's the child's full-time job for the first few years of life. But it's fun and exciting. No studying necessary, and no homework!

Children are born as language learning machines, a special talent that many experts believe is gone by the time we reach puberty. But that doesn't mean adults can't learn languages and learn them well. Yes, it seems like it takes a long time. But don't forget that children are hearing and using the language for thousands of hours; and for everyday language use, it takes them close to ten years to master their mother tongue.

And in some ways adults have an advantage over children. Because they already have a language, adults can use what they know of their first language to organize the words and grammar of the new one. We don't have to start from scratch.

And since analytic ability comes later in life, we also have an advantage when it comes to figuring out how the new language works. For example, even if a language has some sounds that English doesn't, (maybe a trilled r as in "burro" -- or an n.g. sound at the beginning of a word, like "nga"), chances are that most of its sounds will be familiar. Or the new language may use word orders like "The boy brave with his rifle the tiger fierce shot."

That sounds unnatural to an English speaker, but the grammar rules are only slightly different from English. By recognizing what's English-like in a new language and what's different, and focusing attention on the differences, adult language students can jump-start their learning.

Other aspects of language need to be absorbed rather than studied. Absorbed through continued and repeated exposure. When the mind is relaxed and not seeking explanations or patterns, it's capable of categorizing and sorting some aspects of language without conscious effort. The parts of language taken in best unconsciously can't be captured in a textbook, and they're seldom explained well by teachers or grammar books. To develop this kind of implicit knowledge, it's better to watch TV or listen to the radio in the language you're trying to learn, rather than poring over the rules.

So adults use a combination of unconscious absorbing of language, like a child, and conscious learning through analysis. But even acquiring knowledge isn't enough. You still have to practice, practice PRACTICE. And you have to get past the very adult fear of embarrassment. How do you get over it? With a sense of humor. Accept the risk that you'll sound a little klutzy at first -- and go ahead anyway. Are you willing to walk up to strangers from another country -- say, a group of tourists -- and try to talk with them in their language? To the extent that you're game to jump in and try to communicate, your ability in the foreign language will grow.

Until around 1960, language learning in school was pretty dull. It was all about memorizing vocabulary, talking about grammar -- in English -- and translating as many paragraphs as you could stand. We've learned a lot about teaching languages since then. And we're learning even more since the 1970's when the new field of Second Language Acquisition came on the scene. We're are finding out which elements of a language are best taught through explicit instruction, and which are best absorbed through sustained exposure to the language. So if you're a monolingual adult, there's no reason to continue in that sad condition. Monolingualism can be cured.

That's the linguistic thought for today, which comes from Dr. Katherine Sprang in Leesburg, Virginia. And this is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. If you'd like to ask a question about language go to our website at www.cofc.edu/linguist. In the meantime, keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do... language makes a difference.

Why is Chinese so hard to learn?

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If you ask professional linguists a question like that, most will probably say that every language is complex in some ways and simple in others, and that they average out to around the same level of complexity. But that's probably not the kind of answer you're looking for. If we rephrase the question, though, and ask which language is hardest for native English speakers to learn, well, yes, a pretty good case can be made for the group of closely related languages we call "Chinese". Let's look at some of the reasons.

One difficulty is that Chinese is unrelated to English. When you study one of English's cousins in the Indo-European language family, like Spanish, Russian or Hindi, you find plenty of cognates--words similar in sound and meaning--to use as stepping-stones. Learning Chinese means acquiring a vocabulary totally new except for a few borrowings like "typhoon" and "gung ho".

As a second obstacle, Chinese has a phonetic feature that's hard for English-speaking learners to hear and reproduce. Like English words, Chinese words are made up of consonant and vowel sounds, but each word also has an intonation pattern that's not optional. The Chinese word liu⁴ means "six"; liu² (same consonant and vowels but different tone pattern) means "remain". Jia⁴zhi² means "value"; jia³zhi¹ means "artificial limb".

Here's a little poem to show what Mandarin Chinese sounds like, with its four different tones:

[Chinese poem]

Now, many other languages lack English cognates. And some, like Vietnamese, are also tonal. But there's another obstacle that puts Chinese on a whole different level: its writing system.

If you've ever volunteered as a literacy teacher, you know what a frustrating handicap illiteracy is, and how empowered an adult learner feels as he or she masters the "code" that links sounds with the squiggles that represent them on paper. People learning Chinese have a very complicated "code" to master.

The squiggles the Chinese writing system uses--usually called "characters"--don't represent simple consonant and vowel sounds, the way English letters do. Each one stands for a whole one-syllable word or word element, combining sound and meaning. For example, if a Chinese-like system were used to write English, the word "unbearable" might be written with three squiggles, one for "un", one for "bear", and one for "able". And that "bear" squiggle would be different from the squiggles used in "grizzly bear", "childbearing", and "the right to bear arms"--to say nothing of "barefoot", "Bering Strait", and "baritone". That adds up to a lot of squiggles for learners to memorize--several thousand characters instead of a couple dozen alphabet letters. Not surprisingly, illiteracy is a major problem in China.

And when you meet a new character, how do you look it up? There are hundreds of Chinese dictionaries, and almost as many different systems for arranging characters. Without alphabetical order, tracking down an unknown character is much more labor-intensive than flipping pages while silently mouthing the ABC song. Even when you find the character, you won't necessarily know--without still more dictionary research--whether it's a standalone word or part of a compound like "unbearable".

I hope these comments serve less to discourage than to challenge people interested in learning Chinese. On the upside, the sound system of Chinese is pretty simple except for the tones, and its grammar poses no real difficulties for English speakers. Even the writing system, devilish as it may seem, has fascinated foreigners for centuries, and offers a key to understanding the classical literature and modern economic vitality of one of the great civilizations of the world.

That's the linguistic thought for today, which comes from philologist and free-lance writer Barry Hilton in Maine. And this is the Five-Minute Linguist at the College of Charleston, in cooperation with the National Museum of Language. Visit us at www.cofc.edu/linguist. In the meantime, keep in mind that wherever you are, and whatever you do... language makes a difference.

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