Questions about language and cultural context (4)

Does language define our identity? 

Language can define our identity, especially through the way we say it. 

The hostess I lived with during the break is of middle age, and she is a mother of a grown-up son and a big yellow dog, which was adopted on the street. She named the dog "ChouBao"--literally means "silly baby", and she talks to her dog all the time whatever she is doing. She treats her dog as if her second son, teaching it a lesson when it attacks other dog, and the way she talks embodies her maternal instinct. In this case, it's not which language affects but the word choice that makes a difference to shape one's identity. For example, my hostess could call me "Nancy", "Nancy Li", "girl", but she calls me "Baobao"--means baby. As I can tell, she is a really gentle and warmhearted lady, a good caretaker with nice temper. And she is the only one who gives me such a nickname in the family, so her words are like a tag representing herself.

Besides, language can also define a group. For example, the teenagers, who have a lot in common, would communicate with each other using their special and fashion words, mostly slang. We tend to feel closer when using the cool words which are mostly incomprehensible to our parents, just like the characteristics of our teens, who are energetic and dynamic, and want to be unique. So the language becomes a tool to express and show our identity, to tell others who we are.

Questions about language and cultural context (3)

Are some languages more or less difficult to learn than other languages?

Subjectively, yes, people feel one language is more difficult than the other, which is due to their aptitude and learning experience for languages and some other factors. For example, most of my friends generally believe that Asians who brought up in Asia can better pronounce Asian languages such as Chinese, while not European languages such as French, and vise versa. The partial reason I believe is the innate ability that Asians born with, and some people say it's the differences lie in the shape of the tongues between Europeans and Asians.

In addition, objectively,when we compare two languages, there are still many criteria to rank the difficulties, for instance, vocabulary, pronounciation,writing and reading. When I chatted with my friend Edward, one of my Chinese classmates who speaks Mandarin, English, French, Esperanto and Shanghainese, he told me that in general he would rank from hardest to easiest language as Mandarin, French, and English (regardless Shanghainese and Esperanto). But if we break down in detail, comparing different respects the rankings change. Edward says that French grammars are way harder than English, while its reading is much easier than Chinese. As for writing, Chinese must be the NO.1 hardest language among all; it takes effort to just memorize a single character. Also, both of us agree that many ancient languages are relatively difficult to learn such as Latin, as if we learn classical Chinese which people used around a hundred years ago.

So it's really up to one's experience and feelings when evaluate a language is harder than the other or not. 

Questions about language and cultural context (2)

Should minority languages be saved from extinction?

The answer to this question is up to the language--is it too old to be used, or is it too inefficient to be used? If so, I would say we don't need to save them from extinction because there will be a better substitute to take place, a modern language that can convey more information through conversations. 

However, if the minority language is still popular among people and people can commonly accept and be willing to speak so, we can't let it die--I mean the government's policy of not speaking it. It's widely known that each province in China has its own dialect, which is quite different from Mandarin, as well as other dialects. When I entered elementary school in First Grade, it's the time when Chinese government is carrying out the policy of "Popularize Mandarin", so schools made Mandarin as the only formal language that everybody must speak Mandarin at school, no dialects. Under the circumstances, I only talk with people in Wuhan dialect after school and at home. However, when I moved to Shanghai in 2nd Grade, schools here had the same policy and I was forced to speak Mandarin everywhere since Shanghainese didn't understand Wuhan dialect; gradually, I became unacquainted with my mother tongue, the dialect, and despite my Mom, who is always speaking Wuhan dialect, somehow I can still understand what she said but only respond her in Mandarin. Sometimes I think about those days and mocked myself not being a real Shanghainese even with a Shanghai registered residence booklet and a 9-year-long experience living in the city, because I can't even speak Shanghainese. If by the time I moved to Shanghai and picked up the new dialect at the age of 7, I'm confident that I should have spoken fluent Shanghainese. 

During this winter break, I happened to live at a home-stay whose hostess was from Shanghai several decades ago, but what she speaks, the really old and traditional Shanghainese, perhaps the really authentic one, makes me confused--my friends in Shanghai speak quite different from her version, though the same language. Yet I can understand the differences imply the transform of time and culture. But I feel pity for myself that I should have known 2 different dialects  instead of neither of them. Dialects embody the local cultures, especially in China. We have over 80 different dialects that are incomprehensible among themselves, and each one of them originates from a distinctive background and cultural support, carrying the message of its exceptional heritage. Nevertheless, the new statistics show many of the dialects are disappearing by few speakers, not meaning they are useless. But just like Shanghai, for instance, few people master the ability over the authentic Shanghaiese as more and more foreign people moving into the city and bringing the culture-shock. Many people raise the awareness of saving their dialect from extinction--a way to protect their roots.

Questions about language and cultural context (1)

Does language shape culture or culture shape language?

Language and culture influence one another reciprocally. As I talked before, culture shapes language because a language is formed from its culture--language is a part of its culture. When there is no language and our ancestors start to invent a way to communicate, they originate their language based on whatever they know and are familiar to, namely, their culture. And once the language has established, people of different generations speak their mutual language, and recreate their language, as well as slightly reshape the culture of their new generation.

We can always tell the characteristics of people, such as temperance and attitude, and even guess the political and social aura in their countries or nations through their language. For example, when I saw Americans protest on the street and march down, fearlessly, I heard the straightforward slogan they used, and the mass crowds followed a leader, yelling the words (I wish I could remember what they said so that I can post them on the blog). But I can feel the anger and turbulence among the protesters. It reflects the culture in U.S., that people have free speech and express whatever they want most of the time, and facing the economic crisis and political campaign, people become emotional.

However, in the current society of China, people tend to use sarcastic language to make irony joke, attacking the government by metaphorization. When Line 10 subway had rear-end collision in Shanghai, last October, I found a really irony status crazily shared on Renren, Chinese version of Facebook, that some genius changed "Chinese pair" (I don't know how to translate this, "对联", a literary style in the form of a pair, the upper pair and lower pair need to to rhyme and there is a horizontal line called "横批" to generalize the theme and the meaning of the pair), the upper pair says "subway, railway, highway, way way to die", the lower pair says "officer, announcer, investigator, sir sir to lie", and the classic horizontal line appears "LOVE THE WAY YOU LIE". This Chinglish culture really rocks. And as we can see, Chinese people enjoy mocking, and people are becoming acrimonious and even playing code words with the governmental officials. Despite we are all Chinese, people laugh at the jokes, as if we don't see it's our government that upsets us.

So language embodies culture, and vise versa.

Questions about language and cultural context

Is the ability to acquire language innate or learned?

I do not think an exact answer to this question for either side exist. The answer lies between middle somewhere. And there are many examples that can justify either side.

Many of my friends are ABCs--American born Chinese, who can speak fluently English but rather Chinese, even though they are ethnically Chinese. Owing a yellow Asian face, black hair, and black eyes, they respond in English when their parents, who are Chinese immigrants, talk to them in Mandarin. As a outsider, I always feel such a scene funny and bizarre, as if two creatures from different planets speaking their own language but somehow they can still have a successful communication without any translation device to help. A mother of an ABC kid once told me， shaking her head, helpless:"My daughter's Mandarin is rather poor, though we sent her to a local Chinese Language School for training, people there don't take it seriously...She can barely remember what she has learned...but she can understand us (her Chinese parents)talking." When I asked the girl to speak Chinese, though not fluently, I can still tell the differences in accent and intonation from other Americans who can speak Chinese. As her mother said, though brought up in America, Chinese future generations tend to master a better sense of Chinese learning, which to me seemed an aptitude for their parents' mother languages. However, such an argument can't stand. If so, Those ABCs should speak Chinese at least as well as English since they parents teach them everyday through daily conversations. They nevertheless speak perfect English as Caucasians which indicates their ability to acquire language is not innate but learned--it is because they are raised in an English-speaking environment that spurs on to speaking good English. The same applies to a kid born in an American and Chinese's family who grows up in China, he is very likely to speak fluently Chinese. 

Besides, it's also true that aptitude does have impact on one's ability to acquire a language. For instance, 10 American students under equal condition, taking Spanish class, we can find that each one of them make different progresses and some are good at it, while others not. Since the learning environment is identical, one's innate skill and capacity probably justify the consequences.

Above all, I would like to say how to learn plays a more significant role in acquiring a language than how much talent one gets.