October 15, 2019
How Speaking Another Language Can Improve Your Writing
Speaking another language has always been something I’m good at. My native language is not English; Greek isProblematically for the concept of "native language", I often feel unable to come up with a word in Greek that I know perfectly well in English—I had to look up Arrogant yesterday. Needless to say, the issue is far more pronounced with terminology. I feel entirely unable to express myself in Greek when it comes to, say, the Gothic (my academic field of expertise), or aviation (one of my interests). Put simply, I have no idea what Non-normative Uncanny Other or Compressor Stall are in Greek.. I am also fluent in Finnish and, having lived in Italy, I do understand Italian fairly well. I’m also currently learning Japanese, just for fun.
Or then again, maybe not.
Learning a new language can and should be fun, but if the expression “just for fun” implies only a casual process lacking any true significance, let me dispel that impression.
Speaking a new language, besides offering a great way to tickle your brain and expand your horizons, can be a vital tool for a writer. Writing is about experiencing the world, attempting to understand it, and offering an alternative reality; a new way of thinking. Speaking another language helps the writer by occupying each and every part of this chain.
Speaking another language can help you experience the world in ways your native language might not. This way, it can offer you additional tools for understanding your surrounding environment, at the same time providing you with inspiration to alter it.
How, you might ask. It’s a fair question. So, let’s take a closer look at the intricacies of speaking another language and, particularly, how speaking another language can help you become a better writer.
You Speak What You Think. Or Perhaps, You Think What You Speak
One of the most controversial elements in linguistic anthropology might be that of linguistic relativity. You perhaps have heard the term “the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis;” it’s basically the same thing.
In a nutshell, linguistic relativity affirms that language determines (strong relativity) or at least influences (weak relativity) the way we think. The modern consensus among linguists is to reject the former and accept the latter. In other words, it is a fairly accepted view that language influences the way we think.
At this point, you’d perhaps like an example. After all, even the weak form of linguistic relativity might initially sound as something odd and implausible. “How can words affect our cognition?” one objection could be. “After all, it’s words and meaning that are assigned to the surrounding world, not the other way around.”
An Example of Language Influencing Thought
Alright, then, let’s see an example. Let’s assume John is a native English speaker, and Maria is a native Greek speaker. John has been brought up to think of his father as a “he”, and his mother as a “she”. So does Maria. So far so good.
John has also always thought of a poppy, a car, or the ocean as an “it”. But for Maria the poppy is a “she”, the car is an “it”, and the ocean is a “he”. Greek, like many other languages such as Italian or French, makes use of grammatical gender for all nouns, adjectives, articles, and pronouns.
At this point, a person might still wonder how this can affect one’s way of thinking. Ironically enough, it might be linguistic relativity that would steer that person in that direction.
For a speaker of both languages, there is a clear divide in terms of how each language inspires you to see the world. Allow me to draw from my personal experience to elaborate on the matter.
How Speaking a Different Language Inspires you to Think Differently
For reasons that might be cultural, historical, or sociopolitical, certain languages place greater emphasis on some things or activities, while other languages place emphasis on some other things or activities. This also reflects on loanwords. “Philosophy” comes from Greek; “sauna” from Finnish.
Additionally, there are also grammatical or syntactical reasons that make a language inherently different than others.
Let’s take Japanese, the syntax of which is very different from English. The phrase “I walk from home to the office” becomes in Japanese something like “home from office to walk”. In Japanese, the verb virtually always appears at the end of the sentence. Furthermore, the subject of the verb is very often omitted. I wish I could read Murakami in Japanese!
Imagine seeing the world in a way where almost the entire context appears before the verb that describes to you what occurs. Imagine a world where you hear something like “my house yesterday big fire suddenly was burned not.”
In the example mentioned in the previous section, a native English speaker might not assign any particular quality to the words “poppy” or “ocean”, other than what the words already convey as a result of the objects they describe.
and ways of thinking out there than what you already know.
Poppies Are Girls, Oceans Are Men
A poppy can be red and it can remind you of summer – that’s how colors work in literature. The ocean can be calm and turquoise, or it can be dark and menacing. And if you’re a Greek speaker, it’s also masculine, just as poppies are feminine.
For a writer, it might perhaps be a little more obvious why this additional layer of meaning can be important. A writer might also not be surprised hearing that in Greek the moon is feminine whereas the sun is masculine.
And so, speaking another language can either boost or challenge your existing beliefs about the world. Effectively, speaking another language can increase your ability to reflect on the ontology of things – a less fancy word could be “beingness”; the way things are. It can also help you understand how to creatively manipulate your readers, guiding them to a certain meaning.
As I will demonstrate in greater detail in the next section, seeing the world from such wildly different perspectives can be an excellent guide on learning to control your narratives.
A Different Worldview Is Always a Great Thing to Have as a Writer
As writers, we all have limitations of various kinds. This is neither particularly bad nor surprising. It just is. The trick is to acknowledge your limitations and try to circumnavigate them. One of those limitations is the way we have become conditioned to see the world in a certain way.
To continue the example from the previous sections, a native English speaker is conditioned to see objects impersonally—poppies, cars, or oceans are all “things”.
To a native Greek speaker, the phrase “the sea was calm and welcoming, waiting for the man to touch it” is replete with humanity and emotion, as a result of the noun (“the sea”) and all its associated adjectives, articles, and pronouns being feminine. It almost feels as if the sea were an actual person (indeed a woman).
Tellingly, the effect would be far different if a Greek speaker used the word “archipelago” (neuter gender) or “ocean” (masculine) instead. In English, the only thing changing would be the nouns themselves, and although some minor difference in meaning would exist, the substitution would mark nowhere near as strong an emotional difference as in Greek.
Can a writer exploit such subtle but powerful differences between languages? You bet!
Syntax English Different Sometimes Can Be
Learning a language other than your native one is an eye-opening experience. It literally allows you to think in a different way. Not only does this supercharge your creativity and inspiration, it also allows you to better control your text.
To name a personal example, ever since I began learning Japanese I started to experiment with peculiar syntax in English. It’s not easy—indeed it is a work in progress—but I feel extremely intrigued by the ability to withhold crucial information the way the Japanese language allows you to.
“Fast cars with careless drivers, by one after another my body was missed.” A peculiar syntax, to be sure, but such a suspenseful manipulation of the reader! It is literally the last word of the sentence that describes what actually occurred.
Speaking Another Language Is About Seeing the World as Another Person
Our native language is our first truly effective way to alter our environment. As toddlers, we quickly discover that we can get what we want by voicing our needs. Growing up, the connection between language and altering our environment becomes exponentially more complex.
Our native language is literally the gateway that connects us with our environment. As such, it becomes an integral part of our identity, of who we are.
Now add a different language into the mix.
The entire setup is often different. There might be a different alphabet (or several; Japanese uses three sets of characters) and certainly different rules. “The black cat” becomes “the cat black” in Spanish, to name one example.
This forces you to think differently, which in turn forces you to temporarily forget who you are and put yourself in someone else’s place. You literally need to see the world as a different person.
I don’t have any research to back this up, but I’m willing to bet that good writers are often talented in learning new languages. Why? Because the ability to see the world as someone else—empathy, in other words—has been linked with writing and reading.
Speaking another language helps you experience the world in a different way. Isn’t this what writing should be all about?
4 Comments
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I’m fortunate to speak Spanish (grew up in Mexico), enough French to get by, and a bit of Latin.
But I also find it mind-stretching to speak different dialects of English – two of my main characters are very different American women, and the third is an Irish man. It’s always an interesting wrench to switch from writing one of them to another.
With practice I can also produce various dialects of Spanish, and it is as varied a language as English – those world-wide empires have led to so much local flavor, from the Argentinian sing-song (sonsonete) to the Cuban version which eats (se come) the endings of words. And of course the Spanish of Spain.
Good for the brain and the outlook. I’m still startled when I meet Americans who’ve never even crossed the border to Canada. My parents put me on my first flight to Mexico alone when I was three.
Reading dialects can be hard work — I can imagine writing them is even worse. Having watched the film first, I tried to read Irvine Welsh’s ‘Trainspotting’, and the way he transliterates the Scottish dialect makes it intolerable to read.
” Nae hassle man . . . I’ll git oaf the skag, and Saughton’s barry fir hash. It’ll be a piece ay pish likesay”
Hard work!
Edit: I just realized there must be something worse than reading or writing such a book: Translating it into another language!
For writing dialects, I’ve found that standard English, plus some altered word order and choice is enhanced by picking one of two words which get the odd spelling – but anything more complex feels like reading an ancient language. I keep my Irish character very light – compared to your transliteration example.
I went back to read Huckleberry Finn a an adult. I had read it as a kid – the full version, not a kids one – and Mark Twain drove me crazy! Way too heavy on the attempt to render Mississippi speech patterns both accurately and comprehensibly. This is done far less often now, because, as someone said (I can’t remember where I read it): those whose speech is being imitated phonetically don’t think of themselves as speaking anything other than ‘English.’
The musicality of the Irish is often due just as much to word choice and order as it is to accent.
Very interesting, thanks for writing this 😊