what do the languages we speak can tell about us?
Heidegger said that «language is the house of Being» [Heidegger: 129] and I completely agree with him. Being the result of the nation’s creative process language preserves the nation’s deepest values, moral guidelines and ways of understanding the world. Fundamental ideas about space and time, important human qualities and basic concepts of life are expressed in the language of each nation. That’s why languages suggest different depiction of reality. Native speakers of different languages will pay attention to different things in the life, depending on what the language they speak focuses on.
In the basis of the world view and world understanding of each nation lies a system of social stereotypes and cognitive schemes.
That is why human’s consciousness is always ethnically determined. The mindset of one nation can not be translated into the cultural terms of other nation by simple «recoding» [Leontyev: 20].
The representation of the world is created in language with the help of vocabulary and grammar. I find it really amazing that analysis of the lexical system and grammar of a language can reveal a lot about nation’s culture, mentality and concepts which seem to be especially important for its speakers.
When I started learning German I was surprised to know that in this language humans’ feelings and traits of character can be described through terms of plants’ vegetation, depending on the stage of their development. For example: «Es tut mir unendlich leid, dass euch auch jetzt noch so viel Kummer blüht» (literally: «I am infinitely sorry that so much sorrow is still blooming in you even now»). Nomination which indicates the growth of a plant metaphorically expresses the intensity of person’s feelings [Dubinskaya: 466].
Also in German comparison with discrete objects, for examples trees or fruits, reflects discreteness of a feeling or character trait. Selection of some elements in these objects (roots of the tree or seeds of the fruit) is testimony to their heterogeneity. It applies also to traits of character and feelings and indicates the potential opportunity for highlighting different aspects in them. For example: «Liebe ist eine süße Frucht, deren Kern nicht zu sehen ist» (literally: «Love is a sweet fruit, the core of which cannot be seen») [Dubinskaya: 467].
My favorite example of how nation’s mentality is manifested in a language is syntactic construction in Russian which is called impersonal sentence. This type of sentence is thought to be one of the most characteristic features of Russian way of thinking [Wierzbicka: 73–76].
What is an impersonal sentence? It is a sentence with no agent in it. Human’s condition which in English could be expressed in a phrase «I can not sleep» in Russian can be transmitted like «Мне не спится» («Mne ne spitsa»). This is an impersonal sentence, because in English phrase there is an agent (that is me, who can not sleep) while in Russian sentence there is no agent. There is just human’s state expressed. The same condition though can be explained in Russian in a different sentence, with an agent: «Я не могу заснуть» («Ya ne mogu zasnut’»). Now there is somebody who performs the action, just like in the English sentence. But this Russian phrase has a slightly different meaning, because there appears a connotation of control, the agent controls its state himself.
Wierzbicka* states that the base of impersonal sentences lies in an attempt to find the true cause of a phenomenon and an acknowledgement of the fact that this cause is unknown. All sentences of this type are non-agent. Mysterious and incomprehensible events outside us happen not because somebody does something and events inside us occur not at all not because we want them to happen. They happen… just because. It is a typical Russian phenomenon, because in other European languages changes usually go in the opposite direction. Richness and variety of impersonal constructions in Russian shows that the language reflects and encourages the tendency of Russian culture to view the world as a set of events which are beyond human control and comprehension [Wierbicka: 73–76].
*Anna Wierzbicka (born in 1938 in Warsaw) — a Polish linguist known for her work in semantics, pragmatics and cross-cultural linguistics.
Examples can be multiplied. When I have just started learning English I was astonished to know that there exists only one word for blue color: just «blue» and that’s all. While in Russian there are two words: «синий» («siniy») and «голубой» («goluboy»). And these are different colors. But I was even more surprised when I was reading Vezhbitskaya and knew that there are actually languages which do not even have a special word for «color». Though all languages have a word for «see» [Vezhbitsksaya: 232].
In Danish there is a special concept — «hygge», which does not exist in Russian (and in English, as far as I know). In Italian language there is an expression «dolce far niente» which also has no analogue in my native language (the closest equivalent in English possibly might be «me time» but it is not exactly the same thing, as far as I am aware). These terms characterize the Danes and the Italians in a certain way and transmit cultural ideas which are important for these nations, the way they live and perceive life.
My experience suggests that this idea of language crafting the reality also works in our everyday life.
If one always focuses on the negative emotions and events in his speech and describes everything around in adversarial terms, the life really seems dull and unbearable for him. While focusing on positive thoughts and expressions changes the life for the better.
I think, that’s why it is so important to study humanities: by understanding them, we get to know ourselves better. We start paying attention to the way we think and see the world around us, to what is important for us and what is not. The language we speak reveals a lot about our view of the world. Linguistic worldview is a very interesting and wide area of study and of course it is impossible to explain everything in one text, but I find it really captivating to look for such things in languages and better understand people through their language.
P.
Literature:
- Wierzbicka A. Language. Culture. Cognition. M., 1996. 416 p.
- Dubinskaya Т. А. Characteristic of humans inner world with names of flora objects (in the German language) // Materials of All-Russian scientific-practical conference Omsk Scientific Readings, 2017. P. 465–467.
- Heidegger M. Poetry, language, thought. New York, 2001. 254 p.
- Leontiev А. А. Language consciousness and view of the world // Language and consciousness: paradoxical rationality. М., 1993. 174 p.
