Even those who are seriously multilingual in Europe usually only know languages that are quite similar to their own: besides German at home, typically English, French, Italian, possibly Russian or Latin. He believes that with this he has opened the window of the world wide; but all of these languages belong to the same family, Indo-European, with its fairly uniform basic patterns – while most languages on this planet function very differently, and indeed some of the most speaker-rich ones.
Gaston Dorren, Dutch author and linguist who writes in English in English, has used an obvious selection principle: He presents the 20 largest languages in the world – size here simply measured against the number of speakers. They appear in ascending order, that is, the smallest of the large ones first, and so up to English. Each chapter is preceded by a profile that briefly informs about relationship, distribution, writing, phonetics and grammatical peculiarities.
In Vietnamese, all semantics depend on pronunciation
The smallest of the big ones is Vietnamese, with 85 million speakers. Dorren, who says “I” with no bias, books a three-week course in Hanoi. One language in three weeks? The consulate officer who issues the visa is skeptical. Rightly. Dorren does not even get to the level of guest worker, but to something else: to the knowledge of the pitfalls of clay. The tone only plays an exceptional role in European languages, for example when you switch between “nà!” and “ná?” has to distinguish.
In Vietnamese, however, with its many monosyllables, the entire semantics depend on it. “You only have to hit the wrong note once and” here “becomes” there “, or” go “becomes” prostitute, “” scrotum, “or” abuse. “All of this sounds like white noise to his ears; and when he tries his hand at Vietnamese in the alleys of Hanoi, the answer is: Sorry no English. “And why are rivers, knives and eyes being treated grammatically like animals? All of this fascinates the linguist in me, but it intimidates the student. “
Gaston Dorren: The greatest languages and what makes them so special. Translated from the English by Juliane Cromme. CH Beck, Munich 2021. 400 pages, 28 euros.
This is the great attraction of the book: that you learn something about a language in an informal way without actually having to learn it. In each language, Dorren picks out the aspect that is particularly interesting to him. Using No. 19, for example, Korean (also 85 million speakers), he explains de Saussure’s claim that all linguistic characters are arbitrary. In any case, this is not the case for Korean. The principle of sound symbolism plays a systematic role here.
“Kam-gam”, for example, means “in the dark”, “kkam-kkam” in turn means “in the pitch dark”, and “k’am-k’am” finally means “in ghostly, bleak darkness”. In the growing articulatory effort, an increasing trepidation paves the way. And that’s not a special case, it’s the rule.
With each of these foreign major languages, something comes to light that also sheds new light on your own. Language could not be changed with a command? Oh yes! Dorren’s key witness is Turkish. Kemal Ataturk not only prescribed a new script for him, the Latin one, but also forced a revolution in the vocabulary. The Persian-Arabic foreign words, around 60 percent of the old Ottoman vocabulary, have been radically replaced by new forms. It happened in such a ruthless and chaotic way that the whole language in between ran into the danger of being incomprehensible and the great rhetor Ataturk only read his speeches hesitantly from the page. Only in the past few decades has Turkish (No. 17, 90 million speakers) achieved a new level of stability. Ataturk got his way. So it works. And it can also be done with violence.
In Japan, gender was about the opposite of equality
Today, gender is an indispensable means of enforcing social equality. In Japanese (No. 13, 130 million speakers) it served exactly the opposite purpose: the clear distinction between male and female in the language is intended to cement the inferior position of women. That is why women in Japan are fighting to put an end to these two things and to be able to call themselves readers without having to smile and nod as readers.
And what about the German? With 200 million speakers, including around 100 million second language speakers (a high rate!), It still ranks 11th on Dorren’s list. But the heading of the relevant chapter indicates the problem: “An outsider in the middle of Europe”. What exactly is the problem? In the irregular verbs? They are everywhere. In the order of the words in the sentence? It’s tricky, but it can hardly be changed if the difference between “You are coming tomorrow” and “Are you coming tomorrow?” not supposed to go down the drain.
The real dysfunctional difficulty in German lies in the declination, more precisely in the duality of strong and weak declination. “On a beautiful summer morning”: It would be much easier if you could say “On a beautiful summer morning”. This also does the dative case a full honor. If you think about it, the case ending does not really make any meaningful contribution to the understanding of this phrase, and “To a beautiful summer morning” would convey the same information without any loss. (Anyone who has ever corrected a DSH exam for foreign students knows that almost half of all mistakes are made in this area.) In any case, what most contemporaries mumble on sounds pretty similar. This is undoubtedly the way of the future. Why not walk it voluntarily today if we will get out there in 300 years at the latest? That would hardly be called an act of violence, but rather an enlightened anticipation. Why not ataturize a little in German too?
No, language is not a sacred, timeless cultural asset. Language is how people understand each other or why they fail. Language does not remain in time and space, it oscillates and creates infinite diversity, which also means: infinite confusion. Dogs have it much easier there. But how deep and wide the gulf separates us is – to get an idea of it you need this book. It’s written in a very entertaining way and you learn a lot. But despite its cheerful, open-minded tone, it also fills with sadness, because one understands how powerful and inescapable the curse of Babel remains.