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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Need it in as many languages as possible, etc etc
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References: <54aflm$i0u@neptune.theplanet.co.uk> <54ddk2$hl9@camel1.mindspring.com>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 1996 17:46:55 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.lang.translation:9713 sci.lang:63123

In article <54ddk2$hl9@camel1.mindspring.com>,
Andras Malatinszky <fairfax@pipeline.com> wrote (in part):
>
>By the way, would somebody posting these silly
>questions explain why exactly it is important to be able to say
>breakfast in Swahili (unless, of course, you happen to be in East
>Africa)? I could imagine a poster saying, e.g., "We are a casino in
>Neverhasbeen, Nevada, and we get a lot of foreign guests who speak no
>English and keep putting pennies into the slot machines, so could you
>please let us know how to say 'nickels, dimes and quarters only' in as
>many languages as possible?" That's a weird but legitimate question,
>and I might even consider answering it, but these foolish exercises
>about 'breakfast' and 'love' and 'thank you' and 'hello' are just a
>pointless waste of time and resources.

	Hate to break it to you, but Usenet is almost by definition
a pointless waste of time and resources.  On the other hand, most of
us living in the first world (and some residents of the second and
third worlds) have more than enough time and money to squander on
things that amuse us.  As a linguist, I relish knowing weird bits of
languages most people wouldn't; as a language educator, I encourage
people to show an interest in foreign languages, even on the most
shallow and dilettantish level.

	No, I haven't been the impetus behind any "How to say x in y
languages" threads, but, when I younger, I tried to collect "I am a giant
duck" in as many languages as I could, even going so far as to post my
request on linguistics department bulletin boards. "What could be more
pointless," you're probably thinking.  Well, here are some of the concrete
benefits:

*It's a tremendous icebreaker, especially when meeting foreigners.  If I
already had the phrase in their language, I could say, "Oh, you're Thai?
I know some Thai!" and launch into it; if not, I could ask them how to say
it.  Either way I usually got a very bemused and friendly response.  I
have fond memories of an Ethiopian waiter teaching me not only "I am a
giant duck", but also "You are a giant duck," "He is a giant duck," and
"She is a giant duck":  An impromptu crash course in Amharic pronouns
between the desert course and the bill.  Or the response of a group of
Chinese students who were trying to raise money to support the
demonstrators in Tiananmen Square by selling calligraphy.  I think after
an entire afternoon of transliterating American given names and writing
"Home, Sweet Home", it came as a welcome change.

Most people, especially those whose native languages are not commonly
spoken by Americans of European descent, are gratified to here that one
knows even just a word or two.  This may sound silly, but I think for some
it feels like a validation of the importance of their culture.  Alternate-
ly, it suggests that they're not dealing with some barbaric ugly American
(or Briton, German, Frenchman, etc.).  In one of his books, Mario Pei
describes the delighted reaction calling out the number of his floor in
Hungarian produced in the elevator operator at his Budapest hotel.  I get
a similar response from my Korean dry cleaners every time I greet them
with "Annyeng haseyyo!"

*It produces an appreciation for human creativity in the form of the
tremendous diversity of natural and artificial languages.  Even the
linguistically unsophisticated can spot intriguing similarities and
differences in a simple list of greetings, expressions of thanks, or words
for love.  With my phrase and my background, I was able to go a bit
further, getting a glimpse of the complexity of the Vietnamese pronomial
system or Crow polysyntheticness.

*It gives someone the thrill of teaching someone something new and/or
showing off their erudition.  I made light of this in my posts on the
bulletin boards (saying something to the effect of "Ridiculed for the long
hours spent memorising Nahuatl verb paradigms?  Well now you can show them
off to an easily-impressed undergraduate!"), but it's a serious motivating
force.  If not for it, Usenet would collapse in a day.  Why else do people
waste precious time and resources posting follow-ups to requests for help
from people they don't know from Adam?  It's not just out love of one's
fellow man.  Think about it:  If Usenet were *completely* anonymous, and
those helped were not able to send thanks to their helpers, would anyone
still post?

	Oops, I didn't mean for this to turn into such a damn treatise,
but I hope you understand now that even "pointless" pursuits are never
quite as pointless as they may appear.  There are a *lot* of functions of   
language beyond the simple communication of facts.

-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
