clives@sri-unix (12/10/82)
[This was to be a letter, but I thought perhaps it might add something new to this discussion group.] CNS Hurray, Pablo! Good rejoinder, interesting discussion, good attitude, and ever so much more so much more interesting than "ov". If I weren't very soon to be out of touch with the net, I'd try engaging you in a little correspondence. I am interested, if you wish to tell me, how you developed such an interest in English language. In particular, do you find differences in world-view that strike you between your native tongue -- is it Spanish; do you feel like telling me what other culture(s) you have roots in? -- and English? I ask due to my experiences with Korean, with which I learned a passing acquaintance about 9 years ago. It is a very different way of attaching to the world for a Westerner; I found myself writing certain of my feelings in that language for years after last returning. Once in a while I still do, though I've become pretty rusty. Most Westerners who visit Korea learn little or nothing of Korean; contrariwise, though Koreans study English for years as a necessary connection to the Occident, few of them have any real liking for it, or easy fluency. Exemplifying this, in 4 years of travels in and out of Korea, one of them instructing in engineering practice in a graduate school with Korean professors -- most of whom had 10-15 years in America before repatriation -- I only met two persons who spoke clear, comfortable English; both were extremely unusual men. (Add: I imagine several of my students probably do by now) The first was a clinical psychologist, a profession, he assured me, of Western origin and quite new in specific concext to Korea (though of course they have their own ways with such needs of life); the other had been sent as a missionary (!) pastor by the Presbyterian church to a remote ranchland in the Dakotas for 10 years. In contrast, many Japanese, whose language includes obvious connection to the Korean root Ural-Altaic, doubtless (though somewhat unmentionably) passed through Korea, can speak a flawless Oxford English with an ability which I sometimes felt surpassed my own. And a high-school age bus-boy in a tiny restaurant in Tokyo could explain to me, given only patience, the difference between several fish dishes whose constituent's names I didn't really know in English myself. The very feeling of Korean seems to hint an answer, if I did not know one from more intimate observation and friendships. Koreans have a profound relationship with intuitions towards the nature of things, really a sort of ontology; and English just does not feel comfortable (a word I've known them to use often and specifically in this context) to their sensibility. Though it may be used synthetically to do so (an illustration of it's real power, among all our self-degrading criticisms), English in it's everyday form cannot align with the way they feel or see, so brings a feeling of real discomfort to use. As I found in tutoring immigrants back in this country, English sounds themselves require one to reshape the face in ways, use expressiveness, that is quite embarrassing to Koreans, especially to men. Contrariwise, of course, Korean sounds simply do not differentiate to Westerners unless they learn something new about hearing. The notion of clear speech is antithetical to the flowing agglutination of Korean. Much more than this, though, there just is not much conceptual matching between the languages. Translation dictionaries seem to give lists of words and phrases to encircle the intended meaning; there is seldom any literal equivalence. One of the first things one learns is the counterpart to the Western notion of having to do something; e.g. "You must go to work in the morning." In Korean, the verb, short, and so often used, is toeda (try saying tway-da, sort of) in one of the six or so popular transliteration schemes. (None of these truly work at all; Korean has a perfect phonemic alphabet half again as large as the English non-phonemic one.) This word seems to translate roughly as a notion of becoming, and is used in constructions as, literally, "if you don't do so, things won't become"; i.e. the universe will not progress as it should if you don't do your part. What a world of difference, and here I borrow from Ruth Benedict, the famous anthropologist commissioned by the US government to explain just who the Japanese were and possibly what it was they were after during WW2; our notion of requirement is based on guilt, and Asiatic ones on shame. Speaking of which, this seems an excellent place to stop, and get some needed sleep. I haven't touched, much less scratched the surface; some issues are the totally different syntax -- sort of RPN, (Lisp-lovers might like it); the specificity, number, often onomatopoeic and gregarious (yes, I mean that) natures of adjectives (100 or so for ways of walking down the street); the intense musico-communicative nature of tone in a language that has a much flatter inflection than English, and no connection whatever to tonal semantics as in Chinese..... That last is something which had the power to wake me in the Siberian pre-dawn, snow literally blowing in through the loose window-frame, to meditate deeply down until I could find the root of a meaning which had been communicated through a thin wall the night before, wordlessly. But that's another story; I probably won't be around long enough to get the chance to tell it here -- off for greener pastures. But, if these things interest, perhaps inter-cultural discussions could be held, instead of the vague (is it) defensiveness I've felt. Let's stop that, all you New Jerseyites, Canadians, transported English, Oregonians etc...... We might learn something even work-related (ai, anyone) from discovery of others' sensibilities, as opposed to sensitivities, and it could be really fun. I'm sorry I'll miss further chance of it. Maybe there might be, even, net.modern.literature? I recommend trying John Fowles, Barry Holstun Lopez, and Ntozake Shange. Hoping this sort of intelligence discussion is as interesting as the "artificial" one (which I also like) and wondering what else I might do with an essay like this, (This is one thing I do, when there isn't any woman, and when there is) I remain, Clive Steward Tektronix, Beaverton