Talk to ze Hand

Talk to ze Hand

Dear Hand,

My new boyfriend is French, and he barely knows how to speak a word of English. On the other hand, I’m trying to learn his language, but it’s hard, especially because he speaks to me primarily in French. Any advice?

Moulin Rouge

Chère Rouge,

Your problem is more common than you think. Human speech is indeed an unusual way of communication in the natural order of things. It does not have the simplicity of biochemical signals from both plants and animals, or the extreme efficiency of animal cries when it comes to conveying their intentions to hunt, to mate and to survive. Same species across time and space, regardless of origins, can understand one another’s intent and biological state with little difficulty, if not easily. Not so for us humans and our myriad languages.

From the basic component of speech which is the phoneme we see how different people from different ethnolinguistic backgrounds already have variations in how language comprehension occurs. Phonemes are the building blocks of syllables, which are in turn parts of words. In any single language, altering a single phoneme can drastically change the meaning of the word, moreso when that word is taken in a different linguistic context.

Learning a new language brings with it a number of dilemmas, including the segmentation problem and the variability problem. The segmentation problem has been asked because it has been observed that our input of auditory stimuli does not happen in individual spurts, but rather in a constant stream. How, then, are we able to identify particular details and singular words? Even using the most advanced of auditory measuring devices, which analyzes the spectral images of speech, we see that breaks in sound do not necessarily equate to breaks in speech patterns. It is here that we see culture come into action: a person used to a certain language can easily identify specific linguistic elements and ascribe meanings to them, thereby giving value to the content of the speech. A foreigner unfamiliar to the vernacular hears only a steady blabber, and being unable to pin down words, could not infer the meaning of the speech. The segmentation problem is a lot more difficult for languages with no pauses in between sentences. French, for instance, is a continuous tongue, halting only at the end of every sentence, words flowing into each other especially if the first one ends in a vowel and the second starts with a consonant. This highlights the segmentation problem more, making even students of this particular Romantic language strain to note down individual words and concepts.

The variability problem also presents a predicament for foreigners and language students alike. According to it, we see specific phonemes in its own linguistic context; that is, the /b/ in bat is different from the /b/ in boot because although both are of a single phoneme the succeeding acoustic signal alters their individual meanings. It also depends on the one speaking. For example, a person says bat differently compared to another person using the same language but with a different set of speech patterns, including variance in the accent, speed and pronunciation clarity. In many ways, this becomes a hassle for students learning a specific language in an environment which does not foster it: local teachers, for one, have a distinct way of pronouncing words and ending sentences which may not be similar to how native speakers speak. One’s own speech patterns could also affect the way one speaks another language. For example, people who are articulate in German, a hard, guttural tongue, find it somewhat difficult to adjust to soft, nasal French. French people, on the other hand, would most probably find Tagalog hard to learn, with the latter’s clearly pronounced vowels and word endings.

The variability problem compounds with the segmentation one to make a new language harder to comprehend. Because of the changing nature of speech depending on the context, it is trickier to infer sentence segments based merely on what one hears. For language students whose teachers speak to them only in their object inference, this makes it more difficult, because the student does not as of yet have clear segmentation. Even if they do, the neural associations ascribed to meanings have not yet been established yet, thereby creating multiple sensory signals which can become more confusing in time. Enter the multimodality of speech.

Just like in virtually all aspects of a normal person’s life, auditory signals work in concert with stimuli from the other sensory modalities to create a better mental image of the world. This is seen in human communication primarily through eye contact and non-verbal cues. A man saying something unintelligible in a foreign language may seem impossible to comprehend, but with him pointing at, say, you, a table laden with food and then to his mouth, we somehow understand the message that he is offering us to eat. Similarly, hand gestures and body poses help us not merely in making sense of foreign languages but also in our daily lives, making it extremely easier for us to convey our thoughts across.

To be sure, non-verbal communication has its flaws, too. Differences in cultural backgrounds can lead to misunderstanding. An example would be the OK sign, with the thumb and the forefinger pressed together and the three other fingers raised. In the United States, it’s typically a positive signal, but in Venezuela and Turkey it’s an insult to a person’s sexuality. In Germany it can mean to be an asshole, while in Japan it’s commonly held to represent money.

Learning a new language is never an easy task, because it brings with it not only problems regarding memorization and linguistic rules, but also cultural and social dilemmas as well. That is why it is important to be decisive about it and work hard to try to learn it, of course applying lessons learned from the psychology of language and speech perception. Love comes in to save the day, too. If your love is pure and you’re willing to devote a lot of your brain cells to learn his language, then good for you. Bonne chance!

amitiés,

Hand Sam

p.s. Immersion is still the best way to learn a language. Ask your boyfriend if he can afford you guys living in France. :)

References:

Goldstein, E. B. (2007). Sensation and Perception (7^th Eds.). Wadsworth: Belmont, CA.

Psychology of Language