Simran Week Eight: Carrying Memory
It’s been four weeks of this blogging quarter, and I think we all can agree that memory can be conveyed through the words we say and the details we use. But how about language itself? Can language carry memory? The words that a language contains shows the history of the language and can reveal information about the native speakers and who they interacted with.
Think about some of the words you use. How many of you have ever said plaza or guerilla, which come from Spanish, or cliché or etiquette, which come from French. Borrowed words are proof of how language can show how connected groups of people are. The article, “How the Infiltration of French Words Changed English” describes why French and English have a much closer connection than you might think. It explains how in 1066, the duke of Normandy had invaded England and changed the language spoken by the nobles to Old French. This caused many French words to be borrowed into English. While you might have recognized some of the earlier words I had mentioned, there are many other words in English that originated from French. These words include air, flower, joy, blue, music, coast, river, and people. One fact that had especially surprised me, however, was how long ago this had occurred. This invasion had occurred almost a thousand years ago, yet there is still a clear impact on how the French has impacted English. In fact, it occurred so long ago that most people would not even imagine these words to be borrowed from French.
The usage of a language in an area can also show the history of the people. Oftentimes, colonizers force the people in the area to speak the colonizers’ language. The use of English in India, South Africa, and Ghana are all examples of this. Another example is how Native American children in the US were forced to go to boarding schools where they were banned from speaking their own language. This had a large impact as it vastly decreased the number of speakers who could speak these languages, causing many Native American languages to be at the risk of disappearing. All these examples show how the words of a language and the usage of a language can reveal the history of a group of people, which is definitely interesting to think about the next time you write an essay.
Works Cited: https://www.wondriumdaily.com/how-the-infiltration-of-french-words-changed-english/
Comments
I absolutely think that language carries memories. In Chinese, many words consist of the meanings of other words. For example, the word for passion fruit or 百香果 means “thousand flavor fruit.” I can absolutely imagine the first Chinese person to try this fruit going: “WOW THERE IS A THOUSAND FLAVORS IN THIS FRUIT. I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT TO NAME IT.” I feel like when something has a name to it, there is a specific memory for it. Even derogatory names have memories to them, even if it is for a terrible reason. Do you know any words with a cool meaning behind it?
I think I’ve asked this question to a few people who were born in different countries other than America: what language do you think in? I asked my Indonesian mother, who is simultaneously very fluent in English, this question and apparently, she has been thinking in Indonesian her whole life, despite knowing English very well. I think people just default to whatever they were born with. But that does mean that in some ways, language affects memory and thinking because certain languages are more generally less descriptive than others, just like Indonesian. Everything is a lot simpler in that language compared to English.
-Angel Susantin
I think it is really cool how many languages are intertwined. For example, when I watch Kdramas, sometimes I can understand the things they say because it is similar to English or Chinese. It is also interesting how so many of the most widely used English words originated from a different language. This alludes to the fact that despite the fact that we have different cultures and languages, we are all humans and live together on the Earth. The addition of words in the English language also reminds me of Shakespeare and his large influence on the language, creating words like bandit and lonely.
I think that your blog post was really interesting for me to read. Because I know a good amount of Spanish, I do know that like 1/3 of the words are just English words with -o added if it is a masculine noun or an -a added if it is a feminine noun. #so cool and loling. But yea, I figured that some works were borrowed from other languages to make English, a language that a lot of people speak today.
Sincerely,
Mrinmayee
I really liked your historical take on memory and language! It’s cool how people of different ethnicities and languages are all somehow related. I just wish that people didn’t learn to adapt to other languages because of invasions in the past or stuff like that. They could have just met peacefully and had a whole meeting about learning new languages and didn’t have to force other tribes or ethnicities to learn their language.
Sincerely,
Faith Tong
I do believe language carries history and memory and that I remember in history the teacher had talked about how people allied together because they had similar culture. Although being pretty fluent in both English and Chinese , I would mostly think in Chinese sometimes even speaking out the thought in Chinese. I think it's pretty interesting and might be the reason that I speak more chinese than English at home and that it happens with many multi-lingual.
I love noticing how languages are able to have similarities, to be honest. Though I am HORRIBLE at reading Chinese characters, I can recognize simple characters when playing Japanese server games because their lettering slightly derives from Chinese characters, so I am like "WOW! I can read some characters! :0" I also notice that my grandmother's native tongue slightly has a touch of Spanish origins, which is very odd because it sounds like a mix of Mandarin, Cantonese, and Spanish, but otherwise really cool to hear.