Tag: English

The next lingua franca

Published on by Maciej ModzelewskiLeave a comment

When I think of a lingua franca, the first thing that comes to mind is Latin, which shouldn’t be all that surprising, if only for the centuries of dashing strides of Roman legionaries across the Mediterranean world, much of Western Europe, the Balkans, Crimea, and vast regions of the Middle East, including Anatolia, the Levant, and parts of Mesopotamia and Arabia. But Latin held strong even after the fall of the Roman Empire, although its status as the official language of the Croatian parliament as late as the mid-nineteenth century is more of a curiosity than the norm. Nevertheless, the first truly global lingua franca was French—to think that it all began with the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts—and its undivided reign in courts and salons, universities and military headquarters, received its first blow only when the Treaty of Versailles was also drawn up in English. And so here we are—with the language of Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen and Orwell—producing literature, scholarly works and manuals by the mile and wondering what will come next—Chinese perhaps? But I have a hunch that the next truly global lingua franca will be 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001, but that is going to be as relevant to us as the invention of the washing machine was to the dinosaurs.

More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com

Do as the Romans do

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Being a native speaker is certainly very convenient, but it often makes you also blind to the idiosyncrasies of your language. After all, you absorb it with your mother’s milk (is that why they call it a mother tongue?), so you think nothing of it. To give an example, I never noticed that one of the constructs in my native Polish violated logic—well, even if it doesn’t inherently do so, a negative concord definitely does seem counterintuitive to formal logical systems—until I started learning English. But learning the latter is not without its own challenges, one of the biggest being articles—something completely alien to me, since they don’t exist in Polish. They simply make no sense to me. I could say, ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do’, but I don’t think that proverb is the most fitting here.

More words to ponder at maciejmodzelewski.com

surreal oil painting showing a person translating text from one language to another

Journal (The art of translation)

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

Translation is a tricky endeavour, and you can easily spot the problems if you happen to know both the language of the original text and of the translation, as it happened for me in the case of Diary by my favourite Polish intellectualist, Witold Gombrowicz, which I have in two editions, original and translated into English, and frankly, I’m not particularly fond of the latter.

This particular text aside, it’s one thing if the root of the problem lies in semantic equivalence, but it’s something else entirely if contortions, whether accidental or intentional, come into play, as in the quotation from Cicero’s Tusculanæ Disputationes that I found in The Essays of Montaigne—Volume 05 by Michel de Montaigne, translated by Charles Cotton. “Hanc amplissimam omnium artium bene vivendi disciplinam, vita magis quam literis, persequuti sunt.” is translated as “They have proceeded to this discipline of living well, which of all arts is the greatest, by their lives, rather than by their reading.”

Apart from the fact that in the original this is not an independent sentence but the conclusion of a longer one, it has misspelt two words since the original text is “hanc amplissimam omnium artium, bene vivendi disciplinam, vita magis quam litteris persecuti sunt.” (Tusculanae Disputationes, M. Tullius Cicero, M. Pohlenz, Leipzig, 1918), and in translation by Charles Duke Yonge, for example, it reads as follows: “yet promoted this most extensive of all arts, the principle of living well, even more by their life than by their writings.”

Someone might accuse me of nitpicking details, but I see fundamental differences between “proceeded” and “promoted”, and “their reading” and “their writings”.

an oil painting showing a young woman visiting a foreign country

Journal (To sharpen your wits)

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

I know it’s just grammar, but English sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable due to the constant repetition of words, especially personal pronouns. In my native language, this would be considered a failure of style. But perhaps me being pernickety is just a smokescreen by my shallow mind in denial, and even if every now and then I do happen to have a thought that might be worth sharing, I’m too afraid to do so because every important aspect of life is a subject to controversy, and I’m terrified of conflict. Of course, I could always lean on the crutches of institutional authority, as I did in my journalism days, but this helps only in the professional sphere—personally, I’m a chicken.

Perhaps it’s a matter of my upbringing. I must admit that reading the Epistles, the thirteenth book of The Good Book, in my late forties was something of a revelation, and I deeply regretted not having known its contents in my youth. The problem is also in the fact that the modern education system we are put through is neither in a position to fill the shortcomings of parenthood nor pursue master-disciple-style mentoring. In reality, it’s more like a grinder or lawnmower for shaping an efficient and reliable workforce.

What’s left is self-education. But here lies the problem—you can’t do that alone. As Michel de Montaigne rightly noticed, “conversation with men is of very great use and travel into foreign countries; not to bring back (as most of our young monsieurs do) an account only of how many paces Santa Rotonda—[The Pantheon of Agrippa.]—is in circuit; or of the richness of Signora Livia’s petticoats; or, as some others, how much Nero’s face, in a statue in such an old ruin, is longer and broader than that made for him on some medal; but to be able chiefly to give an account of the humours, manners, customs, and laws of those nations where he has been, and that we may whet and sharpen our wits by rubbing them against those of others.” (from “The Essays of Montaigne—Volume 05” by Michel de Montaigne, translated by Charles Cotton) I especially agree with the idea of travelling to foreign countries because I have first-hand experience with its power and how it changes your perspective and way of thinking. It’s a pity it didn’t happen until I was thirty.

watercolour portrait of a bored young woman

Actively bored

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

You will never see the peculiarities
of your own language
or really appreciate its beauty
until you learn another one.

Only after emigrating,
while delving into the intricacies of English,
did I notice that in my mother tongue
there is a construction that is contrary
to the principles of logic.

The negative concord was quite a surprise,
and once I saw it, I was baffled at
how something so obvious
had escaped my notice
for almost three decades.

On the other hand, if I think of diminutives,
English is not even remotely close
to what one can achieve in Polish.

And if the doldrums struck,
in my native language, you could say I’m bored
but also express that in a more active,
if untranslatable, form.

stack of letters of the Latin alphabet

Let’s say—future

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

Imagine a simple word—let’s say—future, spoken as if it were native
to my mother tongue. It would sound something akin to foo-too-re,
with the last e pronounced as in the verb get. It sounds rather ridiculous,
doesn’t it? Perhaps this will allow you to be in my shoes for a moment,
so you know my feelings when I hear you say my name like it’s English.
It may be hard to believe, but the letters of the most widely used script,
the Latin alphabet, do not necessarily represent the same sounds
as in the current lingua franca.

a man is looking through a book in a pound shop

The first time at home

Published on by Maciej Modzelewski1 Comment

Have you ever been to a pound shop?
I still remember, as if it were just yesterday,
my very first time in one.
It was right after I arrived in Scotland.
Imagine a recent immigrant, still without a job
and already on a very tight budget,
in a place where everything costs only a pound.
I found it an absolutely marvellous idea,
especially after discovering a well-stocked bookshelf.
Of course, I did not know a single word in English then,
so there was no chance of reading any of them,
but the mere fact that I could have some for the future
was enough, like a beacon of hope
that sooner or later everything would fall into place,
because where there are books,
there is home.