Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Get everyone's attention and then say, okay, dog <inaudible> hello. I'm Joseph shawls. Welcome to the deep culture podcast, where we explore culture and the science of mind. This is a podcast for people who move between different cultural worlds. We talk about intercultural experiences and we dig into the science and the psychology of culture in mind. And I'm doing that today with Yvonne Vanderpoel as usual. How are you Yvonne? Hi, Joseph. Great being here. I'm doing fine. So the other day, one of my students asked me, do I think that technology is making foreign language, learning, obsolete, that because of technology we won't ever, we won't need to learn a foreign languages anymore.
Speaker 0 00:01:02 Well, that's an interesting question. After all software is getting better and better at fence relation, you can speak into an app on your phone and it will translate what you say. I did that in Japan and China and that's what's great. I want to try that. I've got my phone here. So let's let's experiment. How do you say the 4th of July in Japanese? She got to your cup. Oh, that seems pretty easy. Well, yes and no. I mean, it translated as July 4th, not the 4th of July. And you got the differences because as an American, as an American, there was a difference. The 4th of July is American independence day. It's a national holiday. You know, you see fireworks you on picnics, but July 4th, that's simply the day after July 3rd, but the phone translated it as July 4th, not the 4th of July. I learned it in the states when I lived there.
Speaker 0 00:02:10 And when I would say, how are you going to celebrate the 4th of July? And I understood, I'm not going to ask how are you going to celebrate July 4th? So this is an interesting example of cultural nuance in language, something that's cultural, rich people deal with a lot. That's what we're going to explore in this episode, this language, culture connection. We're going to look at a few different questions. Why are certain words hard to translate? What precisely is the connection between language and culture and does speaking a foreign language make you see the world differently? And that brings us to part one. And wabi-sabi Yvonne. Both of us have spent years learning foreign languages. So let's give our listeners a taste of our foreign language journeys. And of course English is my first language. Yeah. And <inaudible>, and they launched it. Okay. I don't speak touch, but I know that that's your first language and English is my second language. I learned it from the age of 10 <inaudible> <inaudible> yes. <inaudible>
Speaker 0 00:03:48 muster in America. Latina. The split is going to be, be in Costa Rica in the <inaudible> <inaudible> <inaudible> that's Japanese. For sure. I know your <inaudible>. Yeah. <inaudible> <inaudible> how does this <inaudible> shaft into the sun if <inaudible> I been doing Nissa. Oh, wait, wait a second. So wait. So we have three languages that we speak in common, English, French, and Spanish. And I'm comfortable in Japanese. I speak that pretty well, but that was German, right? Because I, I can't hope he's tell the difference between German and Dutch because I speak neither of them. Yeah. I get, you completely know they're close related because they're in the same language group. <inaudible> <inaudible>
Speaker 0 00:04:59 Saya, Sadaka, Indonesia. Hi. I don't speak Bahasa the language of Indonesia, but I recognize it. So you've spent quite a time, quite a bit of time over there. My Indonesian is not really fluent. It's still still a work in progress. Oh yes. Every foreign language is forever work in progress. So given that language learning is so hard and we've got new technology. Why go to the trouble? Is it worth it? Well, great question. Well, for me personally, absolutely. Yes, it's worth it, but, but it's also related to the first question we asked ourselves today. Why are certain things hard to translate from one language to another? And the language is not just a way to transfer transfer information. It's reflects the way of life, the values, the thinking of that family of speakers. So learning Spanish for me was a way to dive into another language group with a complete different structure.
Speaker 0 00:06:15 Also a shock for me to discover how different it was using Spanish in real life. Not just making sentences in a classroom. When I was 19, I took a bus for 26 hours. I think to sound Magalia. I ended to study Spanish in Mexico. It changed my life. And I discovered that Spanish is not just, you know, words on a page. It's an entry point into this other world. And there I was walking on cobblestone streets and I was buying chatter on this fried pig skin from a little stands on the street. And I was, I was struggling to make sentences and talking to people, but it was really this soaking in this other cultural world. So the language practices is so closely related to this entering into another world. Yeah. And this is also the reason that things are sometimes hard to translate language reflects culture. For example, what words might capture some unique element of Dutch culture, for sure. That would be cellophane.
Speaker 0 00:07:24 You say it nice. Yeah. What it is, it translates in English or best in the best possible way as coziness, but actually it's much, much more, uh, it means that there is no set time and place for feeling close to friends and family in a nice and cozy atmosphere. And you shouldn't be watching the clock for instance, once you're having a good time without errors, is this the proverb coziness knows no time. Oh, wow. <inaudible> does that refer to like a cozy feeling that you share with people that you're close to like with friends and family? No. Well, yes and no, because interestingly singly enough it's even at meetings at work can be Facila and it means having a good time together with others while doing the work. Uh, and that's really hard to grasp for foreigners, but it can also be the opposite actually. And don't be so almost as Ella is what people then say and not for not to cozy. And for instance, in my case, when I refuse cookies and sweets, because I'm allergic to sugar, they'll find that rather on the wholesaler. All right. So that means, so when you, when you say no to cookies, you are, you're not being a salad person, is that right? I smell complete through eyes. I'm absolutely. I'm typical. I'm not facility. And, you know, saying no creates like a kind of disharmony when you refer to something in a cozy atmosphere.
Speaker 0 00:09:06 What about Japanese? Are there words that are hard to translate in Japanese? Well, of course I would imagine. So. Yes. Well, there are tons of that. Well, there are some really famous examples like wabi-sabi, um, which it refers to a Japanese aesthetic, uh, the, the kind of beauty that can be found in things that are imperfect or incomplete, and to get a sense too, that you need to experience the kind of scenes or objects that represent wabi-sabi thing too, that linguistic neuroscience is teaching us not to suddenly go to neuroscience here, but language is not just a set of labels for ideas. Language is very closely related to experience, and that's why dictionary definitions are never enough. So I guess for you learning Japanese required, getting a feel for how Japanese relate to each other. Yeah. One reason it's so challenging is that Japanese has many honorific forms that depend on context.
Speaker 0 00:10:17 And so to practice them, you almost have to be in that situation. Can you give me an example of this situational language? Well, if you ask me how to say eat, but I have to give you several different words each used in different situations, depending for example, on the status of the people involved, it could be taboo or it could be <inaudible> or it could be messy. I go to, or it could be cool depending on the situation. Wow. That's hard to imagine. Totally. Right. If I'm in a formal situation, I might ask someone <inaudible>, you know, did you eat? And that choice of words expresses deference to this other person. But if I'm talking about myself, if I want to say I've eaten already, I've had enough. I might say <inaudible> because that word expresses humility towards myself, rather than respect to the other person, it really reflects the kind of deep elements of Japanese values. Yeah. I sometimes joke that, you know, Japanese show respect by pretending that the other person is superior. Whereas Americans show respect by pretending that we're all equal. Oh yes. Well, this is also interesting, but it's raises a deeper question. What's the relationship between language and culture. Well, and that brings us to part two lingua culture.
Speaker 0 00:12:06 Most people understand that some words can be hard to translate any English speaker who has studied friends. For example, learns that you have to make a distinction between two familiar form of you and Fu more formal form. And they also learned that making a cultural mistake can be worse than making a grammatical mistake. For example, using two, instead of VU in the wrong situation in French, because knowing that too is more informal than food, it doesn't really tell you when and how to use it. I know that I've been speaking French for many years, but I still hesitate sometimes on which one to use. Yeah. So to really get a feel for speaking French, you need to enter into the world of French speakers. But wait, if we say the world of friends speakers, some people will think we're saying that there is like a single true or essential world of French.
Speaker 0 00:13:00 That's a good point. Well, we're not saying that there's one true essential world of French, obviously using French in Dakar, Senegal will be a very different experience from using an America shore Paris or Montreal. So it's not a single one thing. And the world of French speakers is complex and dynamic. And ever-changing like with many other transnational language, just think of Chinese, Arabic, English, Russian, Swahili, Spanish. So culture is also dynamic and complex in a very similar way. And there are people in fact who use the word lingual culture to describe the relationship between language and culture as a single thing. Uh, the linguist, uh, Paul Friedrich first used this term, uh, Michael <inaudible>, who's a linguistic anthropologist. He uses the term language culture. Yeah. And in effect, by putting a language and culture together into one word, lingua culture, you are saying that language and culture are two parts of a larger whole languages are alive.
Speaker 0 00:14:08 Like a super organism. They're constantly changing and evolving, which reflects the lives of its speakers there, their shared culture, which is why we might call Latin death language. There isn't a large enough community of Latin speakers to keep it alive and evolving in the same way. Shared cultural pennants emerge from the interaction in the community. Language and culture are both emergent properties. Um, this idea of emergent property, it comes from complexity theory. Hi, you are, but maybe you're getting a little bit Sutera to go here. Oh, come on. I think our listeners love this stuff. Okay. I'll go ahead. So, so an emergent property refers to how simple interactions create complex phenomenon. So for example, individuals buying and selling stock, which is a simple interaction creates complex unpredictable patterns in the stock market. You can never predict what's going to happen. Emerging phenomena is complexity that emerges from simple interaction by culture too. Right? Right. So culture emerges from interaction and language develops in parallel to that. So language and culture, lingua culture, it's this larger whole of shared meaning. Okay. If I go to dry language reflects, shared cultural experience. So for example, the meaning of the words, 4th of July reflect the experience that Americans share related to the 4th of July. With that in mind, let's move on to part three, seeing the world in a new way.
Speaker 0 00:16:20 You sometimes hear people say that they feel like a different person when they speak another language. Do you feel that way? Well, I, I definitely shift between different ways of expressing myself. Like I'm, I'm more reserved speaking Japanese than when I speak Spanish. I'm still playing my own music. I'm still being myself, but it's like playing on a different instrument. How, how is it for you? But I do notice that's what speaking Spanish in the central American context, for example, I feel so much at ease and speak as if I'm hanging out with people on a porch, just outside. Weather's nice. And I'm just hanging out and chatting a bit, but I'm still curious. Are we really looking at the world in a different way? Now that's a difficult question. And that's something that linguists have been arguing about for a hundred years. Um, do you refer here to disappear Wharf hypothesis?
Speaker 0 00:17:16 Yes. The superior Wharf hypothesis. That's, that's the idea that language shapes perception and it's been tested in lots of different ways. For example, some languages have fewer color words than others. So linguists will test whether people with fewer color words have trouble perceiving the shades that their language doesn't have words for. And there's some evidence that the language one speaks can relate to our ability to distinguish shades of color. Hmm. That's interesting. What else? Well, th there's some quite clever research that I thought was interesting, uh, that shows for example, that when describing a key, so imagine a key in your mind, like the kind that you use to open a locked door that when describing a key Spanish speakers tend to use descriptive words that emphasize the kind of curved or rounded quality that a key has. Whereas German speakers when describing a key are more likely to use words that emphasize it's kind of jagged or rough nature.
Speaker 0 00:18:27 What's a Y well, the, those researchers will say that it's because in Spanish, the word for ki is a feminine noun. And so their attention goes to the more feminine stereotypes, stereotypically feminine aspects of the key, whereas in German, it's a masculine noun. And so that may affect the aspects of the key that people notice. Wow. Fascinating. I mean, it doesn't seem that useful to me in terms of intercultural understanding. I don't think Germans and spinners are not often arguing about the shape of queues. It's true. There's a lot of other research that look at language and cognition from the field of neuro linguistics or cognitive language linguistics. For example, research that has really fascinated me is related to the cognitive processes related to language. And in particular, something called embodied simulation theory. But is this going to get technical? Of course, I'll just stick with me here for, for a long time.
Speaker 0 00:19:35 The dominant idea was that language is basically a symbolic system, a set of concepts that we manipulate in our mind. So that language is like a mental code or a set of labels or thoughts. So if I say, doc, you understand that I'm thinking about a doc because you know the concept doc, no, the concept dog. And I know that the sound dog goes together with that concept. So if that's the way that language works, then in order to learn a new language, what we're doing is learning a new set of labels, our thoughts. Oh, that makes sense. Well, it makes sense, but embodied simulation tells a very different story.
Speaker 0 00:20:28 Does it tell a story about a dog? Well, in fact, it does tell a story about a dog in, I mean, it's a very different way of looking at how language works in the mind. Embodied simulation theory says that linguistic meaning is not primarily a manipulation of symbols. It's an embodied simulation in other words. And here's where the dog part comes in. When I say dog, this triggers a simulation in your body and mind based on your experience with dogs. So that simulation is like a recreation of your experience with dogs. More like remembering then like mental manipulation. And if you want to test this yourself, you can try this experiment when you're at a party. Uh, just when you're feeling cozy. Okay. That's very similar. Sorry. I couldn't remember how to pronounce it, but get everyone's attention and then say, okay, dog, and then ask everyone to tell you what kind of image comes to mind.
Speaker 0 00:21:40 And people will not say that they had a kind of generic symbolic dog in their mind. Rather, they will give you a concrete answer. They'll say, oh, Dalmatian or poodle or German shepherd. And that's because the, the word dog it's triggering a simulation based on their experience with dogs. So when I asked Japanese people this question, many of them answer she bucket or the Sheba dog, which is a breed of dog that is really common in Japan. And many Japanese probably grew up with no we're hearing you talk about this. For me, it was like a dozen of different dogs because every day I work in the nature and near by my house. And I'm the only person or almost the only person without it though. Well, how, how about this? If I say wet dog, what image comes to your mind? Then I see this golden retriever that has just jumped in a puddle on the more there and they'll wet and maybe shaking and running happily to his own life.
Speaker 0 00:22:42 That's a beautiful image, but interestingly, you are not simply putting two concepts together. You're not just putting the concept wet. Plus the concept dog together in a kind of mental manipulation. What you're doing is the words wet dog creates a simulation of experience that you've had with dogs. Yeah. Interesting. If that's true and learning a new language requires something more than learning a new mental code. Exactly. So learning a new language means we have to create new mental simulations and those simulations need to be based on our experience, not just some mental symbol or definition that we find in the dictionary. I get that. But what about abstract concepts like governments or happiness? We don't really have mental images for those things. That's true. So that's the question about embodied simulation theory? How, how you embody something abstract like government or happiness and the research in that area focuses on metaphoric, understanding that we understand these things metaphorically.
Speaker 0 00:23:56 So we say that we find happiness. We speak about happiness as though it's an object, or we talk about being full of joy. We're speaking about joy as though it were a liquid that has volume. Uh, so can they actually test what's happening in people's minds when they are using language? Oh, there is a lot of research that does that. And if you're interested in that, I totally recommend the book louder than words by Benjamin Bergen. Uh, it totally changed how I understand language. It introduces research like this. Uh, for example, they showed people a smiling face and they asked, they asked, what is this person feeling when they asked that question in a library, people were more likely to answer happiness, which is emotion as an object that you might look for, like a, like you look for a book, like a book in the library, right?
Speaker 0 00:24:55 Whereas if you asked the same question in a bar, people are more likely to say this represents joy, which is emotion as a metaphoric liquid, something that you can be filled with. Wow. That's interesting. And a bit weird. Is there anything easier to learn about how it is then buying a book? Well, if you just want a five minute introduction, uh, go to YouTube, do a web search for the brain dictionary. Uh, it introduces super cool research, uh, which mapped the different areas of the brain that were activated by particular words. Yeah. You can see a rotating brain with words maps onto it. And this research shows that language activates the brain areas associated with the related experience. So for example, if you hear the word, make a fist, it activates the areas of the brain that are used when you actually do make a fist.
Speaker 0 00:25:55 Even if you aren't visualizing the making of a fist. So language use is not managed by some special or a separate language module in the brain. It's closely related to our lived experience. And we used to believe that there was a kind of special language module in the brain, but apparent that's not the way it works. Language is connected to our lived experience. And of course, shared lived experience is culture. So can embody simulation theory help us answer this question about whether speaking a new language makes us see the world in a new way? I think it helps embodied simulation theory shows us that language is more than a code. It's not just a label thoughts. It reflects the shared experience of the people that speak it. So to internalize it, to internalize a language, to get a feel for the subtle expectations of what things mean of it's their unique flavor you need that shared cultural experience.
Speaker 0 00:27:01 So if I really want to understand cassette of hide, is that right? That's right. Then I need to share that experience with Dutch speakers. And it's that experience that will give me the sensation of entering into another world. Well, actually recording this podcast with a cup of tea over a distance of 10,000 miles was pretty sailor does, you know, coziness knows no time, but by now it might be time for us to ride. It has been great spending this time with you, this cozy Casella time with you Yvonne. And it was also with the flavor of wabi-sabi. Yeah, the deep culture podcast is sponsored by the Japan intercultural Institute, an NPO dedicated to intercultural education and research. I am the director of GI. If you're interested in learning more about culture and the mind one place to start is my book, the intercultural mind. In fact, I just learned that it's been translated into Turkish. I thought that's really cool. Wow. And check out. Yvonne's wonderful book reflections on intercultural craftsmanship. It talks about how the starting point for intercultural effectiveness is understanding the cultural patterns of our own mind. If you'd like to today's episode, we'd really like to hear from you leave a comment on apple podcasts or write us at D C podcast at Japan, intercultural.org. Thanks to our sound engineer, Robinson Fritz, and to everyone at GII. And thanks to you, Yvonne. Can't wait to get together again next month. It would be wonderful. Well, thanks dear listeners for being with us today. Thanks Joseph.
