Shopping for languages

In case you read Spanish: did you hear about my newest blog, Alerta Religión? It's about the evils of religion and blind faith — seen as causes of intolerance, discrimination, and absurd suffering. Do pay a visit.

I feel like this year is really starting now. Summer's over — there are still hot afternoons but no more of those unbearably hot evenings, and almost always a breeze. Classes are starting, and soon I'll start mine as well.

This year (for the first time since 2004!) it won't be Japanese. I took the plunge and signed for Arabic classes last Friday. The Rosario Arabic School is a little house with an old-fashioned courtyard on Dorrego St., a comparatively quiet part of downtown, two blocks away from my old highschool. The head teacher is the one who founded the school back in 1945 — a respected member of her community, a talented translator, and probably a veritable fountain of history, though a bit hard of hearing.

To tell you the truth I'm not that enthusiastic about Arabic, but only a bit curious. When I started learning Japanese I didn't think about it, I only did it because it was a strange language and I liked how it sounded. As I progressed, I felt I could really learn Japanese, all of it, in time. Then I came to realize I couldn't. That wasn't a problem — I was satisfied with keeping myself at a level I could manage and continue practising and learning bit by bit. But the study schedule wouldn't let me do that, so I quit. Arabic I'm going to start with a different outlook, just checking to see if it goes well with me and perfectly aware that I will drop it the very moment it becomes a chore. It's not like I'm doing it to fill my CV.

I need to call my Japanese school to see when calligraphy classes begin, since they're independent of the rest and I intend to keep practising it, at least until Watanabe-sensei returns to Japan in July (and speaking to sensei and her daughter in class will be language practice, too — something to keep me from forgetting spoken Japanese for a while). And I'll have to check if the Arabic school also offers calligraphy courses. I once read somewhere that Muslims believe calligraphy is an art that God Himself gave us. I don't believe in any gods, but that's got to mean something.

And those are my plans for the end of March. In the meantime, Easter weekend is coming. I'll be leaving on Wednesday night for Córdoba, and back home by Tuesday night the next week. After that it's going to be work and study, no vacations or escapades, for a long time...

Catholics and evangelicals and the power of words

If you remember, yesterday I was talking about a conversation I had with a friend, about language. The same day, after that, I also got to talk with a friend about the poverty of language, specifically in religious discourse. It was quite an interesting chat, so I thought I could share some of it.

My friend has the perception that evangelical preachers (in Argentina, and especially TV and radio preachers) have lowered the level of discourse to a crude minimum, and people sadly respond to it because they, too, have had their vocabularies shrunk, and their thought (and their ability for abstraction) as well. What he means is, you turn on the radio or the TV and you find pastors basically selling Jesus as a miracle product, or preying on the vulnerable without any kind of subtlety. We're talking of "ARE YOU IN PAIN? COME TO JESUS AND HEAL!" in big block letters across the screen, literally or figuratively.

My own contention is that the preachers are giving the people exactly what they want (a wind-up machine called Jesus who provides you with money and health and a comfortable house once you know the magic words) and that people might have a smaller vocabulary but do not necessarily have less ability to think and reason; that is, the preacher's speech is so plain, and so lacking in spirituality, and so incoherent at times, that you only need a basic command of language to see through the scam. That is, I don't believe that exposure to grossly simplistic religious language can be used to bring down your ability to think about deep spiritual matters, unless of course you accept that degraded language on your own volition and then become accustomed to it, which is what most people do.

On the other hand, my friend said, Catholic priests were still using "higher" language at times: less concrete, more superficially spiritual, possibly popular but not vulgar. I contended this was as bad as the evangelicals, only more weaselly. "Jesus will give you financial stability if you receive him and praise him in the assembly" is straightforward; "God takes care of all His children" is almost completely empty, although being empty it allows for the hearer to fill it with meaning, and is only useful for the hearer once completed with the warning that, in order to be a good child of God, you must go to church every Sunday.

I had the feeling that my friend was either not conveying his ideas wholly, or he lacked experience in a Catholic community, because if you've had that you know that most people in church are just there to gossip about their neighbours, and not to hear the priest using spiritual or abstract language. Moreover, they'd go straight to the evangelical preacher if they weren't culturally accustomed to being Catholics in an overwhelmingly Catholic country.

The real difference between those sects is the level of commitment they require. In order to be a Catholic you have to do... well, nothing. If you want to be an active Catholic, you're only required to attend church and sit there. It's all a social community experience, no more. You may get something spiritual out of the priest's rambling, but you can safely ignore it and believe yourself to be OK most of the time. Catholic spirituality is based on suffering, self-abasement and mortification, but understandably they don't insist on those things too much; they remain safely in the abstract plane. On the other hand, evangelicals (in line with Weber's analysis of protestantism, I believe) see suffering and poverty as an indication that you're doing something wrong, and so try to correct it, actively. They call on you and insist that you have to turn around your life, through the use of Jesus, and if you dare tell them that you're fine, they tell you, emphatically, that you're not. You're filthy. You're addicted to money, sex, Internet porn, alcohol, dancing and parties, and all sorts of foul social intercourse with the unsaved — mundane stuff that you've got to get rid of.

The Evangelicals are proactive — they're in the minority and they need to make you suffer so they can save you. They'll dig up whatever is rotting inside you and show it to you, and describe the feeling and the smell graphically to you. The Catholics are in the majority, and they'd rather keep their ninety-nine sheep happily in the fold than go out of their way to look for the missing hundredth. They do the sensible thing, as expected from an old well-established sect. I can't guess what will happen to those two.

My friend is actually preparing a thesis about the exercise of power through language, and this is part of it, so I'll keep you updated.

Languages: doin' it as they do in the Discovery Channel

I was chatting with someone from the U.S. the other day about an assortment of topics, and the evolution of language came up. This is one of my favourites, as many people know. We discussed how the younger members of our societies seem to be losing certain finer distinctions of language, how this makes us (both in Spanish and English) feel we're experiencing a kind of degradation of our respective languages, and how this is, after all, a natural and even desirable consequence of change.

We both had a problem, truth be told, with young Americans using the past tense instead of the past participle and saying for example "I had went" (gasp!), as well as forgetting there's a subjunctive mood, and with Argentine teens (and so-called professional journalists) using the conditional/potential mood in place of the subjunctive in conditional clauses ("Si lo sabría te lo diría" instead of "Si lo supiera te lo diría").

One of the myths of language is that of purity. And it's a dangerous myth, like any ideal involving purity or perfection, especially when in reality they're nowhere to be found. If there were such a thing as "pure" in language, there would be no Spanish or English. Spanish has a ton of words from Latin, of course, but it's not Latin — the original words have been mangled, lost, redefined, their sounds changed and merged into other or split into different sounds, the grammar being greatly simplified, the vocabulary supplemented by thousands of foreign elements.

There's a sizable contribution from Arabic in there too, from alcohol and azúcar (sugar) to café and zanahoria (carrot), and Germanic words from the time when the Visigoths took over, and words from French, English, Basque, and many Native American languages from Nahuatl in Mexico to Quechua in the former Inca territories and Guaraní along the littoral of the Paraná and Uruguay rivers, and of course technical terms reborrowed from Latin and Greek (often recognizable in many other languages). English, well, you know about English. So if you listen to some purist claiming he or she speaks "the good ol' language" and chiding the youngsters for polluting it with foreign words and degrading it with neological grammar, you know that's all ridiculous.

I had an interesting conversation with another friend later, also about language, but in a philosophical/religious setting. I'll tell you about that tomorrow.

¿Por qué in English?

¿Por qué escribo este blog en inglés?

La pregunta no me sorprende. Mi idioma nativo es el castellano, y vivo en un país y una ciudad donde no son mayoría los que pueden entenderme si escribo en otro idioma. Me juego en contra, se diría además, al escribir en inglés desde y sobre una ciudad que no es internacionalmente conocida, que no es un destino turístico, que no tiene fama excepto la muy difusa de ser la cuna del Che Guevara.

Fueron precisamente esas cosas las que me decidieron a escribir en inglés. La comparación con Buenos Aires es inevitable. La capital de nuestro país tiene muchos bloggers, y más que unos cuantos son extranjeros angloparlantes. Se hace y le hacen también mucha publicidad a Buenos Aires para un público internacional. Rosario tiene comparativamente pocos bloggers, y ninguno, que yo sepa, en inglés, salvo yo. Creo que lo que pasa en el interior de Argentina es tan importante como lo que pasa en la capital, que ya tiene demasiados privilegios como para concederle, además, que sea la única visión de Argentina que llegue al exterior. Creo también firmemente que el futuro de Rosario como ciudad turística está en juego en estos años, y que hay que ayudarla; que también vale la pena difundir lo que pasa en esta provincia, tan rica en recursos y en emprendedores y a la vez tan pobre en instituciones y en representación ante el mundo.

En cuanto a lo personal, supongo que si puedo escribir de mis convicciones y opiniones, no está mal escribir sobre mis hobbies y distracciones. Si puedo hacerlo sin traicionar mis raíces como argentino hispanoparlante, llegar a un público amplio y de paso practicar mi segunda lengua, ¿por qué no?.


Why do I write this blog in English?

The question does not surprise me. My native language is Spanish, and I live in a country and a city where the ones who can understand me if I write in another language are not a majority. I'm going against my interests, you could say, by writing in English from and about a city that is not internationally known, that is not a tourist destination, that has no fame except the vague claim of being the craddle of Che Guevara.

It was precisely those things that prompted me to write in English. The comparison with Buenos Aires is inescapable. Our country's capital has a lot of bloggers, and more than a few are English-speaking expatriates. Buenos Aires also gets lot of advertising targeted to an international public. Rosario has relatively few bloggers, and none in English, that I know, except myself. I think that what happens in the interior of Argentina is as important as what happens in the capital, which already has too many privileges and shouldn't be additionally granted the one of being the only view of Argentina that reaches the world abroad. I also firmly believe that the future of Rosario as a touristic city is at stake these years, and that it has to be helped; and that it's worth making things known that happen in this province, so rich in resources and enterprising people and at the same time so poor in institutions and in representation before the world.

As for the personal stuff, I suppose if I can write about my convictions and opinions, it can't be wrong to write about my hobbies and pastimes. If I can do that without betraying my roots as a Spanish-speaking Argentinian, reaching a wider audience and in passing practise my second tongue, why not?

Japanese weekend

Yesterday I finally took the Nihongo Nouryoku Shiken (Japanese Language Proficiency Test, or JLPT). In Argentina, the JLPT is taken at Belgrano University in Buenos Aires, on the same day as in the rest of the world, i.e. the first Sunday of December. Waves of Japanese students come from many places in the capital on foot, by subte (metro), by bus or taxi or whatever; many nikkei join in from La Plata, where many are settled (they even have a Japanese-language newspaper called La Plata Hochi); and of course, many others travel for hours during the previous night. Rosario Nihongo Gakkou dispatched a busload -- 23 students, including yours truly, two teachers, and one grandma.

I got up at 3 AM so I could gain some degree of composure, ate a half-breakfast (bad idea), and waited for a taxi. We left Gakkou at about 5 AM in our hired bus. I find it extremely difficult to sleep in any place other than a proper bed, preferably mine, so despite the convenience of having proper rest before an exam, I didn't even try. Fortunately there were other similarly afflicted or nervous students; while most dozed off into oblivion, four of us practised with kanji cards, discussed some grammar doubts, and after the sun came out and study was over, we played truco and a couple of other games, and drank some truly horrible ersatz coffee from the machine in the bus while lamenting the lack of a hot water thermos and a mate.

The driver was incredibly slow and didn't quite know how to get into Belgrano. I'm completely clueless when it comes to navigating the oversized metropolis that is Argentina's capital, but then I'm not for hire to do that. We got off the bus with just enough time to run for a gas station bar and get some coffee. Then we went back to Belgrano University, where a Japanese guy with a megaphone was herding the students into their appointed exam rooms, divided in groups according to their exam level and so they could fit into the elevators (Belgrano Uni has several space-age elevators that fit 36 people each, and within which Newton's laws seem to be nullified -- you almost don't feel any acceleration).

In we went, and into our room, where a teacher started to explain the procedures in quick Japanese, then paused, and asked if it was OK or we preferred Spanish (needless to say nobody dared ask for that). First part of the exam -- writing and vocabulary, 35 minutes. Break for lunch, and then back to the second part, which strikes fear into all students -- listening comprehension, 35 minutes. Short break, then the last part -- grammar and text comprehension, 70 minutes. A one-page-long text in Japanese can be a horrific sight, even if you're a step from mid-level proficiency and you've studied for it; as it happens, every language has its quirks, and Japanese is full of elliptical and illogical constructions (as in "It's OK" sometimes meaning "No"). Add to that your nervousness and the writing -- since this was to test your comprehension, it was written mostly in the phonetic syllabary (kana) rather than in kanji, which paradoxically makes it difficult to read quickly, since kanji are much more immediately recognizable, provided you are familiar with one or two hundred common ones. The usual mixed kanji-kana text also makes it easier to spot word breaks.

All in all, except for the audio part, I can't complain; I'm sure I did well. Now I have to wait until March to get the score. This was sankyuu (level 3); it wasn't much more difficult than the yonkyuu I took in 2005. Nikyuu (level 2) is not nearly as light, and might take me two or three years to prepare for it; one incentive is that the 5 top scores get a free trip to Japan. Only a handful of people take ikkyuu (level 1), and by then you're, according to one my classmates, "a Super Saiyajin of Japanese" (even native speakers sometimes fail ikkyuu, I'm told).

We headed back but, at some point, a group of students complained they hadn't been able to get lunch because they were too nervous... so we absolutely needed to stop (and make everybody late). The driver took 15 minutes to get off the highway into Campana, some 75 km from Buenos Aires City, a lovely place with a landscape full of petrochemical factories, and then left us before a McDonalds', which is the closest to "food" you can get when you're on the road on a Sunday afternoon. For a fast food place, it took ages for the girls to be served, and they in turn took almost one hour to eat a hamburger. Back in the road, me very pissed off, and my seat neighbour and I embarked in a heated discussion about Aldous Huxley's use of entheogens, the cultural assumptions of Native Americans, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, planified economies, the practical application of Marxism, and a project I'd heard about to replace arbitrary currency units with valuables backed up by actual energy production. I don't usually get into that sort of arguments before the first bottle of beer, so I guess I was very bored.

I got back home by 10 PM and into bed by 11 PM; I got up today at 5:30 AM and I'm trying to stay awake right now. But it was fun.