Why am I interested in taking this class?

The interstices between languages fascinate me more than any other region of academia I have yet encountered. While many people learn new languages primarily because they wish to gain the ability to communicate with native speakers of that language, I study languages because I love to see the differences between them. To me, the inter-linguistic differences are the main point--the ability to actually communicate is just the icing on the cake.


What languages do I speak?

I began studying Spanish in seventh grade and concluded my in-school studies of it in eleventh grade at the end of level five. German, I began freshman year of high school and studied through level five in senior year. I began to study French in my free time near the end of junior year and entered third-level French second semester of senior year.

This year I am beginning first level Chinese and first level Xhosa, a South African click language.


What experiences have I had germane to this class?

I have traveled on exchange programs to Ecuador, Spain, and Germany. During these travels, I noticed that there were some linguistic differences between our cultures that affected our ways of thinking. This was particularly evident to me in Germany where I noticed that the German manner of thought is more pointed and direct than that of English speakers. The Germans have no word equivalent to our "whatever," and as such, they are less likely to randomly end any given thread of conversation and more likely to articulate their ideas clearly. Also, in German, suggestions of what to do are more forceful and the future seems more definite (and closer to the present) because there is no difference between the words "shall" and "should." While in English we are prone to suggest, "We should (or ought to) go to the mall," the Germans instead say, "We shall go to the mall."

Also, different languages value different parts of speech more than others. The speakers of Spanish, French, and German ascribe a much greater importance to articles than English speakers do. Before a speaker of any of these languages even says a noun, the listener knows the gender and plurality of that noun (from the article) and begins to formulate an idea of what the noun will be. As a non-native speaker of these languages, I require more time to process incoming information because I instead have to wait for the noun to be spoken before my brain begins to engage.



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