The Elenicoi and Naturalisation

[Thomas Winwood]

I'm told that it's possible to be immersed in a culture where nothing you have learned from your culture applies to the one you've been put in and still adopt a broken form of the spoken language. I personally think this is bunkum - that'd be like asking me to memorise a book.

How is it that the Verdurians were so tolerant of a bunch of pale-faced loons who arrived on a strange boat wandering about doing really stupid things while babbling a half-intelligible broken form of their language and being completely illiterate that these people were accepted into Verdurian culture to the extent that they were able to marry? This seems to be pushing the limits of my suspension of disbelief past their limits.

[zompist]

It's no worse than immigration from a country with an unrelated language.

(It's quite true that circumstances had to be just right on both sides for the immigrants to not only be tolerated but respected. But they were: the Erenati were an occupied country looking for saviors; the Elenicoi were trained to provide one.)

[Adso de Fimnu]

How is it that the Verdurians were so tolerant of a bunch of pale-faced loons who arrived on a strange boat wandering about doing really stupid things while babbling a half-intelligible broken form of their language and being completely illiterate that these people were accepted into Verdurian culture to the extent that they were able to marry?

Short answer: because it makes a good story. (Besides, Almea also has several sentient races, the Zone of Fire, and magic. )

After all, it is called the Miracle of the Translation.

Perhaps someone else can explain better than I.

Also: it wasn't the Verdurians that were so tolerant of the loons, but the Avélans.

EDIT: Ah, I was too slow.

[Nuntarin]

It's no worse than immigration from a country with an unrelated language.

You don't quite get the problem, Zomp: Xinux has been going on about this on #almea, simply refusing to believe any of the anecdotal evidence we provide that people really can move to a country where they don't speak the language and pick it up over time. So saying "it's no worse" than something he believes impossible isn't going to help.

[Mornche Geddick]

I'll add my tuppence: the Elenicoi were Greeks from the Mediterranean - not that different in appearance from the people of the plain, who are described as looking like Arabs, or Mestizo Hispanics. It's not as if they were Norse (or Bantu for that matter).

Something else has just occurred to me.

I'm told that it's possible to be immersed in a culture where nothing you have learned from your culture applies to the one you've been put in and still, etc

Nothing? Cultures can diverge widely, but it's not possible for them to be sheerly different. They would have to be totally opposite in every respect. China and Rome used very different languages (one inflecting, the other isolating) but they both agreed in using language. In the West we use knives and forks, in the East they use chopsticks, hunter-gatherers use their fingers, or stone tools. What do we all have in common? Eating. And cooking as well. (Try eating a dug-up tuber raw). Speech, a shared history, cooperation, sharing - any human culture would be impossible without them, and that's probably not a complete list. So we know that any two cultures must be similar in some ways, or you wouldn't be able to call them both "cultures".

[BGMan]

They were Egyptian Greeks I think. I don't know if they resemble pale-faced loons too closely. The educated ones among them would have likely known Latin too. Verdurian would not have seemed alien to them, like, say, Hungarian would.

Come to think of it, I wonder if Erenati scholars classify Greek and Latin as "Sarise" (Eastern)?? Linguists in Almea are lower-grade than ours -- they don't recognize Chia-Sha as Sarise, so this is in my view a likely mistake they would make.

[Pthagnar]

that'd be like asking me to memorise a book.

Do you also believe that People are unable to memorise books, or merely yourself?

[Thomas Winwood]

You don't quite get the problem, Zomp: Xinux has been going on about this on #almea, simply refusing to believe any of the anecdotal evidence we provide that people really can move to a country where they don't speak the language and pick it up over time. So saying "it's no worse" than something he believes impossible isn't going to help.

The problem is that this is such a tall order - I'm magically transported X lightdecades away to a planet with a language totally unlike any I've ever encountered before (and don't start with the "it's not that different" spiel, because that's false) and I'm supposed to pick the language up? If I'm listening to a conversation, I don't know enough to ask people things! MUBA's suggestion of mad gesticulating doesn't seem to help matters - sure, I can learn that you're called Mark (then again, this could easily be manhandled into anything given the sounds the non-native is used to) from you pointing at yourself and saying "Zompist", but that doesn't help me; for one, you'd need the two people to agree that the native will name things the non-native points at; for another, that doesn't help with verbs - you can't point at an action.

I'll add my tuppence: the Elenicoi were Greeks from the Mediterranean - not that different in appearance from the people of the plain, who are described as looking like Arabs, or Mestizo Hispanics. It's not as if they were Norse (or Bantu for that matter).

This would surely only exascerbate the problem - I'd rather look odd so people know I'm not likely to know the native language and perhaps use simpler language (which on some level would be easier to pick up, even granted the tall order of being able to pick up language at all).

Nothing? Cultures can diverge widely, but it's not possible for them to be sheerly different. They would have to be totally opposite in every respect. China and Rome used very different languages (one inflecting, the other isolating) but they both agreed in using language. In the West we use knives and forks, in the East they use chopsticks, hunter-gatherers use their fingers, or stone tools. What do we all have in common? Eating. And cooking as well. (Try eating a dug-up tuber raw). Speech, a shared history, cooperation, sharing - any human culture would be impossible without them, and that's probably not a complete list. So we know that any two cultures must be similar in some ways, or you wouldn't be able to call them both "cultures".

I fail to see the relevance. Just because we can both cook doesn't mean that we can understand the gabble that comes out of each other's mouths.

[Anguipes]

I get the feeling this is very unlikely to sway you, but....

If language is so incommunicable, how do any of us learn it in the first place? And how does anyone become bilingual? If a language is impossible for an "outsider" to learn, how is it possible for me to go and pick up a grammar of, say, Japanese, in English - where was the starting point of a person from one language group learning the other language? They can't have learnt it in a scholarly manner - that would require an infinite backlog of texts. You learn from a textbook, which was written by someone who learnt from a textbook, which was written by someone who learnt from a textbook.... where did the first guy learn it?

[Thomas Winwood]

You make the most convincing point thus far. As traders the Elenicoi would have experience with languages already, so they'd be perfectly suited to pick things up at least to the extent of being able to trade (and I bet the contents of their ship were pretty valuable too). I'm having trouble seeing that they'd extend that enough to marry though. It is, I suppose, common for missionaries to acquire wives - women so taken by the new doctrine they throw themselves at it as hard as they can.

[zompist]

I'm having trouble seeing that they'd extend that enough to marry though. It is, I suppose, common for missionaries to acquire wives - women so taken by the new doctrine they throw themselves at it as hard as they can.

It's not, actually-- I've known quite a few missionaries, and though a few do marry the natives, most do not. However, those were missionaries who had a homeland to come back to.

Again, by the time the Elenicoi married, they were a high-prestige group, leaders of the anti-Kebreni revolution.

[Nuntar]

The problem is that this is such a tall order - I'm magically transported X lightdecades away to a planet with a language totally unlike any I've ever encountered before (and don't start with the "it's not that different" spiel, because that's false) and I'm supposed to pick the language up? If I'm listening to a conversation, I don't know enough to ask people things! MUBA's suggestion of mad gesticulating doesn't seem to help matters - sure, I can learn that you're called Mark (then again, this could easily be manhandled into anything given the sounds the non-native is used to) from you pointing at yourself and saying "Zompist", but that doesn't help me; for one, you'd need the two people to agree that the native will name things the non-native points at; for another, that doesn't help with verbs - you can't point at an action.

You keep assuming we're talking as though one can pick up a foreign language instantly, which is of course not the case; it takes years. Over a long time, you would recognise patterns -- the same thing being said repeatedly in the same situation -- and you'd come to recognise greetings, terms of address, names of objects, and gradually, more complex sentence. As we repeatedly pointed out to you in our IRC discussion, it's not that different from how you learnt your first language -- which you know is possible.

(And gestures would help. If I point at a tree and say "zâgh", and then point at another tree and say "zâgh", and then point at another tree and say "zâgh", what would you think "zâgh" meant? Well, what do the three situations in which you've heard it used have in common?

Or turn it the other way round -- imagine you're the native, and this person, who you know doesn't speak your language, points at an object and looks at you. What are you going to do? You don't need the two people to agree that he's asking you to name the object; it's obvious, because it's the only thing about it you can communicate.)

[zompist]

The problem is that this is such a tall order - I'm magically transported X lightdecades away to a planet with a language totally unlike any I've ever encountered before (and don't start with the "it's not that different" spiel, because that's false) and I'm supposed to pick the language up? If I'm listening to a conversation, I don't know enough to ask people things! MUBA's suggestion of mad gesticulating doesn't seem to help matters - sure, I can learn that you're called Mark (then again, this could easily be manhandled into anything given the sounds the non-native is used to) from you pointing at yourself and saying "Zompist", but that doesn't help me; for one, you'd need the two people to agree that the native will name things the non-native points at; for another, that doesn't help with verbs - you can't point at an action.

It isn't easy, but it's something that's been done, historically, over and over.

This is one of those things, I fear, that you can tie yourself in knots about if you just think about, without ever trying it. Quine famously did this with his bags of rabbit parts.

Fortunately, in contact situations you don't normally encounter tricksy philosophers, but people who wish to cooperate and to communicate. If you corner a relaxed native speaker, it's not hard to play Learn Some Nouns. The things in front of you will be a good start. Some very simple miming will let you learn "eat", "drink", and more. Basic pronouns, numbers, and colors are not hard to pick up.

Desperation concentrates the mind wonderfully. People who can, avoid language learning. But if you need to do it to get a meal or even to sell your goods, you do it.

In the case of the Elenicoi, there were a few advantages. The structure of Old Verdurian was not difficult for a Latin or Greek speaker. And both sides were literate-- once the Elenicoi learned the very basics of the language-- once they could speak an Old Verdurian pidgin-- they could use books to learn more.

Finally, note that you really need only a couple of people on each side with a real gift for this. After that, they can server as interpreters, or teach the others.

I may try to tell this story sometime. Most fantasy stories, if they mix worlds, cheat-- the new world happens to speak English. It's understandable enough: most readers aren't that interested in the linguistics of first contact. But my readers are likely to be different.

[Gremlins]

If it helps in the slightest, my Grandma lived in the darkest depths of Donegal in the 1920's, and spoke only Irish Gaelic. When she went over to Glasgow, she had to learn English. She managed this pretty quickly, with the help of her bilingual friends, and learned to speak English fairly well very quickly. Same for my cousin who went to live Japan- almost no formal tuition, just making friends and talking. I did the same with Portuguese to a lesser extent (although my writing is atrocious as a result).

[Neek]

Xinux, if you want a real world example, I just want to point you towards Géronimo de Aguilar and Gonzalo Guerrero.

[goneriku]

If it helps in the slightest, my Grandma lived in the darkest depths of Donegal in the 1920's, and spoke only Irish Gaelic. When she went over to Glasgow, she had to learn English. She managed this pretty quickly, with the help of her bilingual friends, and learned to speak English fairly well very quickly. Same for my cousin who went to live Japan- almost no formal tuition, just making friends and talking. I did the same with Portuguese to a lesser extent (although my writing is atrocious as a result).

Most of the Hispanics I know who speak English did similarly.

[IrkenHobbit]

My dad grew up in polish speaking neighborhood and learned english from the TV and friends.

[klase]

Mario Lemieux, a former star hockey player for the Pittsburgh Penguins, often tells the story that he learned to speak English by staying in his apartment and watching television for hours on end. And he is a very good speaker of the language today

[Chengjiang]

I'd also like to point out that, contrary to what XinuX said, you can "point to an action". Say Helpful Native Speaker A is trying to teach Confused Learner B the word for "walk". A could point to a man walking and say "likun a moi", point to a dog walking and say "likun e sapo", point to some women passing by and say "likami ros chenok", and then start walking, point to their feet, and say "likeb nu". A might follow it up with standing still and saying "likeb hara nu", for good measure. A could also, if it seemed necessary, point to B whenever B started walking and say "likau bo". If you were B, do you think you'd have too much trouble figuring out what the common element in those statements meant?

This can also work for adjectives (or stative verbs if that's how the langauge expresses adjective-like concepts) and numbers. Pointing to various black things and saying "sueb e tila", "sueb e kasi", "sueb ir logu", and then pointing to something green and saying "sueb hara e fantu; e fantu redai" would make the meaning of sueb quite clear. Similarly, to teach the word for "two", A could point to sets of two and saying "na pem tila", "na pem fantu", "na pem chenok", and then point to a set of three things and say "na was sapo". Again, B should learn the target word pretty fast.

Also notice that, just by doing this, A will also have elucidated to B some of the language's grammatical words and sentence structure. B will probably test his/her knowledge by trying to construct sentences about the surroundings, using elements from the phrases he/she has just heard.

I'm not saying this is how language learning has to work (most of the time one person won't be quite this helpful all at once), but the point is that it's not that hard to pick up verbs, modifiers, and even grammar by noticing patterns in what people say.