Language Affecting Eternity

Just saw a really interesting clip from a TED talk on how language structures our thoughts. https://www.ted.com/talks/lera_boroditsky_how_language_shapes_the_way_we_think

It might be easy to listen to something like this and make the statement as I did above: ”really interesting”. Of course the issue is that languages are more than “interesting”, but rather are the very essence of life and death to individuals as well as even cultures.

Living as we have lived in so many different places, we have had the  opportunity to see how languages affect daily lives. Even languages we do not speak, but know something about, have been the object of mental investigation.

In Zambia the area that we lived was the home to the Bemba tribe. Now, although we studied chiBemba for about 3 weeks, really we never spoke it, but we were told that chiBemba has 2 future tenses…..and 23 past verb tenses. Do you know how drastically that affects lives….planning…economies? How do you do a budget analysis if your future tenses can only delineate between a few weeks and the rest of eternity? The neighbors were astounded that we could drive the 6 hours to the capital city and with some accuracy buy the flour and sugar and milk powder that we might need for the next 3-6 months before we would make the trip again. They had no way to shape that concept to begin with, much less actively make it happen. No wonder major areas of Africa have tremendous difficulty with their economic planning.

Now, if I want to discuss lessons from the history of my race and my individual family, chiBemba gives me the tools to pursue this with 23 past tenses. But you know, I am only minorly interested in this pursuit. Could my language be shaping my interests?

Another area of language that we have often commented on is our number systems. I have sat in Chinese preschool where the teacher verbally said things like: 6+8-4+2+5=? And these 3 and 4 year olds immediately stated the answer accurately and enmass. I have never heard English speaking kids do that. Now of course there is major training involved, but it also has to do with the structure of language. Chinese numbers say: 1 ten 2 (12), 3 tens 6(36). Think how much more difficult it is for little kids to figure out the tens and ones in numbers that we say as “twelve” and “thirty-six”.  (I have taught grade 1 for 6 years. I am well aware how difficult it is for itty-bitties to interpret “eleven” into “one ten 1”.)  We don’t get into that level of specificity in our number language until we get to “three hundred, etc.” Now don’t even get me started on number language in French! Do you get my meaning?

Then you have all those tremendous Bible translators out there. How do you translate a Middle Eastern language document into an aborigine South American language? Is the essence of ourselves located in our heart? Our stomach? Our liver? One friend talked about the language she was working with and that every topic was always announced before the statement or discussions. That is not the way the Bible is written. (She got around the problem by using the current tool of an extra-Biblical statement labeling the next section and making sure always to include it.) Ultimately,  how dependent on language is our image of God? This becomes a matter of our faith in God’s sovereign control of all aspects.