THE latest book by science writer Marek Kohn is truly one for our times. In Four Words for Friend, Kohn argues that bilingualism could be the antidote to those seeking to 鈥渃lose borders, build walls and impose a resentful simplicity upon the world鈥�. A language is both a way of communicating and of creating linguistic boundaries to exclude those who don鈥檛 speak it, he says. If we became bilingual, we might break through cultural barriers and counter the divisive nationalism gripping the world.
To make this point, Kohn tries to paint languages as living entities, not just something we use or possess. Languages evolve in much the same way as species, says Kohn, behaving 鈥渁s though they are in a hurry to get away from their relatives鈥�. Like species, languages can go extinct too.
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The connections between languages and our humanity (or lack of it) comes across in some powerful anecdotes. One concerns Jewish people living in D眉sseldorf before the second world war, all of whom spoke fluent German. They fled the Nazis in two waves. Six decades later, the group that left last, after the violence of Kristallnacht in 1938, spoke worse German than those who fled when Hitler came to power in 1933. Those who left earlier retained native command of the language. 鈥淭he last group to leave experienced the most cruel persecution, and it alienated them from the language spoken by their persecutors,鈥� writes Kohn.
Four Words also explores infants as they acquire one or more languages, suggesting there is a biological window for children (usually the first year) to acquire 鈥渘ative-grade sound sets for more than one language鈥�. While you may still speak a non-native language fluently if you learn it later, you may never do it well enough to fool a native speaker.
Kohn explores in detail the question of whether different languages influence the way their speakers experience their worlds. We get a sense of how language can possibly influence both thought and behaviour. For example, languages in which actions are bounded in time (they have beginnings and ends) cause speakers to look for endpoints as they describe an activity. When describing a film, for example, English speakers tend to talk about ongoing activity (鈥渉e鈥檚 looking around鈥�), while German speakers wait for outcomes (鈥渉e has again discovered water鈥�).
The book shines when Kohn tackles the cognitive and health benefits of bilingualism. While the evidence for cognitive superiority among bilingual people is shaky, it is much stronger when it comes to health, primarily the delayed onset of dementia if you speak more than one language, writes Kohn.
He packs in a lot and the book is richer for it, but to do it all in 215 pages means the writing is a tad aloof, never really getting close to the people who populate the pages. As Kohn cites study upon study, statistic upon statistic, readers may sometimes hanker for a slower, more intimate take.
鈥淐onfronted with the wonders of languages, it is hard not to worry about their declining numbers鈥�
That said, Four Words will make you wonder about languages and their connection to how we think, act, relate and form friendships, communities and nations. You are confronted with the wonders of human languages, and it is hard not to worry about their declining numbers. It will take real effort to preserve our linguistic diversity.
Kohn provides a wonderful example of the community of Warruwi in Australia鈥檚 Northern Territory. The 400 people there speak eight languages between them, and 鈥渟ustain these both by speaking them and by declining to do so鈥�, writes Kohn. If two people talk to each other, they use different languages 鈥� each understanding the other but speaking only their own tongue.
Such bilingualism, argues Kohn, could save us from our worst nationalistic impulses by providing emotional access to at least one other reality, creating an overlapping mosaic of worlds. As someone who grew up trilingual, I couldn鈥檛 agree more.
Yale University Press
