Language as an act of identity

Humans communicate with one another using an array of languages, each differing from the next in innumerable ways. The languages we speak shape the way we see the world, the way we think, and the way we live our lives. For an example, suppose we want to say, “Bush read Chomsky’s latest book.” See the verb, “read.” To say this sentence in English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we have to pronounce it like “red” and not like “reed.” In Indonesian you need not alter the verb to mark tense. In Russian we would have to alter the verb to indicate tense and gender. So if it was Laura Bush who did the reading, we would use a different form of the verb than if it was George. In Russian we would also have to include in the verb information about completion. If George read only part of the book, we would use a different form of the verb than if he’d diligently ploughed through the whole thing. In Turkish we would have to include in the verb how you acquired this information: if we had witnessed this unlikely event with our own two eyes, we would use one verb form, but if we had simply read or heard about it, or inferred it from something Bush said, we would use a different verb form. Believers in cross-linguistic differences counter that everyone does not pay attention to the same things: If everyone did, one might think it would be easy to learn to speak other languages.

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