Learning The Language, A Chrestomathy* (Vol. 4)

Remember: this is a continuing series...if you haven't read volumes 1-3, I recommend doing that because
there is a developing argument and I refer to things I've said previously...enjoy!

So to be clear, I want to say that normalization is a process during which our feelings (or unarticulated meaning) become conditioned by sustained use of words to come to us already habituated to the form (that is, the specific meaning) of those words, and that this conditioning gives rise to thoughts (or articulated meaning yet unexpressed).

Normalization is what happens as babies acquire language for the first time, and similarly, as we learn a second language. For a baby, this process deals directly with raw feelings, in the normalization of feelings and words, and therefore is a deep and fundamental kind of learning that informs nascent modes of thinking itself.

The difference in learning a second language however, is that we are basing the acquisition of our new words (in this case the Spanish ones) on our understanding and competence with our old words (the English). Our feelings and words have already been normalized, our modes of thinking established, and now we are attempting to substitute our old words for new ones.

This kind of learning is not as deep and fundamental as with that of the baby—instead, this kind of learning seems to be lateral, almost shallow. Learning another language could be just swapping out old words for new ones without considering making amendments or adaptations to the underlying meaning. But I don’t think it necessarily has to be like that.

Here we begin to butt up against the role that culture has in this discussion of language and meaning. What I mean is, in order to truly understand a language, one has to be sensitive to the meaning and significance of words within their cultural context. For example,  I could know the literal Spanish translations of every English word in the dictionary, but I would still sound like a bumbling gringo idiot in a Spanish conversation without certain knowledge of cultural norms, speech patterns, phrases, idioms, inflection, and pacing.

So an important part of learning a second language is learning a second culture as well—in addition to the lateral movement of word substitution that exists on the surface, one must also take care to really understand the meaning and significance of new words within the second language. This contextual learning comes from an understanding of culture; that is, from an understanding of the attitudes and behavioral characteristics of a given social group.

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I view my learning of Spanish in Nicaragua almost as the birth of my “Spanish-speaking self.” I have tried to think of my burgeoning language abilities as mirroring the same kind of development a Nicaraguan baby goes through as it picks up language for the first time. Sure, I base a lot of my learning on what I’ve learned as an English-speaker, to ignore all of that would be insane, but for many things, especially aspects of social life and custom, speech patterns and inflections, I try to forgo my American cultural inclinations and search for a new Nicaraguan base understanding.

In this way I’m striving to realize a process of normalization analogue to the deep normalization that establishes fundamental modes of thinking in babies. I don’t want to think that I’m replacing the modes of thinking I learned as a baby developing in America, but rather that I’m expanding those modes of thinking, giving them more dimension with the addition of new cultural and linguistic norms along with the new words themselves.

So, if in the future I happen to travel to another Spanish-speaking country or have the opportunity to converse with non-Nicaraguan Spanish speakers, I assume that it will be glaringly obvious to them that I learned Spanish in Nicaragua. I will have a Nicaraguan accent, speaking cadence, diction, etc because in effect, my Spanish-speaking self was born in Nicaragua. I am interested to see if it will be possible to adopt different Spanish accents in the future. Will speaking in an Argentine accent for example, always feel affected in the same way that speaking English with a British accent feels affected?

• Volume 1
• Volume 2
• Volume 3
• Volume 4 ***
• Pictorial Supplement