How were languages first translated?

No, you use visual cues and role play. It's very hard to learn a language just through observation, without directed teaching.

 

Then how come when I was a young kid, I learned a language(English) mostly through observation (like a puzzlepiece)? This is why I get the feeling that only children raised in bilingual homes could have first written language dictionaries.

 

I guess your mom taught you.

 

How could Europeans have first translated difficult Asian languages by just visual cue and role play? If somebody speaking Indian or Chinese pointied out stuff to me, I could easily guess simple nouns and some verbs mabye, but how does that explain translating their entire grammar and sound structure fluently? There's no way it happened without intermarriage and bilingual children.

 

If you actively prompt language, and then progress to asking simple then more complex questions, and especially if you know what you are doing, you can extract it quite easily. That isn't "observation".

 

I might be able to answer this because I did study some aspects of this in my college years.

It is a very complex issue and I do not know where and how to start. So I'll try one aspect and I hope that by the end of the post this may make sense.
Latin today is the language of academia. It is not used really as a spoken language, yet still used widely in many scientific fields. The reason for this is, because Latin had a clear vocabulary and grammar more than 1500 years ago. However at the same time other languages were spoken and didn't have their own grammar, spelling or vocabulary yet. And to make things more complicated: even people who spoke the same language may not be able to communicate because of vast accent differences.

This meant that there had to be an event or a special occasion when someone felt the need to communicate to others in another language than Latin, which the nobility and clegry spoke. Therefore, it was usually linked to the peasants, when their language received a grammar, spelling and proper vocabulary. I personally didn't study that issue for the English language, but I did for German and a few other languages, so I will use German as an example instead. While 500 years ago people spoke in German they didn't have a grammar yet. So even if you wrote in German, the same name might be spelled differently in the same text. The text would also vary quite a bit depending where it was written because that would be linked to the local accent.

The development of a language getting a grammar and a spelling was usually the result of a secular leader of some sort, who felt the need to make his rules (or laws) known to his people(s). And to do that he had to move from Latin, which peasants in general didn't speak, to a peasant language. This presented difficulties, because some accent differences in the land he ruled may cause different meanings. Similar to today really, if you think about it. It therefore was necessary to unify the peasant language by creating a dictionary or lexicon of some sort, and that way unifying the meanings. Then the structure of the sentences had to be unified, in order to maintain the meaning. All these measurements had to be taken and developed over the course of many decades, because it wasn't an overnight job. The languages which you study today basically received a structure because some secular leaders usually intended on writing laws.

I hope this process makes sense. Indecently the written language differs from the spoken one, because the written language is based of the accent of the region of the first secular leader, who wanted to make his rules heard. Everyone else just reuses the build system from then own for their own accent group. It is simply cheaper to reuse the established grammar books, spelling rules, etc. than to start from scratch.


Ok I hope the first part makes sense. Now to the more practical application of how people used several languages.


A few centuries ago, prior to the a public school program, the children would primarily live on farms. The parents would then send their children to a neighboring farmer who in return gave his children. This was done because the two farmers might talk different languages, and this was a simple solution to make sure that in both families the children would learn both languages. Basically you would adopt the neighbor's kids and in return he'd adopt your's. This practice may then be again repeated every 4 years. At that time reading and writing wasn't that high of a priority. People just tended to speak the languages of the people near to them geographically. And you have to keep in mind that centuries ago, most people lived very much rural.

Writing was done primarily by the clergy in Christian communities and by males in Jewish communities. In case you didn't know, the Jewish boys had to learn Hebrew, reading and writing in that language from the local rabbi even back in the middle ages. Oddly enough you can find in Hebrew writing here and there German words in the text if the writer couldn't remember the Hebrew word for it. Christians communicated verbally apart from the priests who learned Latin and wrote as well. Without a lacking spelling or grammar though they could find an absurd amount of ways to spell Vienna (or another village name) in the same document.

The first lexicon was written in French by Diderot & d'Alembert and published 1759. They basically wrote down the currant state of knowledge. Fantastic read. I used it for one of my classes. Back then they thought electricity and magnetism were the same thing.

But if you think about it, really only in the 1700s languages as important as French, German, etc. for the first time got a grammar and dictionary. Russian czars spoke French, not Russian (just as a side note). I am not sure how much later English finally received its grammar and dictionary, but I cannot imagine it being to far off French and German.

 

When I studied German, I leaned the difference between Hochdeutsch and the language spoken by the common people. One thing I noticed was that it was similar to English in the Thee and You forms which are no longer used. German still uses that difference.

It is also not that different from Spanish where you have the formal and the familiar.

I was also interested in my study of California. how different native tribes living relatively close to one another spoke entirely different languages. And even how members of the same tribe had major differences in wordage.

I think development of languages stem more from economic reasons than anything else. The need to have common languages in trading seems to make more sense than anything else.

 

The only language I know that doesn't have the formal and the familiar form is English. All the Slavic languages have that as well.

English is deeply influenced by three languages as far as I know: Latin, because of the Roman heritage, German because of the German rule over England and French because of French rule over England.

England actually seldom is ruled by royal families who have a English heritage. For about 600 years French kings ruled over England, and most of the other time (since the fall of the east Roman Empire) England was ruled by Germans. A trend which actually continues today. The Queen Elisabeth has a strong German heritage, as well as her husband. Diana was very popular, maybe because she was really English, while Kate again has a German heritage.

You see that the English language has all these tendencies. Think in English about the structure and you'll see a lot of German influence, if you look at the dictionary you will see the connection to Latin, German usually with every day local products and processes, and usually French whenever it's a question of mannerisms or related to behavior.

The development of languages in its roots are pretty unknown, because it predates the written aspects of the language quite a bit. We don't know if 25,000 years ago humans spoke. Definitely possible; also questionable in relation to the Neanderthals.

The OP just posed a very contemporary question which he naturally assumed must have been valid for people who lived a few centuries ago. Unfortunately the contemporary problem doesn't apply...

 

Bilingual children may help explain it, but I read somewhere that Europeans in Feudadl Japan learned the language and translated it just by visiting there. Do you think that's true or not?

 

The Japanese writing system is @ least partially based on Chinese writing. So if the Europeans in question were already literate in Chinese (same writing system for all dialects, TMK), then they had a big head start on learning Japanese. As far as I know, Japanese doesn't depend on tone for lexical meaning - so another plus for a Chinese-literate person learning Japanese.

Details on which Europeans we're talking about would be helpful. The Jesuits, for instance, were brilliant linguists, especially the ones assigned to Japan, China & related. If they're the ones we're talking about, then they'd already done a lot of studying & analysis before they ever got to Japan.

 

Spanish speakers such as my wife can carry on a conversation with Italians as the two are very similar. I have seen this first hand with her and an Italian lady one time in a store.

My wife can also jump from English to Spanish in the same sentence which in itself is not difficult. What makes it difficult is she also takes the English and adds a Bronx, NY accent to it while the Spanish has the accent of Puerto Ricans born on the island.

As most of her friends are Spanish but from various Central and South American countries as well as Cubanos, Dominicanos, y Spaniards, the accents from each country is so different than the others. Cuban accents are the easiest to understand, think Ricky Ricardo or Scarface's Al Pacino. Even I, a gringo, can discern accents between various Spanish speakers.

By the way, my wife is pure Puerto Rican but she is whiter than I am. Her sister is cinnamon colored but there grandmother was black. Negrita is what they are called on the island.

 

I am a bilingual child. I grew up with many languages and it confused the living hell out of me.

I don't know what you're specifically implying, however I can insure you, that within 12 to 18 months you can be fluent in pretty much any language if you're in the right country. People came to study to Vienna who never spoke a word of German or English, therefore being unable to communicate with 99% of the population. They might not have been able to read either because they didn't use the Latin alphabet in their country of origin. Usually after 6 to 12 months they were fluent in German and doing well in their exams in college as well. I picked 18 months at the top of this paragraph just for as a high tolerance level, but I can insure you that pretty much anybody can learn any language in a year or so.

The only criteria really is that you are surrounded by people who speak that language native. I studied French for 4 years in high-school and continued to read it after I graduated, yet was unable to say too much. I even forgot whatever I had know after a few years. I therefore spend 4 months in Montréal studying French and now I'm for the first time able to communicate in that language.

 

How come most people cant learn a foreign language fluently by watching movies or shows and seeing the interaction, but its possible to do it by living in a place for some time?

 

Maybe different languages started off with different tribes and since they were so close, they would just know what each other meant and from there, as tribes got bigger and bigger, the languages spread. Of course, I'm just guessing. I don't really know. Lol.

 

That's interesting. I do know of a woman who did learn English by watching television and stuff, but she spoke very broken English.

Another interesting thing I've heard is that as a child, your brain is capable of learning languages but as you age, for some reason, that ability decreases significantly.

 

Fascinating. That is kind of similar to my theory.

 

Agree. You would have to be speaking it all the time and kind of "forced" into learning it. I took Spanish in high school and college. I don't remember much at all because I never use it. I would really be interested in relearning it. Being bilingual is valuable in the work force in certain industries.

 

what was her first language?

 

I really believe that our mind is awfully incapable. Any human can learn the "I am"-"You are"-"He/She/It is" etc. stick quite quickly yet it takes us quite a long time before we are ever able to use the knowledge which was acquired within a few minutes properly and usefully. This is obviously an English example but I had to learn to say "I am" in quite a few languages and still couldn't use it properly for at least a week after studying in a random sentence without thinking. Sort of like people use it in their native language when they don't think of the construction or conjugation of the verb "be"

The fact that you are in a foreign land and surrounded by people who don't speak another language seems to me to sharpen up the human mind quite a bit. The conscious seems to understand that you need to learn quick in order to survive. In this dire situation you catch up so much quicker. That's why I felt that learning languages has to be done over many many years to take effect (I started with English at the age of 7) or by forceful entry. Today we can create that circumstance by just having the balls to move to another country.

For me the next on the list is Japan. And I will spend a few months there and hopefully pick up the language as a sheer necessity when I'm there. I know I'll learn in 4 months more than I could in 4 years here.

But maybe that's just me.

 

Being bilingual is a nice thing indeed now, but it is a surreal problem in childhood, believe me. I grew up basically with 4 languages and was then forced to take two more in high school and college. French was the first and only language I learned voluntarily so far. And I later found out that in this country 90% of the people who grow up with 4 languages never graduate high school because they are too confused. I graduated more with luck than knowledge having had problems in all language subjects upon graduation. If I had received fair grades by my teachers I wouldn't have graduated.

Speaking 4 or 5 languages isn't that impressive in central Europe though. It is not common, but not that hard to find either...

______________


Edit:

Just as a side note: The thing I wrote in my post about how languages received a grammar and dictionary are not a theory. I actually researched that aspect for Slovene in the course of my dissertation. I didn't use too many numbers, because I was too lazy looking for them, but I did write what happened here in central Europe.

What I don't know is when Italian, English and Spanish received their grammar books, but I assume that it was at a similar time and that they didn't have a century advantage over German and French...

 

What are you visiting Japan for-vacation or work?

 

to learn the language. At least that is the plan. But I still have to save up some more money and remain there for I think 6 months, otherwise it will be pretty useless.

 

I know, but are you vacationing there randomly, visiting people you now there, or working?

 

The idea is to see quite a lot of Japan while I'm there, so I guess more vacationing than anything. But I will try to find a school definitely where I get an intensive course in Japanese...

 

Historically it's a matter of bilingual individuals creating a kind of cultural bridge between two different linguistic communities because of economical and geopolitical needs [if you run trades with foreigners you have to be sure that the terms of the "contracts" are clear and understood for all the involved parts].

I think to an intuitive process. I studied several foreign languages [I'm Italian and I can use English and French fluently and German is known for me, also thanks to the German roots of a side of my family] and usually the process to learn a language starts from certainties.

This is a flag in English, a "bandiera" in Italian. So showing a "bandiera" to an English I can learn it's a "flag".
This is a mug of beer in English, if you show it to an Italian it will be a "boccale di birra".
This is a pistol , "pistola" in Italian [not that different] ...

In a few words, visual communication is the base to interconnect different languages.