Language as a Mental Model

Language

Language has a certain quantity of more or less logical rules. One source of frustration when learning new languages is that there seem to be huge quantities of rules to remember, and also huge quantities of exceptions. It’s a tricky combination of logic and non-logic. Some languages are more logical than others. I always enjoyed the logical structure of Latin, but there are still certain things you simply have to remember, such as how the verbs conjugate. At least in English there is little to remember on that front, and no genders to remember for nouns, but there’s the awfully confounding question of pronunciation, which is not logical at all. Spanish pronunciation is much more logical (that is, consistent) but still has plenty of exceptions to grammar rules.

We can trace back the etymology of the language we speak now, to see how it came to be the way it is over time, through gradual morphing, borrowing from other languages, and sometimes misunderstanding. But as with logic, at a certain point we get back to a starting point that we can’t explain. Many English words come from old German or Latin, but where did those words come from? An etymology dictionary tells me that “cat” comes from Latin but might ultimately go back to an Afro-Asiatic language. Why, at some point in history, did people decide that “cat” was a good way to refer to a small, sleek furry four-legged creature? Some words are more obvious than others, like “cuckoo” which sounds more or less like the sound the bird makes. “Cat” in Cantonese is a high-pitched “mow” (rhyming with cow), which does sound quite like the sound a cat makes. More than “cat” does, anyway. These are the starting points of language and they must once have come from some sort of free or random association. After, all not all concepts make sounds that we can imitate in our naming of them.

One of the difficult aspects of learning a new language is the sheer quantity of vocabulary you have to learn to get yourself started. A certain amount of memorisation is hard to avoid. However, as with learning times tables, I have found that memorisation doesn’t help with actually using the language, because when you’re speaking you don’t have time to run through your verb conjugation to pick the right one. You have to be able to access it faster than that, from some non-logical, deep-rooted place in your consciousness. We don’t learn to speak our native language logically, we do it by immersion, by copying, by emotional connections, and by desire. Children first learn to say things they have a strong desire to say, like “Mama”, “Dada”, “cat”, “ball”, “more” or “mine”. They often try to proceed logically with language and have to learn that English, alas, doesn’t work like that. They might start to notice a pattern with how the past tense is formed, but then they’ll say things like “Mummy gived me ice cream”.

In any case, children often learn words by adults saying them repeatedly when pointing to something or giving that thing to them. They hear “milk” repeatedly when being given milk, and eventually make a connection. There is no explanation for why that sound goes with that concept: it’s a starting point.