Language and Light
Forward (with hope) into 2024
I’ve been trying to learn Spanish for several years now. My progress has been uneven because my motivation waxes and wanes. I wrote about my bumbling and stumbling journey with the Spanish language back in 2022.
Because I’ve been trying to learn Spanish, the song “El Amanecer” was one of the top songs on my Spotify playlist in 2023. I think it’s a beautiful song, even though I don’t fully understand the lyrics.
Songs are hard to translate. But music doesn’t need to be translated. They say it’s the universal language. It can be experienced.
Se suma un nuevo sonido a las orquestas del día
The opening line is about a new sound being added to the orchestras of the day.
It’s a hopeful idea, and it’s good to be hopeful this time of year.
Give me a few more years stumbling along in Spanish and I’ll be able to translate a whole verse.
One of the difficult things about learning a language is that there are different words that mean close to the same thing. The nuances are habitual for native speakers, but they are difficult to parse for newbies.
“El amanecer” means dawn or daybreak or sunrise. It sounds more poetic in Spanish, as many things do. Another word in Spanish to describe the early morning is “la madrugada.”
We have a saying in English that it’s always darkest before the dawn. It’s an optimistic saying, even if it’s not based on scientific evidence.
John McCain used to joke that it’s always darkest before it goes completely black. This gallows humor is fitting of the times, but we are trying to stay hopeful here.
Sometimes darkness allows us to see the light better. For example, streetlights in the city obscure the natural light of the sky. If you drive to a place with less artificial light, you can more easily see the stars.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, a star is “a massive self-luminous celestial body of gas that shines by radiation derived from its internal energy sources.”
As far as science goes, that’s a poetic description.
The word for stars in Spanish is “las estrellas.”
Meaning is never a direct translation from one language to another. Each language has a different internal structure of meaning. Thinking itself is in some ways dependent on language.
A language-learning newbie tries to translate each bit of input or output. A more fluent speaker can simply think in the language.
The only real method to thinking in a language is through a persistent regiment of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. It will help to get lessons on grammar and whatnot, but there is no path to fluency without a ton of meaningful usage.
The connection between language and thinking also applies to English literacy.
In the earlier days of American history, many young people were brought up with McGuffey Readers. These textbooks, which helped standardize American English, taught students to read — from the basics of the alphabet all the way to the reading of stories, speeches, and literature. The content was selected to reinforce moral virtues.
Today, there’s a bit of disagreement over what schools should teach. We could use classic texts that are edifying to the soul as well as the mind. Or we could use modern texts that speak to modern social dynamics.
Either way, a more powerful language immersion is happening on TikTok.
Social media is a weird hybrid of communication methods. I recommend this insightful article about online discourse: The Inescapable Town Square.
Before the written word was invented, human beings relied on the spoken word, which incorporated physical presence, community rituals, memory, and non-verbal cues. The written word not only changed how people shared stories and information, but it also changed people’s ways of thinking.
Walter Ong was a Jesuit academic who wrote about the cultural transition from orality to literacy. In the article linked above, tech philosopher L.M. Sacasas takes Ong’s framework and uses it to explore the modern transition to digital communication.
When examined as part of the history of human communication, we may find that the posted word does not radically break with, but in fact revives and retrieves features of, both the spoken and the written word. In this way we may begin to make intelligible the chaos of our digital discourse — and find even firmer ground for pessimism.
With social media, communication is fleeting and immediate, much like the oral tradition. But unlike the oral tradition, social posts are written or visually symbolic, and they are intended for a nebulous audience. In the digital age, information is stored and accessible, like the written tradition, freeing us from the burden of memory. But we don’t approach social media with the ponderous headspace of a reader or writer, because the platforms don’t nurture that kind of thinking.
Grounds for pessimism, sure. But shedding more light on our digital culture can help us better navigate the strange times we live in. If nothing else, it’s better to have a proper diagnosis for our pathologies. Staying hopeful.
What I have come to appreciate about learning a language is that it’s an endless process. I've been speaking English my whole life and I still look things up all the time.
If you enjoy the process, you don’t worry about the destination.
Such is life.
We take what we know and we try to decipher it all. We listen to the orchestras of the day and we try to find a rhythm.
We continue along in darkness, that’s true.
So we keep on going. Adelante.