Most people in the world are exposed to a second
language. Some are fortunate enough to live in a place where many languages are
spoken while others have to learn an additional language in a more formal way
at school. Regardless of how well they are exposed to a foreign language, people always have
less confidence in their knowledge of it relative to their mother tongue. There is no method more certain to
feed that doubt than to visit a place where people speak a version of the foreign language so different from what they learned that it is hard to understand. The failure to
understand immediately raises the question whether this incomprehension is a result of poor
knowledge or the “weird” manner of speaking. Almost every language has these
outliers, including French, Spanish, Arabic and English. The cause of the local
uniqueness may be historical, linguistic, geographic or any combination of
these. The difficulty posed by these variants makes being a translator far
easier than being an interpreter in terms of language knowledge.
Even after the advent of radio and television, devices
that shattered geographical language barriers, every area, whether a village,
city, province or country, has its own vocabulary and way of pronouncing words
to one degree or another. In some cases, the resulting dialect is so different
from the standard language that even non-local native speakers struggle to understand it.
For example, the Picard dialect in northern France sounds like French but only “sort
of” due to its strange syntax. Of all of the Spanish variants, Chilean Spanish combines
rapid speech with missing syllables and local vocabulary, a deadly combination.
As for Arabic, putting aside Moroccan Arabic, which is a language in itself, Bedouin Arabic is beyond the ability of most non-native speakers to understand due to its
different pronunciation of certain sounds, among other reasons. The English language
enjoys a myriad of accents, with among the most confusing existing in Scotland and the parts of the south in the United States. Even native speakers struggle
to understand what the locals are saying. An encounter with any of these
dialects will instill doubt in the most intrepid of language learners.
The source of these local language identities may be
historical, i.e., it is a previous form of the language. For example, Church Slavonic
is the old Orthodox Slavic language, which was retained in Church literary and
speech even after the reform of the Russian language in the 18th
century. The Cajans or Acadians, who live in Louisiana, speak an old Breton
French as part of their creole dialect as they left France several centuries
ago. Old Anglo-Saxon speech survives in signs and the writings of Tolkien, who
studied the language. It is possible to find bits and pieces of previous “versions”
of language here and there.
A more common factor in a very local dialect is the presence
of other languages in the area and among the population. French speakers in all
of the colonies may use the French framework but freely integrate words from
African or other native languages into their speech, including even Dutch in
some northern areas of France. Berber, a non-Arabic language, makes its presence
felt in North African Arabic. Spanish in South America borrows Indian words
while English in many southwestern states in the United States steals terms
from Spanish. Depending on the local ethnic mix, the main language develops its
own style.
From another point of view, geographical isolation is a
vital factor in differentiation. Where mountains or extreme geography limit
contact with other cultures, languages develop in their own way. The heights of
mountain ranges, the great distances of the oceans, the lengths of the desert
and depths of the jungle cut off a language from its source and ultimately
create a new one over time. The dialect becomes ever more distinct from the standard
form.
This evolution creates challenges for linguists. For interpreters,
this diversity means that knowing the standard version may not be sufficient to
be able to understand the speaker. By contrast, written communication remains relatively
standard over cultures. Official Russian from the Brezhnev era is not much
different than the current form. For the foreign visitor under the impression that
several years of language study in high school or college will ensure smooth
linguistic sailing in foreign lands, it is a shock to experience total
incomprehension. The only reaction to the flood of apparent gibberish is “say
what”. However, to cheer up any bewildered foreign visitors to such areas, it is normal. It
is not you. It’s them, at least from the visitor’s perspective.
