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Miscellaneous talk #45 reasonable request, Genitiv, otherness, C2, two-leg chair, Leib, Ten Watch, Foreign, Italiano
Posted on Nov 3, 2024
by Chung-hong Chan
- I’ve read a paper recently and got some weird interpretation of this almost standard data availability statement written in English: The data underlying this article will be shared on reasonable request by the corresponding author. Of course, under the context, I should know what it means. With my first glance, I thought that only the corresponding author can make that reasonable request and get the shared data. I discussed this with my coworker Paul and it confirmed my hatred to the English language. The standard way to improve this is to write it in active voice: The data underlying this article are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Don’t fuck with me about “data are” and “data is”. If passive voice must be used so that the scientific objectiveness can be expressed, the form The data underlying this article will be shared by the corresponding author upon reasonable request can also be suggested. However, this “by” sentence is quite weird as it is the same as The corresponding author will share the data underlying this article on reasonable request. No one is interested in who share the data. Instead, the data availability statement should emphasize how to obtain the data, i.e. making a reasonable request to the corresponding author. But I know, most of the world is actually not using English as the first language.
- After knowing some German, I think languages relying on word order (so-called “analytic languages”) are quite fragile. But even in German, word order can still introduce ambiguity: die Daten werden vom korrespondierenden Autor auf angemessene Anfrage weitergegeben and die Daten werden auf angemessene Anfrage vom korrespondierenden Autor weitergegeben. However, that is probably the reason why the standard German has Genitiv: die Daten werden auf angemessene Anfrage des korrespondierenden Autors weitergegeben conveys a stupid message. And it actually makes me understand why cases (Kasus / Fälle) are useful, although they are pain in the arse to get the hang of it.
- The next point, I think there should be a disclaimer: This is more like a self criticism rather than a criticism of someone else. Back when I was still a little research assistant at a local hospital in Hong Kong, I had to take care of guests. There was an occasion that the world most important sleep researcher from the US visited the hospital. He was actually French and had been living in the US for more than half of his life at that point. He was a really nice senior academic and he respected me even I was just a nameless research assistant speaking broken English to him. I had a little small talk with him (which is not my forte) and he told me even at that point in his life, he still felt that he could not integrate into the US society. He still had the language barrier. Remember, he did not have that “obvious” problem (you know which, the “r” word) to be living in the US and he was already the most important researcher in his own field. People there should respect him like priest or mage. But he still felt that otherness.
- According to the hiring condition of a professor in the Netherlands on most job ads, non-native speaking hires should be able to teach in the teaching language, i.e. Dutch, in under 2 years. Well, it’s impossible for me to attain the level of C2, i.e. which one is able to teach, in 2 years, probably in any language. I am not in the Netherlands of course. But recently, I can feel very strongly that same otherness experienced by the French sleep researcher. I feel the hidden dynamics in the (German) academia, in large part due to my language ability. I have been studying German on and off since 2016. 8 years later I hate myself for still being at the level of B2. Sure, my German works somehow. But it works not well enough to earn respect and trust. I really want to advance to perhaps C1. But deep in me, I know the answer to this question: Whether or not would I earn the trust and respect, even if I were at the level of C2 or even near native?
- Communication is a very potent tool for creating otherness. Man kann nicht nicht kommunizieren (One cannot not communicate), said Paul Watzlawick. So, the refusal to communicate is also a form of communication. For example, during the signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, Hitler (Nazi Germany), Chamberlain (Great Britain), Daladier (France), and Mussolini (Fascist Italy) were there to decide the future of Czechoslovakia. Historians have to ask why Czechoslovaks had no say in the agreement, even they were the ones—probably the exclusive ones at that moment— being affected by the agreement. Another example, which is more close to me, is that when I was young, I experienced the negotiation on the future of Hong Kong between the Chinese Communists and the Brits. Similar to the Czechoslovaks, Hong Kong citizens and elites had no say and could only be informed after the fact about their future. The then-chairman Deng Xiaopeng once said that the negotiation must be a two-leg chair (Communist China and Great Britain), never a three-leg one (+ Hong Kong). This of course has to do with who are the Colonizers and who are the Colonized.
- I’ve read the book On Freedom by Timothy Synder recently. A central thesis in the book is how we see others as Leib or Körper. In the whole book he uses the German terms because both terms translated to the English word “Body”, which cannot capture subtle differences between the two German terms. For example, “mind-body problem” is in German Das Leib-Seele-Problem. However, “physicality” is in German Körperlichkeit. The (deliberately) damaging of someone else’s body is Körperverletzung. Körper is a bunch of flesh. Leib is a thing that can feel and suffer like you. Do you see people, including people who are different from you, as Leib or Körper? If one sees someone as colonized, probably someone else is just a Körper.
- I said in the last post that I read some Klaus Krippendorff recently. In some of his less known works, he wrote about communication and otherness. He quoted the American Philosopher Richard Rorty: “…[C]oming to see other human beings as ‘one of us’ rather than as ‘them’ is a matter of detailed description of what unfamiliar people are like and of redescription of what we ourselves are like.” I still remember a scene in the movie Casablanca (1942). There is a German couple immigrating to America from the Nazi Germany. The head Waiter Carl first talks to them in German. And then the German lady says they will speak nothing but English, so that they can feel at home in America. At this point, the movie writer shows how the language can be used for creating otherness.
Gent: “What watch?”
Lady: “Ten watch.”
Gent: “Such much?”
Carl: “You will get along beautifully in America.”
- Just to sum it up, both German and English are “foreign” languages to me. Both are hard. Even my mother tongue is kind of difficult to me recently.
- Having said that, I am practicing Italian on Duolingo. Because I am bored and wanted to confuse my brain even more. I know some Latin, so it’s not that bad.
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