Language Learning

2010-07-14T12:16:00.000-07:00

Genghis Khan had one of the biggest rabbits ever. He started out with just a small rabbit in the Gobi Desert. The rabbit grew as it progressively swallowed up all the neighboring rabbits. Genghis Kahn’s leadership resulted in unprecedented rabbit growth and, by the end of his life, he had created the largest rabbit of his time, second only in all of history to the British rabbit that would rise many years later.

My Czech students were hoarse with laughter when they realized that I was confusing rabbit (králik) with kingdom (království) as I recounted the career of Genghis Kahn. During my foray into the Czech language, I have also managed to order ten times as much food as I meant to, create entirely new words, mix up scores of others, and insult loads of people. Imagine the shock of the train station worker when she was cheerfully (but rather obscenely) asked for a sleeping ox, or the confusion of excited new believers when told of the upcoming church asparagus when they were expecting a baptism.

A friend learning to speak Shona in Bostwana said, “You have to murder a language on your way to mastering it.” Language learning seems deceptively romantic at first, but quickly reveals itself as a long, confusing journey through mushy-brain and rubber-tongue syndromes with a few moments of triumph, terror, and unexpected humor. Perhaps because language so profoundly defines the way we process our world, language learning casts new light on our understandings of ourselves and of the living God. I can only write from personal experience learning Czech and teaching English, but I am sure that the same principles extend to language learning everywhere.

Though most of us do not realize it, we are all linguistic experts. We freely manipulate English, a highly developed language with at least twenty verb tenses (counting passives), to express exactly what we want it to. Even the best of my Czech students struggle with the difference between “I went” and “I have gone,” while it would be second nature for any native speaker. And though we are specialists in our first language, mastering a second is incredibly challenging. After four years of learning Czech, I still struggle to read books written for second graders. This phenomenon may be akin to Paul saying in Romans 7:18, “I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” The capacity to learn our first language is automatic but, the change to a new language, like switching from our sin nature to new life in Jesus, feels painful and takes years of repetition and perseverance to see through. Meeting the challenges, rejecting the sin, facing the music, or speaking when you are exhausted and do not completely understand are the daily choices that see spiritual and linguistic visions through.

When stripped of your first language, you lose more than your ability to communicate. I often feel like I have lost my entire personality. Because humor is usually tied to tiny nuances in language, I can no longer make people laugh (except when they are laughing at me). Furthermore, I am totally unable to follow Czech humor, which routinely leaves me staring blankly with chuckling Czech friends. I am effectively a dead spot in any conversation, unable to participate in the ways I used to in English. This signals just how much value I put on being able to engage with and entertain others. It is a direct challenge for me to find identity in God and the way He sees me, rather than in what I perceive as my personality. Love, joy, peace, and the rest of the fruit of God’s spirit in me should define me, transcending my linguistic, cultural, or interpersonal abilities.

Idiosyncrasies in languages reveal the complexity of God. English, for example, has that extraordinary array of verb tenses, which makes it possible to for English speakers to describe exactly when and how an action takes place. The future perfect continuous tense, for example, “I will have been out of diapers for twenty-five years next fall,” boggles the minds of most Czechs, and not solely for the grammatical convolution. In contrast, Czech grammar is built on cases, which give loads of information about what is happening to nouns at any given moment. While we rely on word order for this job in English, a Czech speaker can add nuance by manipulating word order because the nouns themselves morph according to the action. “Nosorožec snědl mě” (The rhinoceros ate me.), “Mě snědl nosorožec” (It was I who was eaten by the rhinoceros.), and “Nosorožec mě snědl” (The rhinoceros did eat me.) are all achieved by simply changing word order. (We do not really have to worry. Rhinos are actually herbivores and would probably just gore humans rather than eat them.)

If you eyes glazed over the moment you read “verb tenses,” I don’t blame you. The point was simply that God is more complex than we can imagine, having ordained more languages than linguists can accurately count, each language encoding the human experience in its own brilliant or bizarre way. Language learning gives us a window into the vastness of a God who operates and exists in proportions beyond what our languages or imaginations can express. How is it that a God like that causes Himself to be sufficiently known to each of us in our own language through a simple message of love and forgiveness?

God’s celebration of language is evident in Acts 2:6. The disciples began miraculously speaking in other tongues through the Holy Spirit. People visiting Jerusalem from all over the known world “were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language.” That emphasis is deepened in Revelation 5:9 when worship for Jesus, the Lamb, is based on His having redeemed people “from every tribe and language and people and nation” and bringing them into His unified kingdom. The mystery is that God celebrates our language and cultural differences in order to illuminate His greatness. The beauty is that Jesus, the Word, can be understood by every human heart. The wonder is that His hope and purpose for us transcend our differences to make us one, His people, His rabbit. I mean, kingdom.

Jonathan Lobel and his wife Lisa are building the church in the Czech Republic through Beskydy Mountain Academy, a Christian high school for Czech unbelievers. Contact them at jlobel@gmail.com or find out more on jonnyandlisa.com.

salt:light - the world

Language Learning