The Daily O’Collegian

Professors say learning another language is a gateway to cultural understanding and a way to understand your native language better.

OSU foreign language professors agreed that we live in a global world that is interconnected and interdependent.

Learning the languages of other people is important not only for communication purposes, but also for understanding different cultures, they said.

Perry Gethner, head of the foreign language department, said there are many reasons to learn a foreign language.

“One of them, of course, is for cultural enrichment, learning about other countries, seeing that other people think differently of different customs,” Gethner said.

Learning other languages also “helps compensate for the lack of foundation in English grammar that most students were supposed to have gotten in high school,” Gethner said.

“It’s critical to understand how languages work, how you put things together, what’s correct usage. This has always been, for the last 2,000 years or so, the hallmark of the educated person.”

John te Velde, a professor of German, said learning a foreign language is more important now than ever before.

“As peoples and nations become more and more interdependent and must interact with each other on so many levels and for so many reasons, communication plays a central role,” te Velde said.

Thinking that all communication should be in English is “a sort of cultural and linguistic imperialism,” te Velde said.

“Miscommunication is often culturally-based. If no effort is made by the native English speaker to learn about the culture of his or her conversation partner whose native language is not English, then the cultural understanding will be very one-sided and ultimately break down the communication.”

Najwa Raouda, a professor of Arabic, said, “Languages do not provide the meaning of words only. They reflect on the cultures. And in order to understand best other people, especially in a global world, it will be best to understand how they express themselves in the language.”

Te Velde said learning a foreign language helps people better understand their own language as well.

“You could say that a foreign language is the best window into the soul and spirit of its speakers,” te Velde said.

French

Gethner, who also teaches French, said French is a good language to learn because it is important in commerce and diplomacy.

French culture is also full of major literature, Gethner said.

“A number of major French writers from the enlightenment were crucial influences on the founding fathers, and so is the whole heritage that got this country founded in the first place,” he said.

The biggest difficulty for English-speaking students learning French is pronunciation, Gethner said.

“They have a large number of sounds, especially vowel sounds, that have no English equivalent, which takes a lot of getting used to,” he said.

Another problem is that “there is a serious difference between the way French is written and the way it sounds,” Gethner said.

There are also spelling difficulties such as silent letters, Gethner said. Homonyms abound in the language as well.

“Listening comprehension is much more difficult than reading,” he said.

But there are many instances where the grammar of French and English diverge, Gethner said.

“English probably shares more words with French than any of the other modern languages,” he said.

Gethner said French is easier to learn than some other languages because it has the same alphabet as English.

“I would say that certainly all of the languages that use the same alphabet are automatically easier in that sense,” he said.

“In terms of grammar, first-year Spanish, French and German are roughly equivalent in terms of difficulty,” Gethner said. “First year Russian and Japanese would be a lot harder.”

German

Te Velde said German is the native language of Germany, Austria, and most of Switzerland and Luxemburg. Many people in other European countries also speak the language, he said.

Those who study German will be better able to communicate with these people verbally, as well as better understand the culture, mentality and way of life of these people, te Velde said.

“Their language is intertwined with their very being,” he said

Te Velde said there are three main areas of difficulty for English-speaking students learning German.

The first difficulty is that there are six different ways to say “the” in German, depending on case, gender and number of the noun modified. The second problem is the case system and the word-order freedom that comes with it, te Velde said. The third difficulty is that German is basically a subject-object-verb language, but has some other requirements about the verb placement.

Te Velde said while German may be harder to learn in the beginning, it gets easier once those three above-mentioned difficulties are passed. He said while Spanish and French may be easier at first, they get harder in advanced classes.

“German is definitely easier for English speakers than Russian or Chinese, and probably

Japanese,” te Velde said.

Arabic

Raouda describes Arabic as one of the “richest” languages in the world.

Arabic is the fifth most spoken language worldwide, Raouda said.

“There are over 200 million people speaking the language as a first language and more than 20 million as a second language,” she said.

Raouda said there is now a great demand in the job market for Arabic speakers.

As a linguist, Raouda said she is fascinated by the richness of the language that allows “spontaneous flow and harmony in enriching poetry.”

Raouda said although people assume Arabic is hard to learn, it has a structured set of grammatical rules that it follows.

“The language doesn’t have many exceptions and the words make sense as they originate from one stem or base of a word,” she said.

The biggest problem Raouda sees is that some Arabic letters are not found in other languages.

“To a westerner, they are difficult to pronounce,” she said.

Raouda also studied Russian, but said Arabic made more sense.

“The grammatical rules are logical, and once one studies them, they make sense,” Raouda said.

Raouda said studying a language depends on the students’ interests and the objectives.

“If a student is interested, he can meet the challenge,” she said.

Russian

Keith Tribble, a professor of Russian, said many employers are looking for people with a knowledge of Russian because “they feel that this is a part of the world that is opening up to the West and will play a more and more decisive role in shaping the events of the 21st century.”

“Russia is an ancient country with rich cultural, religious, literary and artistic traditions,” Tribble said.

It is the largest country in the world, and has played a powerful role in European and world history, he said.

“As one of the countries with the richest largely untapped natural resources on the planet, it plays and will continue to play a major role in the balance of power and in trade,” Tribble said. “Without knowledge of Russian language it is impossible to become a player in the resolution of geopolitical conflict.”

The biggest problem for English-speaking students in learning Russian is the intricate grammar that “requires a lot of rote memorization,” he said.

Tribble said Russian is one of the harder languages taught at OSU, but is not more difficult for American students than mastering Arabic, Chinese or Japanese.

“Foreign language is taught largely by analogy with the structure of students’ native language,” Tribble said. “Students who are unaware of the grammatical structure of the English language have a more difficult time acquiring Russian.”

Tribble tries to teach English grammar and Russian grammar at the same time. He even recommends that his students read a book called “English Grammar for Students of Russian.”

Tribble said his students “have a deeper appreciation of the richness of a unique foreign culture, the diversity of our planet and are making a significant contribution to international understanding and cooperation.”