How Being Multilingual Changes You, From Trilingual 'Life of Pi' Novelist Yann Martel | Big Think.

How Being Multilingual Changes You, From Trilingual 'Life of Pi'
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Novelist and "Life of Pi" author Yann Martel has lived a life of travel and multilingual adventure. Nothing opens the mind like travel, he says, and nothing defines the self, or how we relate to one another, quite like language. Martel adroitly compares the linguistic practices of different nations, noting how the French are often hungry to adopt English words, but French Canadians resist such intrusion. And he dispels linguistic myths, such as the Inuit having more words for "snow" than other languages. Trilingual himself, Martel gives an insider's account of this fascinating topic.
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YANN MARTEL:

Yann Martel is the author of The High Mountains of Portugal and Life of Pi, the #1 international bestseller and winner of the 2002 Man Booker (among many other prizes). He is also the award-winning author ofThe Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios (winner of the Journey Prize), Self, Beatrice & Virgil, and 101 Letters to a Prime Minister. Born in Spain in 1963, Martel studied philosophy at Trent University, worked at odd jobs—tree planter, dishwasher, security guard—and traveled widely before turning to writing. He lives in Saskatoon, Canada, with the writer Alice Kuipers and their four children.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Yann Martel: I think my travels and speaking sort of more than one language — French is my mother tongue and I speak Spanish quite well — it does shape you of course. I think mainly traveling especially opened up my mind. My parents — I had the luck of having parents who were peripatetic, first of all as students and then as diplomats. They worked for the equivalent of the secretary of state. They were diplomats working for Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department. So we lived in Costa Rica when I was a child. I also lived in Paris, in Mexico as a young man. And then I got that bug and on my own I continued traveling. So traveling to me is like reading in a sense. You are in a foreign element encountering foreign characters and they mold you. Because when you travel you necessarily open yourself up. I mean I just arrived in New York this morning out of what’s it called — Union Station? Or is it Penn Station? Whatever it’s called here. I come out and suddenly I’m in the heart of New York and you can’t ignore that. You cannot ignore what’s happening to you when you travel. And so it opens you up. It was a lot colder this morning in New York than it was in Washington, so even just the weather. But then all the people. The way they walk, the way they talk. There’s a buzz of activity of New York as opposed to sort of the quieter pace of Tempe, where I was earlier. That opens you up. And then when you encounter different people, you realize to what extent there are different ways of being on this Earth. Obvious ways of speaking, but ways of thinking, ways of dressing, ways of eating, ways of relating to each other. And then in a sense what that does is it gives you options. Each one of us can be slightly different than what we are, you know. Life is a matter of taking what you’re given and then going with it somewhere. You can evolve. You can change. You can learn. You can relearn. And I think traveling teaches you that. And as for languages, language is an interesting one because I find languages can both be an open door and a closed door. So yes, growing up speaking more than one language, learning more than one language and speaking more than one language, it shows you comparative ways in which things can be explained. So there’s all these differences between English and French. One thing, for example, that was lost in English that we still have in French is different levels of familiarity when you’re talking to people. So in French, when you know someone well, you will say, "Tu." Comment vas-tu? How are you? But the "tu" is a familiar form of you. It implies that you know the person well. Either the person is younger or is an intimate.

And if it’s something you don’t know that you’re meeting for the first time, you would say, "Comment allez-vous?" You would say, "Vous." Now we used to have that in English. "You" used to be the formal one. I’d say, "How are you?" when I didn’t know you. If I knew you well, I’d say, "How are thou?" I'd say, "Thou," and that’s been lost. And that’s a nuance that’s interesting to be aware of. When you speak French, it’s a little fork in the road that you are constantly coming to. ......

[kodokukaze]

I really liked how he addressed the formal ways of communication. I find I really miss that when I'm speaking in English.

[rohanpandey]

These are the kinds of videos we want.

[danbondarenko]

One of the finer Big Think videos that I've seen in a long time.

[thmsdngsn]

He is so calming. This talk seems intimate.

[Fernando-ugf]

I'm learning english, and this experience has been changing my view of the world and life for better, since the days that I've made this decision.

[LeoRizoLeon]

I speak Spanish and English. and I relate to what you speak. It's awesome.

[corneroftheroom]

Speaking two languages has opened so many doors for me, i couldnt imagine living monolingually anymore. I strongly advise everyone to be atleast bilingual, it's more useful than any school subject i've ever learned.

[planetstarbucks]

So true, this video. I can relate as someone who has traveled all over but most often to China. Chinese and English are so different from each other that the experience of learning language makes you learn about the people who speak it. In it, you can start to see the cultural identity of the people. For example: it's common in Chinese to greet someone by saying what translates to "Have you eaten?" This confused the hell out of me because in English that's an invitation to go to lunch or dinner, but for the Chinese it's a sort of "How are you?" and concern that you are taking care of yourself.

[Dmitri]

My father is Afghan and my mother is Armenian. Unfortunately wars broke out in my parents' countries and all of a sudden my parents and I became refugees. Life was quite hard, but the only upside to that situation was that we moved a lot. As a result of that I am fluent in Pashto, Russian, English and Dutch and have a fairly decent command of Ukrainian, French and German.

[АлексейБеляев-хт]

Apart from the Russian language, which is my mothertongue, I have also had a chance to learn English, Spanish and German. The feeling of being able to crash the frontier and join yourself to a wider language group is one of the most extraordinary experiences of my entire life, I would say, were I older than just 19. Though I also, unfortunately, have never been abroad, but I'm feeling it's right about to happen

[muticere]

That last point you made is really interesting about French Canadians resisting English words. As I've learned Spanish and traveled to and lived for extended periods in Latin America, I've found the opposite is true. The closer you are to the US, the more anglicized the dialect. For example, in Peru, the word for carpet is 'alfombra', which is the correct Spanish word for carpet. However, Mexicans tend to call carpet 'carpeta', which is clearly trying to mimic the English word. It becomes more humorous because 'carpeta' is actually the Spanish word for folder so it's doubly wrong.

Peruvians aren't immune to English influence, however, because they do still use some strange inventions based on English words. For example, 'guachiman', which is 'watchman' and is derivative of the English word, despite having perfectly good Spanish words for this in the dictionary (guardian or vigilante).

[Smokey]

Holy shit, he's from Quebec? Respect... respect.

[sonroqer]

How convenient that this came out as I'm learning German...

[vvviiimmm]

Ukrainian, bulgarian, russian, belarusian -- some other languages aside french that distinguish formal and informal 'you'. Not having an intimate form of 'you' is actually a good thing in my opinion. It's always challenging to pick the right 'you' for a person in particular situation without making it awkward.

[Francisco-dege]

Wonderful video. Gracias, Sr. Martel!

[JuliusUnique]

we should combine all these languages and create one "perfect" language, it will probably be an enhanced/augmented form of english, I would bring "doch, Schadensfreude and ihr" from german, especially "doch", a really important world missing in the english vocabulary

[NvrPhazed]

In America and especially the south, our eagerness to be so informal is supposed to be seen as hospitality and welcoming. However, we do have some standards in etiquette just not so much on word formality. We see using formal words as more of a business setting than a conversational one.

[Bastro]

That's not to say Quebec French doesn't also adopt and modify English words in colloquial speech. For instance, the word "crush" (as in "having a crush on") is usually translated to "faible" in French, but Quebeckers tend to use the English word "kick" instead, even though that word doesn't have the same meaning in English.

[robertibeh]

This video would have been complete if he gave a recommendation of what languages one should learn if it had to be only 4. I was researching this the other day and came up with my own list: English, Mandarin, Arabic, and a toss up between, Spanish, French, German and Portuguese. Any thoughts?

[taschke]

The first step would probably be renaming the language to "common" "universal" "international" "cooperative" whichever adjective draws the most appeal globally. If people think poorly of the place the language comes from, it will be more difficult to adopt. So, it should be called something that embues the wielder with pride and personal ownership, I think.