Posted by languagehat

https://languagehat.com/a-case-of-bilingualism/

https://languagehat.com/?p=18874

Frequent commenter Y sent me Robert H. Lowie’s linguistic memoir “A Case of Bilingualism” (Word 1.3 [1945]: 249-259) saying “This is a fun paper, from a famous figure in American anthropology. I think you’ll like it”; I do indeed, and I think you will too. Here are some choice bits:

I was horn in Vienna in 1883. My father was a Hungarian from the vicinity of Stuhlweissenburg, south-west of Budapest. In that section of the country German had remained dominant, so that he learnt Magyar as a foreign tongue. My mother was Viennese, and, accordingly, High German was the language of our household. My father’s was a generalized South German form, my mother’s richly flavored with the racy vernacular locutions which even educated Austrians affect. Typical are such words as Bissgurn ( “termagant”), dalket (“awkward, gauche”), hopatatschet (“supercilious”). She was capable of expressive original creations, such as verhallipanzt (“entangled, confused”), which appears in no Idiotikon Vindobonense I have been able to consult. Again, like many educated Austrians, she was somewhat easy-going on certain points of grammar, substituting the dative for the genitive with während and wegen. On the other hand, her father, a physician, austerely criticised such derelictions when I indulged in them. It was he, too, who urged his daughter to keep up her children’s German in America since we were likely enough to learn English there.

When we left Vienna to join my father in New York, where he had preceded us by three years, I was ten and had just passed the entrance-examination for a Gymnasium, my sister being two and a half years younger. We immediately entered public schools and rapidly acquired fluency in English. My mother, obeying her father’s injunction, maintained German as the sole medium of communication between parents and children, though my sister and I soon came to speak to each other more frequently in English. The family intimates were all Austrians and Germans, and though our morning newspaper was English, in the evening and on Sunday we regularly bought the Staatszeitung. The Sunday edition of that paper had a puzzle-column, over which we pored for hours, winning several prizes in the form of German books. We occasionally went to the two German theatres and in later years visited German societies. We read the classics and the serial modern novels that appeared in our Sunday Staatszeitung.

Nevertheless, our German could not possibly develop as it would have in Austria. The range of topics discussed with our parents and their friends did not coincide with that thrust upon us in the classroom and in association with age-mates. It was not as a matter of course, but through later deliberate effort, that I learnt gleichschenkliges Dreieck, Herrentiere, and Beschleunigung as the equivalents, respectively, of “isosceles triangle,” “primates,” and “acceleration.” Similarly, dealings with storekeepers were largely in English. Important, too, was the fact that there were, of course, no compulsory school-compositions to be scrutinized by the Argus-eyes of a German pedagogue. […]

In point of vocabulary my German, as explained, lagged behind my English in various respects, yet it remained ahead of it in the domain of domestic utensils and the like. “Skilled,” “rolling-pin,” and “saucepan” still click less immediately in my consciousness than Bratpfanne, Nudelwalker, and Reindl (Austrian).

Facility in German composition, of course, implies much more than lexical knowledge; it means, among other things, a control of stereotyped phrases, such as Beziehungen pflegen, Possen reissen, Nachruf auf … This is one respect in which the emigrant is handicapped; he knows them, but they are not always at his beck and call; hence, at a pinch, he falls back on a correct enough, but vaguer, colorless expression which a stay-at-home of equal cultivation would spurn.

Grammar presented difficulties of its own. The Austrian vernacular, for example, tabus the imperfect, which it supplants with the perfect. Hence the correct forms of the preterite were matters to be learnt from reading, not through conversational osmosis. Then there are some regional differences as to gender: no Viennese spontaneously says der Schinken, but die Schinke. Again, perfectly familiar nouns are not likely to be declined often in the ordinary household routine, hence doubts arise concerning weak and strong forms, and den Hirschen may usurp the part of den Hirsch. Thus, eternal vigilance is the cost of maintaining tolerably good German in a foreign country. We achieved the satisfaction of having our German pronounced much better than that of other children among our acquaintances. […]

A still more serious, because subtler, peril than the intrusion of English words lies in the spontaneous, unsuspected transfer of English idioms and the misuse of German words because of English models. I once used nur instead of erst for “only,” and on another occasion spoke of having vermisst (instead of verpasst) a train. Similarly, an Austrian lady wrote about her Rente when she meant Mietzins, and nothing seems more natural than to aufrufen someone on the telephone when usage demands anrufen. Lapses of this order always left me with a sense of shame, even when I myself discovered and corrected them. […]

By the time I graduated from public school my spoken English was superficially not perceptibly different from that of any thirteen-year-old New York boy. Closer inquiry would have established then, as now, the deficiencies already in part alluded to: only a New England wife made me realize the true essence of a “saucepan”; I never encountered the phrase “milling around” until I was on the staff of the American Museum of Natural History; and within the past year I spoke of somebody’s being “the split image” (instead of “the spit and image”) of someone else. When colleagues credit me with an exceptionally wide vocabulary, I therefore feel bound to qualify the comment. I know many long and unusual words, but I am ignorant of common locutions and not sufficiently conversant with everyday words. In lectures and academic discussions I am fluent enough, but in recounting a simple occurrence of daily life I am likely to grope and fumble for the mot juste – say, “running-board” or “dustpan.” I constantly marvel at the racy oral English of monoglot New England narrators of moderate education and feel that their achievement is utterly beyond my reach. Incidentally, interlocutors have often chided me for a certain pomposity in speech. In my opinion, this is largely due to my not having the appropriate colloquialism at the tip of my tongue, so that I am driven to seek refuge in a colorless blanket or bookish term.

In apparent conflict with my admiration for the homely authenticity of English speech as spoken by some Englishmen and Americans stands my linguistic authoritarianism. Intellectually I recognize, of course, that “standard” forms are factitious; emotionally I resent deviations. I automatically rank British above American usage and at times wonder at neologisms such as some scholars freely indulge in – say, Kroeber’s “formulable,” “authenticable.” I am shocked by Sapir’s defence of accusative “who” and outraged by his repeated use of “nuanced” as though there were a verb “to nuance.” Incidentally, a one-time disciple of his calmly speaks of “sciencing.”

Probably because of my bilingualism I do not relish even wholly legitimate latitudinarianism, such as Jespersen prizes as a signal virtue of English. I wish “people” and “committee” were always used with either singular or plural verbs; that a horse were not alternately “it” and “he”; that one could not refer to mankind as “they (Oxford Dictionary) or “it” (common usage) or “he” (Elliot Smith, Rivers).

It’s hard for me to stop quoting, but if you like what you’ve read, you know where to go for more. (It goes without saying that I bristled reflexively at his “linguistic authoritarianism,” but I understand the psychology behind it.) Thanks, Y!

https://languagehat.com/a-case-of-bilingualism/

https://languagehat.com/?p=18874