The language I'm speaking right now is on its way to becoming the world's universal language, for better or for worse. Let's face it, it's the language of the internet, it's the language of finance, it's the language of air traffic control, of popular music, diplomacy -- English is everywhere.
Jezik koji sada govorim postaje univerzalni svjetski jezik. To je jezik interneta, jezik financija, jezik kontrole zračnog prometa, popularne glazbe, diplomacije -- engleski je svugdje.
Now, Mandarin Chinese is spoken by more people, but more Chinese people are learning English than English speakers are learning Chinese. Last I heard, there are two dozen universities in China right now teaching all in English. English is taking over.
No, mandarinski kineski govori više ljudi, ali više je kineskog naroda koji uči engleski nego govornika engleskog koji uče kineski. Prema posljednjim informacijama, u Kini trenutno postoje 24 sveučilišta gdje se podučava na engleskom. Engleski preuzima sve.
And in addition to that, it's been predicted that at the end of the century almost all of the languages that exist now -- there are about 6,000 -- will no longer be spoken. There will only be some hundreds left. And on top of that, it's at the point where instant translation of live speech is not only possible, but it gets better every year.
Osim toga, predviđa se da se krajem stoljeća gotovo sve jezike koji trenutno postoje -- ima ih oko 6.000 -- više neće govoriti. Ostat će ih samo nekoliko stotina. Povrh toga, došlo je do toga da instant prevođenje govora uživo nije samo moguće, već je svake godine sve bolje.
The reason I'm reciting those things to you is because I can tell that we're getting to the point where a question is going to start being asked, which is: Why should we learn foreign languages -- other than if English happens to be foreign to one? Why bother to learn another one when it's getting to the point where almost everybody in the world will be able to communicate in one?
Razlog zašto vam iznosim ove činjenice je taj što vidim da dolazimo do toga da će se početi postavljati jedno pitanje, a to je: Zašto bismo morali učiti strane jezike -- osim ako engleski postane strani jezik? Zašto se truditi naučiti neki drugi kad već dolazi do toga da će gotovo svi u svijetu moći komunicirati na istome jeziku?
I think there are a lot of reasons, but I first want to address the one that you're probably most likely to have heard of, because actually it's more dangerous than you might think. And that is the idea that a language channels your thoughts, that the vocabulary and the grammar of different languages gives everybody a different kind of acid trip, so to speak. That is a marvelously enticing idea, but it's kind of fraught.
Mislim da postoji puno razloga, ali prvo želim navesti onaj razlog koji ste vjerojatno već čuli, jer, zapravo je opasnije nego što možda mislite. Radi se o ideji da jezik kanalizira vaše misli, da zbog vokabulara i gramatike različitih jezika svi doživljavaju drugačiji "trip", nazovimo to tako. Primamljiva je to zamisao, ali nosi svoje breme.
So it's not that it's untrue completely. So for example, in French and Spanish the word for table is, for some reason, marked as feminine. So, "la table," "la mesa," you just have to deal with it. It has been shown that if you are a speaker of one of those languages and you happen to be asked how you would imagine a table talking, then much more often than could possibly be an accident, a French or a Spanish speaker says that the table would talk with a high and feminine voice. So if you're French or Spanish, to you, a table is kind of a girl, as opposed to if you are an English speaker.
Nije da je potpuno neistinita. Tako da, primjerice, na francuskom i španjolskom riječ "stol" je, iz nekog razloga, ženskoga roda. "La table," "la mesa" ... jednostavno se nosite s time. Pokazalo se da ako ste govornik jednog od ovih jezika i slučajno vas pitaju kako biste zamislili pričajući stol, onda bi češće nego što mislite govornik francuskoga ili španjolskoga rekao da bi stol pričao visokim i ženstvenim glasom. Francuzi i španjolci stol zamišljaju kao djevojku, za razliku od vas, govornika engleskoga.
It's hard not to love data like that, and many people will tell you that that means that there's a worldview that you have if you speak one of those languages. But you have to watch out, because imagine if somebody put us under the microscope, the us being those of us who speak English natively. What is the worldview from English?
Teško je ne voljeti takve podatke i mnogi će vam reći da to znači da imate određeni svjetonazor ako pričate jedan od tih jezika. No, pripazite... jer, zamislite da nas netko stavi pod mikroskop... mislim na nas kojima je engleski materinji jezik. Koji je svjetonazor engleskoga jezika?
So for example, let's take an English speaker. Up on the screen, that is Bono. He speaks English. I presume he has a worldview. Now, that is Donald Trump. In his way, he speaks English as well.
Uzmimo, primjerice govornika engleskoga jezika. Na ekranu je Bono. On govori engleski. Pretpostavljam da ima svjetonazor. Zatim, ovo je Donald Trump. Na svoj način, i on priča engleski.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
And here is Ms. Kardashian, and she is an English speaker, too. So here are three speakers of the English language. What worldview do those three people have in common? What worldview is shaped through the English language that unites them? It's a highly fraught concept. And so gradual consensus is becoming that language can shape thought, but it tends to be in rather darling, obscure psychological flutters. It's not a matter of giving you a different pair of glasses on the world.
A tu je i gospodična Kardashian, i ona je govornica engleskoga jezika. To su tri govornika engleskoga jezika. Koji svjetonazor te tri osobe imaju zajednički? Koji svjetonazor se oblikuje engleskim jezikom, a da ih ujedinuje? Zastrašujuć je to koncept. Tako se postiže postupni koncenzus da jezik može oblikovati misli, ali češće u obliku dražesnih, mutnih psiholoških treperenja. Ne radi se o pružanju novog para naočala za gledanje na svijet.
Now, if that's the case, then why learn languages? If it isn't going to change the way you think, what would the other reasons be? There are some. One of them is that if you want to imbibe a culture, if you want to drink it in, if you want to become part of it, then whether or not the language channels the culture -- and that seems doubtful -- if you want to imbibe the culture, you have to control to some degree the language that the culture happens to be conducted in. There's no other way.
Ako je to tako, zašto učiti jezike? Ako učenje jezika neće promijeniti način razmišljanja, koji bi bili ostali razlozi? Evo nekih. Jedan je da, ako želite usvojiti kulturu, ako je želite upiti, ako želite biti dio nje, onda, usmjerava li jezik kulturu ili ne -- a to se čini sumnjivo -- ako želite usvojiti kulturu, morate do neke mjere kontrolirati jezik na kojemu se odvija ta kultura. Nema drugog načina.
There's an interesting illustration of this. I have to go slightly obscure, but really you should seek it out. There's a movie by the Canadian film director Denys Arcand -- read out in English on the page, "Dennis Ar-cand," if you want to look him up. He did a film called "Jesus of Montreal." And many of the characters are vibrant, funny, passionate, interesting French-Canadian, French-speaking women. There's one scene closest to the end, where they have to take a friend to an Anglophone hospital. In the hospital, they have to speak English. Now, they speak English but it's not their native language, they'd rather not speak English. And they speak it more slowly, they have accents, they're not idiomatic. Suddenly these characters that you've fallen in love with become husks of themselves, they're shadows of themselves.
Postoji zanimljiva ilustracija. Možda vam bude malo nejasno, ali shvatit ćete. Film kanadskog redatelja Denysa Arcanda -- na engleskom: "Dennis Ar-cand," ako ga poželite potražiti na Internetu. Snimio je film "Isus Montreala" I mnogi likovi su živahne, zabavne, strastvene, zanimljive franko-kanađanke, govornice francuskog jezika. U sceni pri kraju filma prijatelja voze u anglofonu bolnicu. U bolnici moraju pričati engleski. Pričaju engleski jezik, ali nije to njihov materinji jezik. Radije bi da ne govore engleski. Govore ga sporije, imaju naglasak, nije idiomatski. Odjednom ti likovi u koje ste se zaljubili postaju ljuske samih sebe, svoje vlastite sjene.
To go into a culture and to only ever process people through that kind of skrim curtain is to never truly get the culture. And so to the extent that hundreds of languages will be left, one reason to learn them is because they are tickets to being able to participate in the culture of the people who speak them, just by virtue of the fact that it is their code. So that's one reason.
Da biste ušli u kulturu i ljude promatrali samo kroz tako rijedak zastor znači zapravo nikad ne razumjeti kulturu. Stoga, ideja da će preostati samo nekoliko stotina jezika... jedan razlog da se nauče je taj što su oni ulaznice za sudjelovanje u kulturi ljudi koji ih govore, samom činjenicom što je to njihov kod. To je jedan razlog.
Second reason: it's been shown that if you speak two languages, dementia is less likely to set in, and that you are probably a better multitasker. And these are factors that set in early, and so that ought to give you some sense of when to give junior or juniorette lessons in another language. Bilingualism is healthy.
Drugi razlog: dokazano je da ako govorite dva jezika manje je vjerojatno da će uslijediti demencija i vjerojatno vam dobro ide "multitasking". Ovi faktori rano nastupe. To bi vam trebalo dati uvida u to kada dati svoje dijete na satove stranoga jezika. Bilingualizam je zdrav.
And then, third -- languages are just an awful lot of fun. Much more fun than we're often told. So for example, Arabic: "kataba," he wrote, "yaktubu," he writes, she writes. "Uktub," write, in the imperative. What do those things have in common? All those things have in common the consonants sitting in the middle like pillars. They stay still, and the vowels dance around the consonants. Who wouldn't want to roll that around in their mouths? You can get that from Hebrew, you can get that from Ethiopia's main language, Amharic. That's fun.
Zatim, treći razlog -- jezici su zabavni. Zabavniji nego što nam ikad kažu. Primjerice, na arapskom: "kataba," napisao je, "yaktubu," on piše, ona piše. "Uktub," piši - imperativ. Što to sve ima zajedničko? Zajednički su im suglasnici u sredini poput stupova. Ostaju mirno dok samoglasnici plešu oko njih. Tko to ne bi htio kotrljati u ustima? Isto je i kod hebrejskog kao i kod etiopijskog glavnog jezika, amharskog. To je zabavno.
Or languages have different word orders. Learning how to speak with different word order is like driving on the different side of a street if you go to certain country, or the feeling that you get when you put Witch Hazel around your eyes and you feel the tingle. A language can do that to you.
Ili to što jezici imaju različit red riječi. Naučiti govoriti s drugačijim poretkom riječi je kao vožnja na drugoj strani ulice ili osjećaj koji dobijete kad stavite vještičju lijesku oko očiju i osjećate trnce. Jezik može to izazvati.
So for example, "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back," a book that I'm sure we all often return to, like "Moby Dick." One phrase in it is, "Do you know where I found him? Do you know where he was? He was eating cake in the tub, Yes he was!" Fine. Now, if you learn that in Mandarin Chinese, then you have to master, "You can know, I did where him find? He was tub inside gorging cake, No mistake gorging chewing!" That just feels good. Imagine being able to do that for years and years at a time.
Primjerice, "Mačak u šeširu se vraća," knjiga kojoj se sigurno mnogi od nas često vraćaju, kao i romanu "Moby Dick." Jedna fraza u njoj glasi, "Znaš li gdje sam ga pronašao? Znaš li gdje je bio? Jeo je tortu u kadi, jeo je, da!" U redu. A sad, ako naučite to na mandarinskom kineskom, morat ćete naučiti ovo, "Možeš znati, sam gdje ga našao? Bio je kada u žderućoj torti, Bez greške žderala žvakala!" To je tako dobar osjećaj. Zamislite da možete to godinama raditi.
Or, have you ever learned any Cambodian? Me either, but if I did, I would get to roll around in my mouth not some baker's dozen of vowels like English has, but a good 30 different vowels scooching and oozing around in the Cambodian mouth like bees in a hive. That is what a language can get you.
Ili, jeste ili ikad naučili nešto kambodžanskog? Nisam ni ja, ali da jesam, mogao bih u ustima kotrljati ne 13 samoglasnika kao u engleskom već dobrih 30 samoglasnika koji se premještaju i preljevaju u kambodžanskim ustima poput pčela u košnici. To vam jezik može donijeti.
And more to the point, we live in an era when it's never been easier to teach yourself another language. It used to be that you had to go to a classroom, and there would be some diligent teacher -- some genius teacher in there -- but that person was only in there at certain times and you had to go then, and then was not most times. You had to go to class. If you didn't have that, you had something called a record. I cut my teeth on those. There was only so much data on a record, or a cassette, or even that antique object known as a CD. Other than that you had books that didn't work, that's just the way it was.
Konkretno, živimo u doba u kojemu nikada nije bilo lakše naučiti drugi jezik. Nekad ste morali odlaziti u učionicu gdje bi bio vrijedan učitelj -- neki učitelj genijalac -- ali ta osoba je ondje samo u određeno doba pa ste morali odlaziti baš tada a to nije bilo često. Morali ste ići na nastavu. Ako niste imali to, imali ste nešto što se nazivalo pločom Ozlijedio sam zube na tome. Samo je određena količina podataka mogla biti na ploči ili kaseti ili onom antičkom predmetu poznatom kao CD. Osim toga, imali ste knjige koje nisu bile dobre. Tako je to bilo.
Today you can lay down -- lie on your living room floor, sipping bourbon, and teach yourself any language that you want to with wonderful sets such as Rosetta Stone. I highly recommend the lesser known Glossika as well. You can do it any time, therefore you can do it more and better. You can give yourself your morning pleasures in various languages. I take some "Dilbert" in various languages every single morning; it can increase your skills. Couldn't have done it 20 years ago when the idea of having any language you wanted in your pocket, coming from your phone, would have sounded like science fiction to very sophisticated people.
Danas možete prileći -- leći na pod svojeg dnevnog boravka, pijuckati burbon i samoga sebe naučiti bilo koji jezik koji želite uz divne komplete kao što je Rosetta Stone. Također preporučujem manje poznatu Glossiku. Možete to činiti bilo kad što znači, više i bolje. Možete si podariti jutarnje užitke u raznim jezicima. Ja svako jutro čitam "Dilberta" na raznim jezicima; može poboljšati vaše vještine. To niste mogli prije 20 godina kada je ideja da u svome džepu i telefonu imate svaki jezik koji poželite sofisticiranim ljudima zvučala kao znanstvena fantastika.
So I highly recommend that you teach yourself languages other than the one that I'm speaking, because there's never been a better time to do it. It's an awful lot of fun. It won't change your mind, but it will most certainly blow your mind.
Zato preporučujem da naučite i jezike osim onoga koji ja sad govorim jer nikad nije postojao bolji trenutak da to učinite. Strašno je zabavno. Nećete zbog toga promijeniti mišljenje, ali će vas sigurno raspametiti.
Thank you very much.
Puno vam hvala.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)