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.
Bahasa yang saya gunakan sekarang akan menjadi bahasa umum di dunia, disadari atau pun tidak. Mari kita terima, inilah bahasa internet, inilah bahasa keuangan, inilah bahasa pengontrol lalu lintas udara, atau musik populer, diplomasi -- bahasa Inggris ada di mana-mana.
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.
Saat ini lebih banyak orang berbicara bahasa Mandarin, tapi lebih banyak orang Cina yang belajar Bahasa Inggris daripada orang berbahasa Inggris yang belajar bahasa Cina. Terakhir saya dengar, ada dua lusin universitas di China yang mengajar dalam bahasa Inggris. Bahasa Inggris telah mengambil alih.
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.
Dan selain itu, diprediksikan bahwa akhir abad ini, sekitar 6000 bahasa yang ada sekarang tidak akan digunakan lagi. Hanya akan ada beberapa ratus yang tersisa. Tak hanya itu, nantinya terjemahan pidato langsung, bukan hanya mungkin, tapi menjadi makin baik.
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?
Saya menyampaikan ini, karena kita mendekati saat, di mana sebuah pertanyaan akan muncul, yaitu: Mengapa kita mempelajari bahasa asing -- selain bahasa Inggris? Kenapa kita harus mempelajari bahasa lain, jika hampir semua orang di dunia akan bisa berkomunikasi dalam satu bahasa?
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.
Saya rasa ada banyak alasan, tapi pertama saya mau menyampaikan sesuatu yang mungkin sudah lazim, karena kemungkinan, itu lebih berbahaya dari perkiraan. Dan itu adalah ide, bahwa bahasa menyalurkan pikiranmu, bahwa kata dan tata bahasa masing-masing bahasa memberi pengalaman bahasa yang berbeda bagi setiap orang. Itu adalah penyampaian ide yang indah, tapi berlebihan.
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.
Bukan sepenuhnya salah. Sebagai contoh dalam bahasa Prancis dan Spanyol, kata meja, dianggap sebagai feminim. Jadi "la table", "la mesa", memang begitu. Itu menunjukkan, jika Anda berbicara dalam salah satu bahasa itu, dan Anda ditanyai, bagaimana mungkin membayangkan sebuah meja berbicara, maka biasanya, penutur Bahasa Prancis atau Spanyol mengatakan bahwa meja akan berbicara dengan suara tinggi dan feminim. Jika Anda orang Prancis atau Spanyol, sebuah meja adalah sebuah anak perempuan, yang berbeda dengan penutur Inggris.
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?
Data seperti itu sangat menarik, dan banyak orang akan mengatakan, bahwa jika berbicara dalam salah satu bahasa itu, gambaran dunia muncul. Tapi harus hati hati, karena bayangkan jika seseorang meletakkan kita di bawah mikroskop, mereka yang bahasa ibunya bahasa Inggris. Bagaimana gambaran dunia dari bahasa Inggris?
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.
Contohnya, penutur bahasa Inggris. Gambar di atas, dia adalah Bono. Dia berbicara bahasa Inggris. Saya anggap dia mempunyai gambaran dunia. Dia adalah Donald Trump. Dengan gayanya, dia berbicara bahasa Inggris juga.
(Laughter)
(Tertawa)
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.
Ini Nona Kardashian, dan dia juga berbicara Inggris. Sekarang ada tiga penutur bahasa Inggris. Apakah gambaran dunia mereka sama? Kesamaan gambaran apa yang dimiliki ketiganya? Ini adalah konsep yang merepotkan. Secara umum bahasa bisa membentuk pikiran, tapi ini cenderung faktor psikologi. Bukan faktor sudut pandang yang berbeda.
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.
Jika itu masalahnya, mengapa belajar bahasa? Jika tidak akan mengubah cara pikir, apa yang menjadi alasannya? Ada beberapa alasan. Salah satunya, jika belajar budaya, jika ingin mendalaminya, jika ingin menjadi bagiannya, apakah bahasa adalah bagian dari budaya -- itu tidak dapat dipungkiri -- jika ingin mempelajari budaya, Anda harus mengendalikan bahasa yang membentuk budaya. Tidak ada cara lain.
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.
Ada ilustrasi yang menarik. Agak tidak biasa, tapi Anda akan memahaminya. Ada sebuah film Canada, sutradaranya: Denys Arcand -- dalam bahasa Inggris, "Dennis Ar-cand", jika Anda ingin melihatnya. Dia membuat film "Jesus of Montreal". Dan banyak tokohnya bersemangat, lucu, ekspresif, campuran Kanada-Prancis yang menarik, wanita berbahasa Prancis. Di akhir film ada satu adegan, mereka membawa teman mereka ke rumah sakit Anglophone. Mereka harus bicara bahasa Inggris. Mereka bisa bahasa Inggris, tapi itu bukan bahasa ibunya, mereka enggan berbahasa Inggris. Perkataannya makin melambat, mereka punya aksen, ungkapannya tidak sama. Tiba tiba tokoh yang membuat orang jatuh cinta ini, menjadi lemah, mereka menjadi tak berdaya.
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.
Saat masuk dalam sebuah budaya, dan memproses orang melalui pertunjukan sederhana itu, maka pengalaman budaya tak akan optimal. Jika hanya akan tersisa ratusan bahasa, maka satu alasan mempelajari bahasa, karena bahasa adalah tiket untuk berpartisipasi dalam budaya orang yang diajak bicara, semata-mata karena itu adalah kode mereka. Jadi itu alasan pertama.
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.
Alasan kedua: riset menunjukkan, bahwa jika berbicara dua bahasa, kemungkinan penyakit demensia berkurang, dan cekatan melakukan beberapa aktivitas secara bersamaan. Inilah faktor yang sudah banyak diketahui, dan mungkin mudah diterima, jika belajar bahasa lain sejak kecil. Bilingual itu sehat.
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.
Dan yang ketiga -- Bahasa adalah sesuatu yang seru. Jauh lebih menyenangkan dari kata orang. Contohnya, dalam bahasa Arab "kataba" = dia menulis, "yaktubu" = dia menulis. "Uktub" = menulis, bentuk kata perintah. Apa kesamaan ketiga hal tersebut? Ketiganya mempunyai kesamaan. Konsonannya ada di tengah seperti pilar. Tidak berubah, dan huruf vokal ada di antara konsonan. Siapa yang tak ingin mengucapkannya? Hal itu ada dalam bahasa Ibrani, dalam bahasa utama Etopia, bahasa Amharic. Itu seru.
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.
Masing-masing bahasa memiliki susunan kata yang berbeda. Belajar mengucapkannya dengan susunan kata yang berbeda bagai menyetir di sisi jalan yang berbeda, saat mengunjungi negara lain, atau perasaan saat meletakkan daun Witch Hazel di mata, terasa adanya sensasi. Suatu bahasa juga bisa terasa seperti itu.
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.
Contohnya, "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back," sebuah buku yang pasti Anda tahu, seperti halnya "Moby Dick." Satu kalimat, "Di mana mencari dia? Di mana dia? Dia sedang makan kue di bak mandi. Ya, betul!" Jika dipelajari dalam bahasa Mandarin, maka Anda harus menguasai, "Kau bisa tahu, aku di mana mencarinya? Dia di bak mandi mengunyah kue. Tak salah, mengunyah-ngunyah!" Itu sudah bagus. Bayangkan jika bisa dilakukan bertahun tahun.
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.
Pernahkah belajar bahasa Kamboja? Saya juga belum, tapi jika sudah, saya akan memutar lidah, bukan dengan puluhan huruf vokal, seperti dalam bahasa Inggris, tapi ada 30 huruf vokal, yang berputar-putar dalam mulut orang Kamboja, bagai kumpulan lebah. Itulah manfaat bahasa bagi Anda.
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.
Hal lain lagi, kita tinggal di masa saat mempelajari bahasa lain lebih mudah. Dulu harus pergi ke sekolah untuk mempelajarinya, di sana ada guru yang rajin -- ada guru yang genius -- tapi cuma ada di sana pada jam tertentu, kemudian Anda harus pulang, kelas itu juga jarang. Anda harus hadir di kelas. Jika tidak, Anda bisa menggunakan rekaman, seperti saya. Ada banyak data dalam rekaman, atau sebuah kaset, atau barang antik bernama CD. Atau buku-buku yang tidak berguna, itulah cara masa lalu.
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.
Sekarang Anda bisa santai, rebahan di lantai ruang keluarga, minum coklat, dan belajar bahasa apa pun yang Anda mau dengan materi belajar bahasa dalam aplikasi Rosetta Stone. Saya juga merekomendasikan Glossika. Bisa dilakukan kapan saja, bisa sesering mungkin, sehingga cepat bisa. Setiap pagi, Anda bisa membiasakan diri dalam banyak bahasa. Saya membaca komik " Dilbert" dalam berbagai bahasa setiap pagi. Kemampuan kita bisa meningkat. Andai bisa dilakukan 20 tahun yang lalu, saat ide mempunyai banyak bahasa dari dalam saku Anda, dari telepon genggam Anda, pasti terdengar bagai fiksi sains bagi kaum jetset.
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.
Jadi, sangat saya sarankan untuk mempelajari bahasa selain bahasa Inggris. Tidak ada kata terlambat. Itu sangat seru. Itu tidak akan mengubah pikiran Anda, tapi pasti akan memperkaya pikiran Anda.
Thank you very much.
Terima kasih banyak.
(Applause)
(Tepuk tangan)