Languages: all or nothing

"Do you or do you not speak Chinese?!" 

I consider trying to come up with a concise, punchy statement about how I know a good deal of Chinese, and that if I am paired with a good dictionary and given a bit of time to figure out what the person I will be talking to knows, I can figure out how to communicate whatever I may wish to say. While I won't be able to understand everything if you plop a random Chinaman in front of me, I'll be able to...

I bring my attention out of the philosophical clouds and back to the present. This is one of many reasons why engineers get hired more easily than humanities majors (Orz). It is not the time for giving a speech or having a conversation. 

I answer "yes". 

If I'm put to the test, I'll be able to manage. This isn't a life or death situation; I have room to navigate some mistakes and get on course.

'Knowing' a language

People who have extensively studied any language they did not grow up speaking understand the position I had an urge to try to explain in the scenario sketched above. You may be a French grammar expert who spent years studying the ins and outs of conjugations, article usage, and so forth. But, a spunky elementary school Parisian can easily throw a wrench into your mental representation of 'French'. Conversely, a person that grew up speaking some language (say, Spanish in the household until age 9 or so) can't be expected to talk about thermodynamics, or politics, or whatever complicated topics did not get discussed in their household while they acquired Spanish. 'A language' like French, or Spanish, or Hausa, or Javanese (not a programming language) is not necessarily a tightly defined thing with a fixed number of vocabulary items, grammatical patterns, and so forth. A person can know some areas of a language well, and others not at all.

This isn't how most people think about language knowledge where I'm from (West Coast, United States). You either know a language, or you don't. Some children are born special multi-lingual snowflakes. They inherit the spirit of their ancestors. They manifest diversity. On the other hand, impoverished children born into monolingualism receive no such blessing. They require cultural enrichment if they do not want to be close-minded bigots. After all, Donald Trump only speaks English.

As for language learners? Well, there's a stereotype that Americans are bad at learning languages. But a simple YouTube search will find you many Americans who are very good at learning languages. Therefore, you are either a "language person" (i.e. "have a gift for languages") or you don't. Most people give up learning languages, except for the language people. And those language people can be like adopted children into the League of Multilinguals; a kind of nouveau riche.

Trouble

There are some negative consequences to the view that one may either (0) not know a language, OR (1) fully grasp a language, which I'll explore below.

Estimation of ability 

The first problem that arises from either overestimating or underestimating people's language abilities in some tongue.

"Do you speak German?"
"Ja."
"Great, now can you help me [insert complicated stuff here]".

 A great conversationalist in German may not be able to help you draft a letter in German, order good beer, or navigate you safely home at night in the dark alleyways of a German city. A Portuguese speaking child may not be able to explain family disfunction to family court. "Knowing a language" does not entail knowing everything else other speakers of that language know. Learning Korean does not make you a k-pop star. Learning German does not make you a crazy philosopher.

This does not mean, however, that a non-expert speaker of some language is useless. Many enthusiastic learners are very good at using their languages for some specific domain: talking about their favorite subjects, interacting with customers, interpreting 2D cartoons (you know who you are, weebs). An anime fan that knows a bunch of Japanese may be very helpful in explaining some esoteric plot detail that relies on knowledge of ancient Buddhist texts of a series you are watching. That same friend may be not-so-helpful at showing you how laundry is done in Japan. In any case, "knowing a language" is understood to be more complex than simply being able to do anything and everything in a language or being a total beginner.

Gatekeepers

The second and final problem I'll bring up here is how "knowing a language" can be used as a kind of gatekeeper for discussing differences between languages and cultures. I believe that an intelligent person who has not studied Chinese for many, many years can sensibly grasp the basics of how the Chinese writing system works in less than an hour. They can likewise understand how a language can express the same sophisticated ideas in many small words that another language might express in longer, more complex words. That person might begin asking how Chinese culture might have shaped Chinese speech and writing, which in turn influences how people put things into categories and think about the world.

Seems unoffensive enough? In the world of the humanities and social sciences, such issues continue to be touchy subjects for many. If a linguist brings in some hard-to-obtain data (e.g. info on the Pirahã language of the Amazon) and suggests some interesting implications of those findings, what happens? Well, you don't know Pirahã so shut up. 

If you've every looked at anything Arabic-related on the Internet you might have found similar posturing with regard to certain texts.

"Do you know Arabic?"
"Well then, don't criticize what you don't understand".

By acknowledging that "knowing a language" isn't an all-or-nothing affair, I think can both (1) decrease barriers of entry for people learning languages, and (2) re-adjust expectations of people who are supposed to know some languages. 

A little bit of language can go a long way

I have met friends who don't want to start learning languages because they see fluency as a far away unattainable goal. They give understandable reasons for that view; those friends won't be willing to pay the cost to learn another language at an expert level: they are busy advancing their careers, exercising, raising families, etc. Understanding that a little bit of language is a perfectly fine place to settle (as is learning a little piano, a little bit of JavaScript, etc.) is preferable than setting the goal of fluency in front of everyone for every language, which it seems to me many educators do.

Similarly, understanding that even native speakers often aren't "fluent" in the sense of being able to talk about anything and everything, we can recognize the specific challenges that face those academics have named "heritage speakers" and adjust expectations appropriately. From my own experience, I remember being shocked at how bad at Chinese I found some of my classmates who were "supposed to already speak Chinese". Now, in retrospect having discarded some misinformation I was given regarding the nature of language, I can sympathize more with the situation those students are in.

Knowing languages is not an all or nothing affair. Nobody knows all of English, or French, or any other language. What does it mean to "know a language"? Here's one suggestion: individuals continually build mental representations of how many things work, including languages. Languages aren't fixed in time and place, but are instead the meanings of words and patterns of words are negotiated like prices of goods. Certain things tend to be stable over time, especially as writing "Christens" certain ways of doing things. But even written words are subject to falling in and out of favor. The view of language sketched above, rather than considering languages as monolithic, complete systems regards languages as something more like more naturally emerging markets. Developing that view further will have to wait for a future post.