Thinking in Words

I just finished listening to Radiolab's excellent podcast on Words. I would highly recommend it. They spend a lot of time talking about the degree to which the ability to use words impacts one's thought processes and social interactions. It got me thinking about when we first arrived in Azerbaijan and suddenly to a small degree I had no language anymore. Actually, it would be more accurate to say when we arrived in Shamaxi. This is because throughout training we are surrounded by English speakers and Azerbaijani language teachers-there is never a loss for words. I did well enough during training-I learned phrases, how to understand and answer basic questions, ask for things. But these linguistic interactions were always slow and one-on-one regarding predictable topics.

In Shamaxi, everything changed. In the teachers room it is loud and gossipy. There are always several conversations going on at once. When I was alone in the corner my brain would get overwhelmed just trying to pick which conversation to focus on and try to decipher. I stop thinking even in English so much as in feelings: Angry, repetitive, agreement, frustrated, sympathetic. I find myself emotionally mirroring the people I'm watching (this is especially useful when people are telling jokes) Oftentimes several people would begin speaking to me all at once. I was hit with a tangle of questions and while I sorted through them and crafted answers for them painstakingly the group would give up. Everyone drops back, silent, with a disappointed look on their faces. And then one person says something slow and predictable: She doesn't understand. Which of course, I completely understand. I have gained an immense amount of empathy for any immigrant to the U.S. who is trying to find their way in a new language.

When describing what it is like to arrive not knowing the language I often say that at that time I was like a baby; always watching, absorbing and not understanding. And like a baby all this processing made me exhausted and forced me to re-institute the four hour afternoon nap.
Eventually things began to click together. Now I can speak. But my vocabulary is still frustratingly limited compared to my English. It makes me think of the assertion in the podcast that we are limited in our thoughts by the breadth of our language. I am interested in this because there are holes in the Azerbaijani language that don't exist in English. For example He, She and It are all represented by one word, O. O went and said to O did you get O? Also there are no articles. For me this takes away a specificity of meaning. When I'm translating what I want to say from English to Azerbaijani in my head it comes out the other end not quite as satisfactorily. But the real question is that at the same time that these words or lack of words are changing the way I communicate, do they intrinsically change the way that native Azerbaijani's think comparatively to how I think in English?
For instance To Wait and To Miss. In English you say "I will wait FOR you" and "I miss you." In Azerbaijani it is the opposite-"I wait (or await) you" and "I miss FOR you." I spend a lot of time wondering why? Why do we just miss and they miss for? Why do we wait for and they just wait? Does it partially change the meaning? Or the feeling?

I think the key is in the feeling. Often people use words to me that I don't know the literal translation for but I can still feel what they are trying to say. Just like Shakespeare. It's what I absolutely love about Shakespeare. You don't have to know exactly what that strange word means because likely at the time he made it up and his audience didn't know it either-you just have to go with the gut reaction you get from hearing the word. And experiencing words on the gut level opens up such an immense and beautiful release to intuition.

But feelings are not enough. Ultimately we need that language key to simplify our interactions (and help us stop taking all those naps!!) Knowing the words can be like magic. Last week I was in Georgia (the Country, not the state). I not only didn't know the language all over again but I was illiterate as well. Georgian script looks like this:ქართული. Which means I can't even attempt to read the street signs. For some reason this is even more disturbing to me than not being able to understand spoken word-maybe because I'm so visual. And so again it's watch, watch, watch, feel, guess. I can't wait to be speaking Azerbaijani again-how easy! How clear! Nothing shows me how far I've come until I cross the border into Azerbaijan, heave a great sigh of relief and say Salam.