All or nothing thinking & language learning

 

They don’t go together.

Binaries in our minds

I have been thinking about all or nothing thinking, also called black and white thinking. This cognitive distortion seems to go hand in hand with anxiety, perfectionism, corporate culture, and a whole bunch of cultural spheres and overtones. I’ve seen people connect it to white supremacy.

Examples:

“I want a perfect home.”

“Healthy food” versus “junk food”

The idea of a “good mother”

“It’s not worth doing if you don’t do it well.”

“There are only two options: stay together or break up.”

Pushing kids into competitive sports.

“I quit.”

I notice it in myself a lot. It makes me happy when someone punctures the all or nothing bubbles in my mind.

For example, a friend told me she signed up for a dance class because it was in her neighbourhood. Instead of searching the internet and asking around to find the best dance studio, she chose a class at a community centre because it fit into her life. What a reasonable, sustainable act.

I think about that anecdote, and feel freer to choose something, rather than all/the best or nothing.

As KC Davis put it on Tik Tok, “motivation suffocates in all or nothing thinking.” We can make an action seem so big and looming that we forget more accessible, more delightful, options. KC invites people to care for their homes without self-criticism or shame.

I want to invite people into language learning in the same way.

All or nothing thinking in language learning

Unfortunately, totality is embedded in the way we talk about languages.

“Do you speak Spanish?” (binary, all or nothing)

“Do you know Spanish?” (binary, all or nothing)

We try to get around this:

“A little.”

“Some.”

“I’m learning.”

“I used to, but I haven’t practiced in a long time.”

Underlying the question is the idea that it is possible to totally speak or know a language. This is a fallacy! I have reflected on it before, when I noticed I was “learning English”, my native language, during my masters program. 

We are always somewhere in relation to a language.

Another binary: We must be actively learning/studying/improving or we are doing nothing, perhaps even backsliding.

As if that is even possible. The mind is always moving. The environment is always prompting. But when we buy into the all or nothing idea of language learning, motivation is suffocated.

Compare:

“I need to learn Spanish.” (all of it)

Versus:

“Ooh, what is the verb for ‘wonder’?”

Or:

“I want to browse the Wikipedia entry for Spanish, find some weird facts.”

Or:

“I wonder if there is a local Spanish class this fall, maybe in my neighbourhood?”

Let’s not suffocate ourselves. There are always an infinite number of ways and opportunities to learn language.

Noticing, in gardens and languages

Once you start to notice something, you notice it more and more, both in plant identification and in language learning.

Some say that this noticing is essential to language learning. It's the key. You can't really learn, or it's hard, if you aren't noticing – whether it's a new word, a recurrent phrase, a strange grammatical ending, or the way people greet each other.

There will be an organic, individual order in which you notice things. You'll focus on one thing now, another thing in a month. Different features of a language will stand out to you more than to another person. Teachers can draw attention to language or even try to elicit noticing. But, inevitably, they will try to teach you things you haven't even wondered about, haven't even encountered.

So, if noticing is essential to learn a language, how does one turn the noticing on? I propose it is natural, if you aren't under duress.

I actually consider attention a marker of well-being. Am I able to pay attention to things outside of myself? Be interested? Not in a vigilant way, of course, where all things are noticed as threats. Sometimes the honest answer is no. I'm too stressed, too anxious, too overwhelmed, too preoccupied with the latest worry. That said, I can often walk myself back into a state of "soft fascination", to use that term from psychology.

The rhythm of walking, the fresh air, the movement through time and space... I begin to see the floppy poppies, the dark-eyed pink rock roses, the blackberry blossoms to return to later. I notice the wind in the familiar, beloved eucalyptus. The season announces itself as chestnuts form from flowers. Walking helps restore my view of the world as a safe and interesting place (thank you, Artist's Way).

Those two poles – safe and interesting – do different things to and for my nervous system. The first offering, "What if there is nothing wrong?" Saying, "You can breathe, you can move, you can look around." The second saying, "Not only that, but there is stuff worth breathing for, walking for, looking around for. Behold the colours and textures."

I think the same world view is useful for learning a language. To be neither drowning nor bored. Try it out. Say: "Learning [French/Spanish/Etc.] is safe and interesting." From this position, you can stand comfortably, as if in front of an abundant garden, and begin to notice. What draws your eye first? What is familiar? What are you most interested in today? You don't need to learn and catalogue everything today, or ever. No one has.

Spring & monastery: a common word?

One of my favourite words in Turkish is bahar, the season of spring. It can also mean blossom. I know a few women lucky to have Bahar as their name. 

I was idly searching for more background about the word, when a sentence jumped out at me, claiming that bahar in Persian also means monastery. Apparently it came from Sanskrit vihar.

Spring and monastery. How delightful. Imagine a common word root growing out to a time of flowers, colour, and freshness, and to a place of balance, beauty, and spiritual refreshment.

Alas.

Turkish bahar is not related to Sanskrit vihar. At least not in any way I can find.

A Wikipedia article at this time of writing still maintains that there is a connection. I found no evidence to back it up. 

Archeology and transliteration

The confusion may originate here: an ancient Buddhist monastery complex in northern Afghanistan.

The monastery is known as Nava Vihāra, or New Monastery. Great. Here is where things get interesting for anyone who cares about transliteration, the art of translating alphabets.

In Sanskrit, this is written as नवविहार. 

With a basic Googled Sanskrit alphabet, you can transliterate this and sound out the word, going left to right. Something like "Na-va Va-ha-ra". I had never worked with Sanskrit, so this was a fun little exercise. I think the scythe shape in the middle divides the two words.

In Persian, it's written as نوبهار‎. 

The Arabic alphabet is close enough for me to be able to muddle my way, right to left: "Now Behar". Hmm. Here is where I think internet knowledge went astray. B and V often get mixed up. I have known many Spanish speakers who struggle with the distinction in English. 

In Persian, I read, you cannot start a new word with the و, which can be sounded as 'v' 'w' or 'oo'. So, instead of writing it as "Now Vehar", a Persian speaker heard the name and wrote it down as "Now Behar." And then people got poetic about vihar and bahar.

I understand the desire to connect. A woman once suggested that çok in Turkish (meaning 'a lot') related to the English expression 'chock-a-block.' I felt embarrassed for her ignorance. Then I was the one who went around telling people that computer in Turkish was 'information palace' (sayar vs. saray being my mistake).

Language facts are beautiful enough without us making them up, poetic as the possibilities may be.

Image source: Okar Research Blog

A Celtic language in Anatolia

 

Did you know that in Anatolia, in modern Turkey, people spoke a Celtic language called Galatian?

They did. See that green blob furthest on the right.

History was wasted on me in school. Truly, I didn't appreciate it. Now I listen to the Fall of Civilizations podcast, read biographies of Mohammed and Genghis Khan, and spend hours on Wikipedia trying to get the gist of things.

Thanks to scrolling Wikipedia, I found this tidbit about the Celtic language Galatian. Since Wikipedia has its limitations, I looked to a couple other sources, too.

My major takeaway is that three tribes from Western Europe traveled through the Balkans to Anatolia. The tribes have wonderful names: the Tectosages, Tolistobogii, and Trocmi. Together, members of the tribes ventured east as part of a great Celtic migration in 279 BCE and maintained their language for at least a few hundred years.

Why this little tidbit of history means something to me: I know my ancestry only as the British Isles. To connect those islands with Anatolia, a place I have traveled more extensively and been enlivened by, lights something in me.

I increasingly appreciate history as a study of change. The world changes, changes, changes. What is will not always be. What has been may be again.

In other words, this tidbit dissolves some idea I might have about stasis and isolation. Even thousands of years ago, people traveled, spoke to each other within and across languages, and traded known objects for novel ones. People saw new places and sometimes stayed.

The story of Galatian language also connects to this recurring question: Why do we speak the languages we do?

For example, why do I speak English? Why this English – my specific idiolect – with its current word bank, pronunciation, and ways of construction? Why not a Celtic language?

The answer I imagine as a long story, drawing on trade, politics, war, migration, imperialism, colonialism, economics, landscape, ecology, urbanism, education, philosophy, media, and many more fields.

I wonder if an inquiry approach would have changed my experience of history in school. I doubt I would have posed the questions above. I would have posed a question, though, had someone prompted. And I may have found this inner flame, which guides me to search, read, think, and reflect with so much pleasure.

Sadly researchers have not much found much preserved Galatian language. Mostly people's names. I did read through the names, looking for familiarity, but they seem truly foreign to me.

Additional sources: 2016 university thesis on "The Ethnic Identity and Redefinition of the Galatians in the Hellenistic World"; 2002 review of The Galatian language : a comprehensive survey of the language of the ancient Celts in Greco-Roman Asia Minor.

Image from Wikipedia: By QuartierLatin1968,The Ogre,Dbachmann; derivative work Rob984. - Derived from File:Celts in Europe.png, omission of the early modern stage. Sources for data: See File talk:Celts in Europe.png, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50243888

Wiki Friday: books, science, trends

Author of The Salt Path

I was trying to remember it, after enjoying the book so much. Raynor Winn – a memorable name. Her partner goes by Moth. Winn relays the story of walking the coast of England, after the couple have lost all their money and learned that Moth has a degenerative terminal disease. 

How happy I was that the book had been written. I don’t often see travel memoirs from people who are not just trying to save money, but who are truly poor. How is homelessness perceived when people are on a touristic trail, versus in a city? What role does age play?

I was curious if Winn had written another book. Indeed she has — The Wild Silence. From summaries I see it is about life after trauma and rewilding a property. 

More recently, and on that note, I read Wilding by Isabella Tree, which captures the challenges of attempting to return land to a previous state. It makes me think of neo-paganism and the challenges of reconstruction. Looking forward to reading this second book by Winn.

Why is the sky blue

Frequency
Vibration
Oscillation
Scattered light
Blue scatters the most
A reminder that rainbow colours together are white
Why clouds are white
Droplets
Sunsets 
Our chance to see the other colours coming from the sun

Earthworms

I have been walking around and amazing people with the factoid that earthworms were introduced to North America. 

Is this actually true? No. 

Apparently some earthworms are native here. Others have been introduced, and indeed some are considered invasive, especially in forests where they consume fallen leaves which would normally decompose. Species who live all over the world are called peregrine or cosmopolitan earthworms, which is a bit funny.

Honey bees

Honey bees defending their hive by swarming two hornets; the heat they generate can kill

Okay, this factoid really is accurate:

No honey bees lived in North America during human times until introduced by Europeans. 

I learned that of the 20,000 bee species alive today, only 8 are honey bees. 

Slow Food 

McDonalds resistance
Bra (the town)
Carlo Petrini, now 72, contributing culinary articles to communist newspapers
Turin/Torino
Terra Madre Salone del Gusto
Should I learn Italian?
Critiques of elitism
Alice Waters
Turkey