Koľko rečí vieš, toľko krát si človekom

In Slovak we have this saying "Koľko rečí vieš, toľko krát si človekom" which translates as something like "You are as many times human as is the number of languages that you can speak". I have to admit that until recently I didn't really understand the meaning of this saying. I simply thought that speaking other languages makes you more human, since you can understand more people.

yeah, I know many of my friends hate this pose :)

But as I came to Korea I realized that there is more to it. Or maybe that I completely misunderstood it. Did you ever realized that when the same person speaks different languages their personality changes. Or maybe it's not really their personality, but they come across differently. It's not that the person becomes someone completely else, more like some other part of themselves is allowed to come through different language, something that could not be expressed through another language.

Natalia and I trying out our 애교

For example (예를들으면) (it's always easier notice it on other people than yourself) I have this friend here in Korea from Central America, her mother language is Spanish, but she is really good in English since she studied at the international school while in her country. So from the beginning we would talk together in English. We have another students here whose mother language is Spanish as well, so I had a chance to observe her while speaking with those people, and I realized that while she speaks English, she is really calm and down to earth but as soon as she starts speaking Spanish, she gets really animated, uses her hands a lot either to gesture or to touch people while talking with them, a lot more emotions could be seen as compared to when she spoke in English. We were here together to study Korean so as her Korean skills were improving I could notice another change. When she would speak Korean she would speak in much quieter voice, and her gestures became little different. She would act in a more cute way than in her English or Spanish self.
So than I started wonder if I am the same way, and I have to admit that I realized it's exactly like that and the same goes for other people. 
Just try to watch yourself more carefully. The more fluent you get in a language, and the more natural it becomes for you, the better you are able to express some other parts of your personality, you become an "another human". Which I realize that a better English translation of the mentioned Slovak saying would be "You are as many times a person as is the number of languages that you can speak."

My Christmas card this year

I often wonder what would my friends from US and Slovakia say if they seen me speaking in Korean. Dad of one of my friends said once "키가 커도 귀여운 점이 있네" (Even though you're tall, you have a cute side to you). I never thought of myself as cute, but I guess the Korean 애교 (aegyo) is getting to me as well, so I'm sending you some of it.

Language and Culture

Here is one of the short assignments that I wrote for my Cultural Psychology class last semester. This one is on the topic "Language and Culture"

After reading the article Nouns Cut Slices by Graf at al. i thought about how strong impression the nouns can leave when speaking about a person. When I was studying an education we were taught to avoid so called labeling. Don’t label child (use noun) describe the action. This goes especially for negative behavior. Don’t say “You are a liar” but say “right now you said a lie.” We were taught that children can associate themselves with these labels and eventually start believing them as truth and act according to that. It is interesting to see how the nouns vs. adjective can influence the intergroup bias. We can see this on daily basis when people are trying to separate themselves from others even as racial labeling - a Black and a White or an Asian they all have a stronger feeling to it than just saying a black person, white person, asian person. In the USA it went as far as changing the connotation (contextual meaning) of the term Black from merely descriptive word to an insult. 

Another thing, that i found interesting in this research article, was mentioned in study 1. It doesn’t have to do much with the linguistics as it has with in or out-group preferences. Here the authors mention that three of the groups showed in-group bias in the noun condition except the Czech participants who on the other side showed an out-group bias in the adjective condition. In my opinion this might be caused by a preference for things that come from foreign countries. From the questions that researchers asked in here “… more meaningful, … more beautiful… better composition… would you like to hang in your living room…” the outer-group bias might be cause by the notion that if it’s from other country it is better, more exclusive, higher quality and also more representative that if it is from my home country. It is a little inferiority complex that is still more less prevalent in post-communist countries towards the things from “west”.

In the study of use of agents vs non-agentive language the most interesting thought is pointed out towards the end. It states that there might be some cultural differences in use of those when speaking about other people but research has shown that even English speakers then to use non-agentive language if the one involved in the accident is the speaker himself. Especially if the result is negative. People tend to say “he broke it” if it involves other person but “it broke” when it comes to themselves. In the positive situations it’s the reversed. They tend to use non-agnet for others and agent for themselves. “it started working again” if it’s done by someone else or “I made it work again” as done my speaker himself. 

If interested in reading the papers I read for this assignment:

• Graf, S., Bilewicz, M., Finell, E., & Geschke, D. (2013). Nouns Cut Slices: Effects of Linguistic Forms on Intergroup Bias. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 32(1), 62-83.
• Fausey, C. (2010). Constructing agency: The role of language. Frontiers in Psychology, 1.
• Kashima, Y., Kashima, E., Kim, U., & Gelfand, M. (2006). Describing the social world: How is a person, a group, and a relationship described in the East and the West? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 388-396.