Foreign languages – in a country whose language is foreign to us, we do not only lose our ability to communicate with other people but it is also difficult to orient ourselves. The hurdles become higher if the language uses a different alphabet or writing. Conversely, learning foreign languages opens up access to foreign cultures. Hearing other sounds, words and idioms teaches us about another world and other ways of speaking, thinking and feeling – and of remaining silent. What is talked about and not talked about can be very different, and reveals elements of traditions, social structures and taboos.
Translation – those who master foreign languages are not free of misunderstandings. Translators know a great deal about this. Some meaning and feeling gets lost in translation whilst new nuances and associations are added by translation. The more complex and multi-layered a text is, the greater the difference. A language is after all not a simple information and sign system. Languages have a history in which some of the contexts they are used in remains in the meanings of words, expressions and metaphors.
Memory – languages and writing are the memory of human history just as are individual cultures, which together with their analysis and comprehension are the basis of many human sciences. Archaeologists, historians, linguists, scholars of literature, art, the media and culture, among others - the knowledge in documents handed down by ancient and foreign cultures comprises of many discoveries which can be valuable for shaping the future.
Literature – reading and understanding means more than decoding. Texts, but also images and other forms of expression, one’s own as well as those of past cultures, can be comprehended in the broader sense as language, as a system of symbols with its own conventions. Grammar, rhetoric, poetry, iconography and so on - the humanities explore the historic changes and cultural differences of practices that form, portray, distribute and broadcast meaning and knowledge. Methods of reading texts make it necessary to understand other ‘languages’ too: architecture and dance, as well as fashion, cults and daily practices, gestures and behaviour. Contrary to naturalistic theses that gestures and expressions of feeling are universal, the humanities explore each culturally specific form of expression as a tremendously varied language.
Homo sapiens – language is a unique property of humans. Whilst animals can make themselves understood via noises and gestures, the human language has developed from a medium of communication into a complex system of messages, insight and self-reflection, rich in diversity and connections, full of nuance, imagery and ambiguity including the wealth of poetry, irony and humour. In this way, language offers an exclusive access to research into specific human abilities. Whilst the cognitive science hope for insights into the way the brain works from the research into language acquisition - children’s apparently playful way of acquiring an extensive vocabulary and grammar rules - language development represents a revelatory stage in evolutionary biology in the creation and differentiation of primates.
Metaphors of knowledge - if research into new, unknown areas makes progress, language is often the vanguard. Nanotechnology received many impulses, which began as ideas on the molecular-biological level of ‘ball bearings’. The ‘genetic code’ received its name in this way even before working methods were recognised where the familiar term was transferred to the molecular-biological function under research. Thus, metaphoric areas of the sciences give access to the ‘unknowns’ of knowledge.
Poetry – in 1950, when Erwin Chargaff discovered the rules for the combination of base pairs in the replication of DNA (A connects only with T, G only with C), he had the anagram of Goethe’s “Roman Elegies” in mind: “The prototype of difference would thus be ‘Roma-Amor’ and not ‘Roma-Rosa’.
Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Sigrid Weigel,
Director of the Centre for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin
