First encounters- how did that work?

Discussion in 'Linguistics' started by Kernl Sandrs, Mar 5, 2011.

  1. Kernl Sandrs Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    645
    How did first encounters work with different cultures? Like when the first Westerner met the first Chinese or Japanese man. What the hell kind of day was that like? I can't imagine how difficult or frustrating it would have been translating texts, either.
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    In most cases, it wasn't really a "first encounter." Like all primates, humans are curious, but in our species it's a prominent, driving force. Since the dawn of civilization around 8500BCE (depending on your definition of "civilization"), explorers have been setting out for parts unknown just to find out who and what is out there. The result is trade, which in most cases benefits the economies of both clans/tribes/towns/cities/states/nations/empires/hegemonies. We've been refining the logistics of first encounters for an awfully long time.

    In the case of the four Old World civilizations (Mesopotamia, Egypt, India and China) they have known about each other, and have been sending traders, scholars, priests (and sometimes armies) back and forth, since before writing was invented to record the encounters for our edification. The Olmec civilization (which became the Maya and then the Aztec) and the Inca civilization weren't allowed to exist long enough to discover each other, but they had plenty of contact with the pre-civilized tribes on their borders.

    Marco Polo went to China and lived there in the 14th century. He learned the language the hard way and was welcomed as a diplomat and a scholar. He returned to the Republic of Venice (there was no such thing as "Italy") with reports of amazing technologies such as pasta (which we now regard as Italian) and printed money (which was scoffed at because unlike the ancient, venerable Chinese government, the European governments didn't have enough continuity to be trusted with honoring what are, when you get right down to it, plain old promissory notes).

    But the Silk Road had been in existence for many centuries before Polo. Traders from China, India, Persia, Asia Minor and Europe had been trekking through each other's countries for a long time. The Ancient Greeks knew about both India and China, and at one point even conquered Egypt.

    We highlight the "first contact" between the West and Japan because Japan had rolled up its drawbridges and receded into a dark period of xenophobic isolation for a long time. But it had not always been so. In the early centuries CE Japan was still in the Bronze Age, and Buddhist missionaries from China brought Iron Age technology and culture to the kingdom, including written language and the huge volume of Chinese literature and scholarship that made available.

    The "first contact" between Europeans and the people of the New World didn't go so well, but it was not because of awkwardness with first encounters. It was because A) the Europeans had an Iron Age culture with draft animals and superior weapons while the Aztecs and Incas were still in the Bronze Age, and B) the Europeans had this haughty attitude we call "Christianity" which inspired them to regard people of other religions as inferior and in need of being conquered. They did the same thing to the people of Australia, New Zealand, and sub-Saharan Africa, many of whom had not achieved the Bronze Age and were sitting ducks. The difference between the Buddhist attitude toward first encounters and the Christian attitude is remarkable and regrettable, and it's no wonder many of us do not regard the religions of Abraham with unqualified respect.

    But in all cases, even the hostile ones, people rather easily got past the details of the encounter, learning pidgin versions of each other's languages and figuring out who was in charge.
    In most cases the first people to discover a new culture are not scholars, so translation of written material is not their first priority. Besides, by the time the technology of writing was invented in various cultures, it was already the Bronze Age--this is when commerce becomes so complicated that transactions need to be recorded and the hash marks of the early Stone Age traders evolve into more a more comprehensive and elaborate set of symbols. Their precursor Stone Age civilizations had been interacting with each other for thousands of years, and had the protocol down.

    As far as we know, Chinese was indeed the most difficult language for foreign scholars, because instead of a phonetic alphabet, abjad, abugida or syllabary, it uses logograms--a distinct symbol for each morpheme. This was quite a system to crack, but foreigners used to easier phonetic systems rolled up their sleeves and did it, just as they still do. Buddhism was brought to China by Indian missionaries, who were used to the phonetic Sanskrit writing system, but they dutifully learned Chinese and translated all the venerable texts into it.

    What is perhaps more remarkable is that Chinese missionaries then took Buddhism, and all of China's Iron Age civilization, to Japan and Korea, whose Bronze Age cultures had not yet invented the technology of writing. They taught that bewildering system of logograms to the scholars and political leaders, who until very recently continued to use it for their own languages. Japanese still uses 2,000 of them, although South Korea is phasing them out and North Korea has outlawed them.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    33,264
    I'd think they would start by holding up an object and making a shrug and saying what its name is to one individual while the other nons "no" and says what it meant in their language. Or pointing toward a tree and saying what their word was for it and the other would say their name so they both could learn from one another.
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. Kernl Sandrs Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    645
    That's what I kinda thought, too. But I'm not sure how more complex words and phrases would be translated, like "I do not feel well" or "how are you today?" y'know.
     
  8. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    33,264
    I'm thinking of just trying to start learning anothers language, not complex sentences like that. It would eventually get there though.
     
  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    In practice, as far as I've seen, the adults mostly get along with a sort of standardized system of miming and vocalizations based on each other's languages - evolves quickly into stock phrases and pidgin.

    When the whites met the reds in NA, both sides (even the regular folks involved) had many centuries of cultural experience negotiating across language barriers (the reds with neighboring red peoples).

    Then the kids start playing together, and no problem.
     
  10. drumbeat Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    375
    Good post, Fraggle Rocker.
     
  11. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    Children learn language much faster than adults. When families emigrate, it's always the children who learn to communicate with the neighbors first. How many times have you seen a foreign family walking around your city, letting the children do the interpreting?

    This is why it's so important to make a foreign language (any one will do!) a core subject in elementary school, when it will be easy. By high school it's harder, by college it's laborious, an in adulthood it's torture.

    Then you can put off the next one until later. Once you've learned a second language, the synapses seem to have been developed that will make the third and fourth much easier. I didn't study Chinese until my late twenties, but because I had started on Spanish when I was 13 it wasn't very difficult.
     

Share This Page