Hello, this is Michael Campbell with Glossika,
and I'm delighted to have here today in person
Sarah Maria Hasbun from Meridian Linguistics.
And she is the founder of this company that
provides linguistic solutions to companies that are entering in new markets.
She's been living in East Asia for many years,
speaks fluent Chinese. and she also provides- um
I had the opportunity to actually experience
and listen to her speech here at the Polyglot Conference
and as she was going over all of the different languages of Asia,
and her deep knowledge on Chinese characters,
it was really fascinating.
And I'm interested in your linguistic background,
and whatever you have to share with our audience today.
Sara: Well, thanks for having me on.
Um, yeah, so I studied linguistics in college or university,
as a lot of our viewers will probably say,
and that was kind of my springboard into a career in linguistic consulting.
So I now run this linguistic consulting company,
which provides solutions to companies that
have any kind of language problems.
So they want to enter a new market and they need to
know which languages to use,
or they need to be able to pronounce very difficult languages
in a speech or something like that any
any kind of linguistic solution essentially, we provide
although we do specialize in Asian languages,
since that's where I'm based.
Mike: So you might even have some solutions for us.
Sara: Yeah. Well, I hope so.
I hope so
I'm a huge fan of Glossika.
Mike: So you also have this amazing blog where you go into a lot of linguistic detail.
Can you share a little bit more about that?
Sara: Sure. Yeah.
So this blog, misslinguistic .com
is well my mission with this blog is to
try to make linguistics more accessible to people.
So language science, essentially.
I know a lot of people are scared of all the terminology,
they think it's a little bit too highbrow for them.
But they don't realize that a lot of what you learn in linguistics
can really directly help you target certain parts of the language that you're learning
so that you can learn much more quickly much more efficiently
and when I first started foreign languages, so I was monolingual until 18.
I only spoke English until I was 18.
and it wasn't until I studied linguistics that
I finally was able to first acquire my foreign language.
It really was the springboard,
it really helped me hone my strategies
and I want other people to know that
you know if they haven't been able to acquire foreign language yet
it's not because they're not talented. It's not because they don't have the ability.
They haven't just hit on that first, right strategy for them
and linguistics can really help you hone that.
Mike: But also, I mean, I truly believe that
your first foreign language is also the hardest one to learn so
I take it that you probably learned
some foreign language or languages
in high school before the age of 18. Is that correct?
Sara: Yes, attempted, struggled and failed, yeah.
Mike: So how do you think that linguistics actually helped you?
So you're able to understand a little bit more about the science
and then it gave you some sort of a better understanding of how language works,
Sara: Exactly
Mike: At what point were you able to make a breakthrough
was that with the same language or with a different language?
Sara: Yeah, it was actually with the same language
um that was Spanish.
So I do have Spanish heritage.
So I was highly motivated to learn Spanish
because people always speak Spanish to me
and I could never respond to them.
Um
So I took Spanish in high school, you know, I did all
the conjugations, I could write the essays,
but it couldn't speak a word
and that was so frustrating
and it wasn't until I studied linguistics,
that I was really able to understand
the why of why we were studying all these conjugations and,
and the purpose of all these conjugations.
and once I was able to understand
you know, give it a top down kind of perspective of
"Oh, this is for this part of language, this is for this part of language"
and give names to all of these things,
that I was really able to organize it in my head and finally make sense of it.
And that's when it finally made my first breakthrough, became fluent in Spanish
and man, that feeling I'll never forget that feeling
and I think that my ego before then had been so bruised
by you know, being a native or being a heritage
being someone that should have been a heritage speaker of Spanish
and not being able to learn that language
that from there, I just kind of went a little crazy and
started learning a lot of other languages
and you know, I can't recommend it enough it's
it's so gratifying to become fluent in a language
and to be able to have a conversation with a speaker and
and to reach that level.
Mike: So what part of linguistics do you think is actually the most
beneficial for people to kind of take a look at?
Sara: Well, it's really hard to choose.
But I would definitely say that phonetics has been huge for me
understanding the difference between phonetics and phonology, which would be the
difference between just you know, sounds out there in the ether,
and sounds that are actually relevant to any given language.
So understanding that, in this language, there's this repertoire of sounds,
and these kind of sounds you can have, but they don't matter.
Or this language has a completely different repertoire of sounds and these ones really matter
and understanding how that works, has really helped me target my learning of new languages
and make sure that I can improve my pronunciation,
make sure that I can understand speakers much better,
yeah, that's been the most effective for me.
Mike: I've come across a lot of linguists in the last few years, and I frequently asked
them a question is, if you could choose between phonology, semantics and syntax,
what would be the one that you would like to spend the most time working on?
Sara: Would have to be phonology
I have to say syntax is probably my least favorite course in university. Not because-
Mike: So my talk kind of went over your head.
Sara: No I did love your talk I was going to say I saw
the absolute of egative as "Oh, God no, not that," I mean,
I have definitely rejected several foreign languages only because they're ergative languages.
Mike: So no ergativeity for you?
Sara: No ergativity, definitely
Mike: I can help you out with that.
Sara: Okay, maybe I need to face my fears
Mike: face your fears.
That's always a good thing.
I think I was uh
I was scared of ergativity up until about
two or three years ago, like I've been reading in linguistics and studying linguistics for
more than 20 years now, and ergativity was that one thing that was just always like,
Uh, I'm scared of it.
Okay I'm actually admitting my fears. Yeah.
Which is a healthy thing to do, but-
Sara: Well it's a really helpful thing, because if you got over it, then I feel like I could get over it too
Mike: No, I think. I think it's not just me, I think it's just everybody
when you say the word
and my speech was actually called Languages Without Subject and Object For Purpose,
I didn't want to ergativity because I didn't want to have just one guy in the audience, so
I tried to attract people with a different title.
so, um
and then I got through my speech halfway, and I said, you know,
"Welcome to ergativity."
and then everybody's like
Sara: "You tricked us!" MIke: "Yeah I tricked you"
Mike: Yeah, and then everybody says, Oh, my God.
Okay, so um
but I think it's a really, really cool concept
and I think that after really diving into ergativity
I realized how weird subject object languages kind of forced this paradigm onto real world events
and I think our ergativity more match-
matches with real world events.
So that's why I feel it's like so, so fascinating.
But yeah, I think if you look at the world as real world events and how they happen,
and then you say, this is how you describe it with ergativity,
and then you translate that back to your subject-object languages,
you'll realize, Wow, subject-object languages sometimes are kind of quirky.
Sara: Okay, you're selling me, you're selling me.
Okay. I'll give it a chance. I'll give it a chance
and that's, yeah,
that's exactly the sort of thing that I've been doing with my blog
is trying to convince people that
these language science terms and these language science concepts are not so scary
and you just can put a word on something and put a name on something,
it can really help you just understand the concept
and it can help you with your language learning.
Mike: You know why I think the word is so scary
to most linguists or anybody else is because
of the sounds of the word,
you have "erg"
"erg"
and erg sounds like U R G G like,
like scary
Sara: Something very negative...
Mike: you know, URGGativity,
and so everyone is like "I don't like that word."
They don't know why, you know, but it starts with that sound.
So that's kind of an interesting photo-semantic meta-analysis.
Sara: Yeah, yeah.
Mike: If we get really nerdy about this,
Sara: Oh we can get really nerdy about it and I'm going to try to keep it on the level.
But you know,
you could go down a rabbit hole, so
There is a really fascinating concept about Chinese that I found is that,
since you also know Chinese really well,
this is a fascinating phonosemantic mapping with the language.
Can you think of any word in Chinese that ends with an "an"? Whether that's "ban", "yuan", "wan"
that does not have a roundish semantic relation to it?
Or I should say, or I should make it the other way around?
How many words can you think of-
Sara: "nan"?
-Mike: How many words can you think of
that have a round relationship around semantic the end with that "an" sound
Sara: that do have a round semantic.
Mike: Yeah, I guess it's sometimes it's harder to think of the negative but if you can think
of how many words can you think of in Chinese that end in "an" that have this round semantic?
Sara: How far can we go from literally round like 滿足 (man zu) so like to satisfy
Mike: because satisfy is like fulfill yeah and if you fill something up
it's full and round right so I was thinking
about (fan) the food that you eat. It comes in around bowl
and what do you call a bowl?
Sara: "碗" (wan??
Mike: Cool and the bowl is shaped like a circle. What do you call a circle?
Sara: 團(Tuan)? Oh, wait, 圓(Yuan)?
Sara: Ohno no,
I'm on the spot. I'm forgetting the basic words.
Mike: How do you how do you make a spiral, in Chinese?
Sara: Oh, I don't know how to make this one -like curly hair.
Sara: 我不知道.
Mike: 卷，卷你的頭髮 right? and "鑽" -to twist something into like a drill?
鑽.
Isn't that cool?
Sara: Yeah. That's so cool.
So like there's a lot of these twisting and turning movements
轉彎, right? To go around the corner.
So I find Chinese really fascinating and I think
that a lot of languages have this this phono-semantic relationship.
Sara: Yeah. Oh, definitely. Yeah.
Mike: And you can find more of these in Chinese
like the words ending in "iang", usally have like two parallel opposite sides with each other.
There's a lot of these things, yeah
Sara: Yeah, wow, that's a Wikipedia rabbit hole I'm gonna go down
Mike: Like the word for River 江(jiang), and 巷子(xiang zi), like an alley.
So there's a lot of words that have this kind of like phono-semantic relationship
that I find that fascinating with languages.
What is some of the things that you found fascinating with phonology,
Sara: Oh,with phonology?
I guess just the- for me the part of phonology that just really still
blows my mind is that you can have two sounds that in one language are just you know, variations
on the same sound just a different way
you might say a sound if you had been suddenly hit in the back
or you know, if you were extra tired that day.
and for another language, those two sounds will be completely different sounds
and completely change the meaning of the word
that is just such a bizarre concept to me.
But, like it's crucial to understanding pronunciation.
Mike: Like you're talking about, like the allophones, right?
Some languages they're allophones but in another another language, they're separate sounds, yeah
Sara: Allophones versus phonemes,
and understanding that concept helps so much with understanding pronunciation
Mike: It's like in English, we can say um
'the tea' and 'computer'. You're right, exactly.
If we say compuTer, it sounds like it's forced.
But an Italian or French speaker or Spanish speaker,
would -they're not really familiar with "Te" sound because it doesn't really exist in the language.
They only have the "De" sound right, yeah.
Sara: And yeah, that comes up all the time in Korean,
making those distinctions, especially those kind-
Mike: You have a three way distinction.
Sara: Exactly, yeah.
Mike: Yeah. Well, thank you very much for joining me today for this talk
and hopefully we have a chance to talk again.
Sara: Yeah. Thanks for having me on.
Mike: Thank you.