Transcriber: Robert Tucker Reviewer: Ariana Bleau Lugo
Hi everyone.
I'm here to wake you up, because I'm speaking in English about Chinese.
So, could get a little complicated, but --
I want to take you with me on a search for traces of culture in language.
Because I feel that this can help us overcome
the outer limits of cultural difference.
I'm taking Chinese because I study Chinese,
and Chinese is often thought,
Chinese characters are often thought of,
as very simple pictures representing what they're supposed to refer to.
because Chinese doesn't have a phonetic alphabet.
So, if we look at this sign,
we can try to guess what it means,
and maybe you guessed right, it's actually just a painting of water.
So, the sign for water looks like water.
However, there are many characters in Chinese
which will have much more profound and poetic meaning,
because they actually refer back to their cultural and historic context.
So, I want to take an example, this is the word "xiang";
it means "to miss someone".
So, it's composed of 3 different characters.
On the bottom we have heart,
which is obvious when you are missing someone.
On the top we have, on the left, a tree, and on the right, an eye.
So, it's kind of weird. Why do we have tree and eye
or wood and sight together in the word, which means to miss someone?
So to find this out, we have to go back around 3,000 years in history,
and look at a Chinese divination book, the "I Jing",
which is also called the "Book of Changes",
I'm sure you've all heard of it, or some of you.
And in it there is one sentence, which is quite banal,
and it combines these two words.
So, the sentence goes something like this:
What we can see most of on Earth are trees.
So, it's a very banal sentence.
But ever since this sentence, these two characters have been combined
in different Chinese words to have the meaning "to see".
So, if you remember this,
we can look at this character and think of a story.
Basically, in my heart, I'm thinking of a person,
I've missed this person.
I get up, I go to the window, and look out,
hoping to see this person,
but all I see is trees.
Before I continue to the next character,
I wanted to talk about another thing: Memory.
Memory is very important in our connection to thought and language,
and what I notice when I was intensively studying Chinese,
is that my memory started to change.
I started to get a photographic memory.
That means that when I remembered words,
I started to remember how they looked on the page.
This is something I couldn't do before.
Another thing is, that when I started to dream in Chinese,
which happened around a year after I was studying the language and living in China,
I actually started to have a different dreamscape,
which felt and looked differently in my dreams.
So, these are all just different examples
of the neurological and psychological process
which goes on in our brain when we're learning a new language.
Scientists have done a lot of research on this,
and we found out that language is actually the fundament of our memory.
And so when you learn a new language,
actually, you're also learning a new way of remembering things,
and also you have a new perspective on what it is you remember.
So, the next character I want to talk about,
is one about individuality, because it means I or me.
And before I explain the character I want to ask --
just think about it -- why has China --
why have Chinese scientists and researchers and artists
won so few Nobel Prizes?
Because the truth is that China has won remarkably few Nobel Prizes
compared to the size of its population.
You can count them on your hands.
So why is this so?
Is it because China is not an innovative country?
I think far from it. There's actually a different reason.
Let's take an example, in the 60's,
a Chinese research team developed a new way of producing synthetic insulin,
and they were supposed to be nominated for the Nobel Prize.
Now, the Nobel Prize Committee asked the Chinese institute
to submit the exact names of the researchers
who had made this discovery.
And what the noble prize committee got, was a list of 230 names.
So, it was everyone in that Research Institute,
from the director down to the cleaning lady.
(Laughter)
So, basically they weren't nominated and didn't win.
But this this is a different perspective on individual achievement,
and the way individual achievement contributes to the group.
We can still find it today in, for example, the political context
when harmony is emphasized.
Or we find it in the scientific context
when we're talking about the difficulty of intellectual property rights
being put in place in China.
So, basically this sign reflects all of these thoughts.
Because it's composed of two characters:
On the left, we have a hand which is grasping;
on the right, I don't know if you can recognize it, an ax.
So, basically, an ax can be a weapon,
but it can also be an instrument, a tool.
I interpret this sign as meaning that an individual, I or me,
is someone who actually contributes to the group,
either by working for the group, or by protecting the group.
To explain this sense of community, I wanted to take another example,
which is eating.
Food is so important in Asian culture, we could talk about it until dinner time,
but I'm just going to take this simple example,
and say that you'll never see a person eating alone in China.
So, this is actually something, if you think about it,
we do quite often ourselves.
We grab a sandwich on the go, we have a snack, we eat alone.
But in China, there's a sentence, there's a phrase,
it's "吃獨食", [Pinyin: chī dú shí]
it means "to eat alone" word-for-word, "to eat alone".
But if you say it about another person,
if you say, "This person is eating alone,"
it actually means this person is very egotistical,
and only thinks of him or herself.
So, if you reflect on that,
you notice that eating together with other people
is a responsibility, a way of taking care of others,
but it's also the prerequisite to experiencing culinary pleasures.
So, to enjoy the food, you have to eat it with others.
That's why Chinese tables are mostly round.
And even the act of paying for a dinner --
When you're out in a group, you've eaten dinner,
they'll be one person, so: I will pay, I will pay because -- for everyone --
because I know that next time, someone else will pay for everyone.
Now, you may think this is of no interest and it's like banal,
but actually it inscribes the relationship between me and this group
into a continuity, into time,
and it produces a stability and a sustainability
to the relationship I have with this group.
Finally, I want to come to the third character I want to present
which is love, so representing all emotions today.
And love is often thought to be universal,
so we're supposed to recognize it everywhere,
and it has the power to overcome all limits.
But, actually, if we start thinking about the way love is lived and perceived
by individuals, and inside of different cultures,
there's actually a big difference the way we understand love to be.
For example, already in the West, 83% of Americans feel
that true love is possible without physical fulfillment.
However, only 34% of French people agree to this.
So, we see then in France, romantic words, language, literature,
is very important in relation to love.
Coming back to China, I would say that it's almost the opposite,
because in China many couples, and also many married couples,
actually, have never told each other the three magic words "I love you".
If we look at this sign --
oh, yeah, by the way, being too romantic in China, it seems insincere --
so guys remember this, could be useful.
(Laughter)
So, if we come back to the character --
you've already seen two different characters --
so this one has the hand on top,
it's held over a roof.
And under that roof we have one which we could recognize,
it's the heart -- again.
And under the heart, we have the sign for friendship,
which is actually two hands clasped into each other.
So, if we take this thing seriously,
we understand that the Chinese notion of love,
which is embedded in this word,
is a notion of a feeling, which is living together as a family,
and which becomes more valuable over time.
This is relevant, because our idea of romantic love is actually the opposite,
it's something which is special in the beginning.
That's why, for example, young couples in China,
they will try to marry very fast after they've met each other,
maybe even two or three months after they first met.
You will never see a Chinese couple splitting the bill,
each person paying for themselves.
Why? Because, already, they have associated the concept of love
with the concept of family being one.
Before I conclude, I wanted to talk about fighting
because fighting is important in emotion.
And there's actually a quite -- almost --
well, many Chinese couples fight in a special way,
which is called "几天不说话", [Pinyin: jǐ tiān bù shuō huà]
and it means not to speak for several days --
so it actually means not to speak to each other.
It's the silent treatment.
I've actually witnessed this with a middle-aged couple,
and they didn't speak to each other, after they got angry with each other,
for 7 days.
So, 7 days they were cooking, making meals for their kids,
doing everything as usual, except in silence.
And after 7 days, they suddenly started to talk again
as if everything was back to normal
and they didn't talk about what they were upset about or the past.
So, it's just from this type of phenomena,
we recognize that, actually, words and language
influence the way, we, as individuals, feel emotions.
And also that words are important, just as important as objects,
they have just as much meaning for others, and weight,
so we should be just as careful handling our words,
as we do when we're handing material objects.
So, to finish I took this image.
This is a pictogram from the Chinese sign for you,
it's only part of the sign,
and it actually represents, with some imagination maybe we --
it represents threads on a loom, métier à tisser,
a cross into a pattern.
So, I wanted to take this image as a symbol of our own personalities,
our own personalities made up of many different strands,
and they're woven into a certain pattern,
in the way we grew up in our family and our culture.
And, basically, learning a different language
gifts you the opportunity to untangle these strands,
and weave them again in your own new and authentic pattern.
So, what I want us to remember, is that learning a language
is not learning another professional skill,
it's actually giving yourself the opportunity to change.
For example, I'm actually a German-American,
and I live in France and in China,
and each time I switch languages or places,
I actually show a slightly new side of my own personality.
So, basically, learning a different culture or different language
is an opportunity for change,
and I want you to think that if you learn an exotic language,
it might just be your own gateway
to a different way of dreaming, eating and loving.
Thanks.
(Applause)