Plug and play language
Why we each bring our native tongue as baggage to a new language.
The only true logically proper names in language are: this and that.
That's according to Bertrand Russell.
He considered them the only true references to a thing, say a book.
I was curious to know how a Spanish native would perceive a sentence in English like:
- The book I'm reading.
In addition how an incorrect literal translation in Spanish would make them feel:
- 🇪🇸 ES: El libro estoy leyendo.
The person I asked said that without 'que' she thought it was two constructions, like:
- 🇪🇸 ES: El libro. Estoy leyendo.
In her mind she would subconsciously add a placeholder to demonstrate what was being read.
- 🇪🇸 ES: El libro. (Lo) estoy leyendo.
- The book. I am reading (it).
She also imagined the 'que' was replaced by someone gesticulating at the book.
We then referenced the English sentence without 'that' to bridge the action to the thing.
She said it was difficult for her not to automatically add the role of 'that' because of its obligatory requirement in Spanish.
Without it, she felt the book and the reading were two constructs, until she became accustomed to the form.
In English, it is not necessary to write a sentence like this:
- The book I am reading me.
A stress on 'I' is enougn to signal that it is me who the book reading action is about.
Still, we understand that the 'me' is to emphasise the fact.
In English, we cannot write:
- The book me I am reading.
The 'me'throws off the function of 'book', but if we add 'that':
- The book that me I am reading.
Now it's more understandable, because 'that' has created a bridge that declares which side 'me' is on.
However, in English, we don't float 'me' in a sentence like this because word stress makes it unnecessary.
Unlike 'me', the 'equivalent 'yo' in Spanish can exist in different positions, and is necessary when stress is required for emphasis:
- 🇪🇸 ES: El libro que (yo) estoy leyendo.
- 🇪🇸 ES: El libro que estoy leyendo (yo).
If you remove 'que', it creates the ambiguity shown with 'me' in English.
It's because of this ability to float stress words that English doesn't have which makes 'que' necessary.
The essence of this post was to demonstrate that your mentalese matters when learning a language.
It's quite common for English speakers learning Spanish to omit the 'que' when connecting an action to a noun.
Ironically, they would understand a sentence like El libro estoy leyendo better than a native Spaniard because they would unwittingly process it as Spanglish, not grammatically correct Castilian!