Words are, first, sounds, and then they are written marks, a code we use to "telegraph" the sounds we want our readers to hear in their brains. The marks represent the word-sounds, while the word-sounds represent concepts.
Concepts aren't words. We use words to try and express them. But the concepts themselves aren't sounds, and they are certainly not marks on paper (or screens). They are impressions, images, feelings, associations, connections, instincts, learned patterns and assumptions.
Learning another language is like learning how to get to work in the morning, not in your accustomed Honda Civic but suddenly on a motorcycle instead--yes, one would say, "a whole different language!" The goal is precisely the same but the approach is radically different. Concepts are like the goal. Every infant in the world knows, sub-verbally, that it wants to be fed. That's the concept. The words it will learn for that will vary with the country and language-space it occupies. The words and their sounds will vary wildly, too. Moreover, those sounds will be of a sort, no matter the language, including English, that the amazingly plastic, adaptable mind of a baby adapts itself to, but they will seem downright humanly impossible to pronounce to an adult non-speaker of that language. Which creates the illusion that the speakers of another language, right down to the two-year-olds, are trafficking in exotic, esoteric concepts inaccessible to our own language and, indeed, our own minds.
Which is nonsense. It's just the sounds that are hard, not the concepts.
Do I mean one language cannot have a concept that another language doesn't? Well, no and yes. No earthly language contains an extraterrestrial concept inaccessible to all humanity apart from the speakers of that language. We all come from basically the same stuff and all our concepts are quite Earth-bound. None of us is starting from "out there somewhere." Milk is milk no matter what sound you convey the notion with. Whether you drive a Honda Civic or ride a motorcyle, you still have to punch the same time-clock at work.
So why do we so often hear things like "this is a Russian concept there's no English word for," or "this Hebrew word expresses a concept with no equivalent in English"?
Actually, this shouldn't be in the least mystifying.
Just think how often (sometimes as a kind of game) people mention something like, say, "that feeling you get when you told yourself to do something and then can't remember whether you actually did it or only told yourself to do it," and ask, "Is there a word for that?" (Answer: no.)
Or how about, "that cold, heartless enjoyment of someone else's misfortune"? What's a single word that captures just that and nothing more or less than that? We don't have a word for it. But guess what: German does. Schadenfreude.
Does that mean Germans are capable of conceiving concepts we're incapable of? Well, don't be silly. After all, I just expressed it in English didn't I? "That cold, heartless enjoyment of someone else's misfortune."
So it doesn't mean English-speakers can't comprehend the concept. All it means is, the German language invented a word to sum it up in one word, and English didn't. Happens all the time.
We have single words in English that sum up a sentence-long description of something where a language like Russian will simply have to say it in a sentence. Does that make English a uniquely exotic language possessed of concepts transcending the consciousness of all non-English-speakers? Again, don't be silly. It just means that, in a take-your-pick sort of way, you could do a survey (if you had the time and were interested) and produce a huge list of words from languages all over the world that uniquely summed up more or less complicated concepts that other languages had no single words for. And I doubt any one language would come out remarkably at the top for Champion One-Word Conceptual Summarizer. It's probably a fairly equal distribution.
Yes, some languages "cheat" in that their "single word for a concept" is really just a bunch of words smushed together. German especially loves doing that. English, not very much. I could make up a new single-word-concept in English like "coldbloodmisfortunejoy" but all that demonstrates is my talent for skipping the space button. It's not a new concept.
That, by the way, is the secret in learning "those really long, hard words" in other languages like German and Russian--you know, the words that look a mile long and you think, good grief, how could anybody think in words like that, in concepts like that?
Well, the dirty little secret behind which they snicker at the outsiders is, those mile-long words are just a bunch of words smushed together, and they are no more difficult to pronounce than "coldbloodmisfortunejoy." When you know the parts you can say the whole thing. It's no harder to say "coldbloodmisfortunejoy" than it is to say "cold blood misfortune joy." Not only is it no harder, it's no different. It's just that to non-speakers of the language such long words present as intimidating an exotic aspect as uiraoiuawiogjnawea or ppahiuaenegahxjsw. Or anti-dis-establish-ment-arian-ism.
Our mistake, and intimidation, upon seeing "long words" in other languages stems from the notion that those words are arbitrary compilations of letters expressing in exactly the same way something we express with a single syllable, like "love". If we see that another language says "love" like rujjidpowwengweolkzew, we recoil and shout, "Why do they make 'love' so complicated?! Why can't they just say 'love' like we do?" But the reality may very simply be that they express the concept with a smushed-sentence-word and rujji-dpo-wweng-we-olk-zew might mean "feeling-that-warmly-to-another-draws." It's the way they convey it and it works for them. Okay, so it's more like a sentence than our idea of a "word," but so what?
So the mental posture I learned early on for coping with these things was, "Look, I'm going to say a sentence anyway. The sounds aren't on paper, they're coming from my mind and my mouth. So what difference does it make whether on paper they look like this: 'Today I'm going to the shoes and socks store to hunt around diligently for the ideal pair of sneakers that will perfectly suit my jogging needs' or like this: 'Today I'mgoing tothe shoesandsocksstore tohuntarounddiligently forthe idealpair ofsneakers that willperfectlysuit my joggingneeds'?" The second is still going to sound exactly like the first, at quite the same relaxed pace and with precisely the same intelligibility. And, yes, I smushed words together to show exactly how these concepts might be "smushed" in some languages.
What set me off on this train of thought was my encountering the Polish word for "age" which is "wiek" (vyek). It immediately caused a short-circuit among my language neurons, in a sort of matter-antimatter reaction with Russian. But to the rescue came none other than our old friend English.
Now forget the word "age" for a moment and consider three concepts in English (which I cannot express with anything other than words, but what can you do...). Think of that era or period in which Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers tapped and whirled themselves about on the silver screen--what kind of time was that for Hollywood? Right: the Golden Age of Hollywood. Now think about a bunch of eight-year-olds in the school playground--what stage of life and status in society has their childhood reached? Right: School age. Now think about a time when, having passed through many life experiences, you begin to understand things more clearly, more wisely. What is it that has brought you to this plateau? Right: with age you have learned very much. Three concepts, one word: age. We'll leave aside for the moment what a cheese does in the cave. Three's enough for now.
Hollywood's Golden Age, a child's age, and the wisdom of age. Quite different notions. One word.
In Russian the word for your age, say 66 like me, is vózrast, from a prefix "voz--" somewhat similar to English "up," and the root "-rast/rost" meaning "grow." So the Russian concept of one's age is one's degree of grown-up-ness, whether a little bit like a three-year-old or a lot like American presidential candidates. Russian has another word "vyek" (look familiar?) which means "age" as in "from age to age amen" and it also means "century"! So we talk about the twentieth "vyek" in Russian. Now there is another, much more literal word for "century" in Russian, stoletiye, meaning "hundred-yearth," but in most conversations we use "vyek."
So imagine my sudden confusion when on a Polish document, where it asked for "age," I saw the word "wiek"! What?! Like, what, you're asking what century I was born in? Or if I'm going to live forever ("from age to age amen")? What are you talking about? I puzzled this over. "Wiek? What could they possibly mean? 'Vyek' in Russian is a century, or, like, an...er...waitaminnit...age." Duh. Only "age" in a completely different sense in Russian, not in the...er, English sense. Well, whaddya know.
So Polish decided to use one word for both a person's age and an era-age. I mean, what kind of crazy language would think of that! Except for Polish. And English. But not Russian, definitely.
Concepts and word-sounds. Different languages mix and match them in their own funny ways. Even close cousin languages choose to go in different directions with them. But whether we're driving Honda Civics or motorcycles, we're all trying to get to work on time.
