The Detail Is in the Language
A Dutch caption that wouldn't survive translation, and what proverbs in Swahili, Dutch, English, and Spanish say about how a language shapes what we notice.
When I returned to Arnhem this October, I walked streets I had walked for three years.
People have walked them for more than a thousand years. Arnhem first appears in writing in 893. It became a city in 1233. In 1944, much of its center was destroyed in the Battle of Arnhem, then rebuilt after the war.
The streets are still the same.
I wrote the caption for that post in Dutch:
De straten zijn hetzelfde. Ik niet.
Then I tried it in English. The streets are the same. I'm not.
It was accurate. It wasn't right.
Two words
I looked at the Dutch again.
Hetzelfde. The same. But I hear the zelf inside it: self. The streets are their self, exactly what they are.
Then Ik niet. No verb. Just I, and not, standing on their own. In English, the I folds into a contraction and the line goes soft. In this context, Ik niet feels more alone, and more defiant, than I'm not.
The streets are their self. Ik niet.
None of that survives the trip into English. That's why my captions stay in the language of the place, as far as my knowledge goes, and why I don't translate them unless I have to.
Some readers may wonder why. Some may feel left out, or think I'm showing off. It isn't either. The detail is in the language.
An idea from a classroom
Years ago, in a linguistics class, I learned about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: the idea that the language you speak shapes how you see the world. I believed it then. Living between languages, I've believed it more.
The idea needs care, though. Its strongest form, that language decides what you're able to think, hasn't held up. Whorf claimed the Hopi language had no words for what we call time. A later scholar filled a book with them. Some newer findings haven't survived either. One famous experiment found that German speakers described bridges as elegant, because die Brücke is feminine, while Spanish speakers called them strong, because el puente is masculine. When others tried to repeat it, they couldn't reproduce the result.
What has held up is gentler. Language doesn't wall us in. It nudges what we notice. The effects are small, but they're there.
Small is where I live. The small details are how I come to know a place.
So I started listening for them.
Hurry
In Swahili: Haraka haraka haina baraka. Hurry, hurry has no blessing.
In English: Haste makes waste.
In Dutch: Haastige spoed is zelden goed. Hasty speed is seldom good.
In Spanish: Vísteme despacio, que tengo prisa. Dress me slowly, I'm in a hurry.
One piece of advice, four times over. But each language counts the cost in its own currency. In Swahili, you lose a blessing. In English, you lose material. The Dutch hedge their bet with seldom. The Spanish turn it into a paradox: slow down, because you're in a hurry.
Same advice. Four different worlds behind it.
Mtu
In East Africa, I hear mtu and watu every day. A person. People.
Listening longer, I notice the rest of the family. Utu, humanity. Kitu, a thing. The same root, -tu, with a different piece in front. Luganda does the same: omuntu, abantu, obuntu. Even the word Bantu, the name of the whole language family, simply means “people.”
There's a Swahili proverb built from those pieces: Mtu ni watu. A person is people.
English has its own version: No man is an island. It starts with one person, alone, and then argues that they aren't. The Swahili starts with the people.
I can't say whether that grammar shapes how people see themselves. Linguists still argue about it. But in a language where person, people, and humanity grow from the same root, those ideas are never far apart. Hearing it every day, I notice them more.
Normal
In the Netherlands, I heard it many times. People shared it with me as a piece of Dutch wisdom. Others shouted it at me, for reasons I didn't understand. Doe maar normaal.
I thought I was being normal.
The full saying is Doe maar normaal, dan doe je al gek genoeg. Just act normal, that's crazy enough already.
The Dutch usually mean it as a call to modesty: don't act as though you're above anyone else.
But normal depends on where you learned it. To a newcomer, the saying can sound like a warning against standing out. It can sound like a joke about how strange we all already are.
The words don't change. The listener does.
Translator, traitor
The Italians have a saying for all of this: Traduttore, traditore. Translator, traitor.
In Italian, the two words almost rhyme. In English, the meaning survives and the music doesn't. The proverb proves its own point.
So does Ik niet. A translation can't tell the story of a place on its own terms.
Someday I may put Swahili on a Dutch post, to point toward a different way of seeing. Either way, the language is part of the story.
Back in Arnhem, the streets are still their self.
Ik niet.
Keep up to date on RootedNomad Observations
New observations, delivered to your inbox. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.