Language Problems

The fact that language problems can cause wars, is very hard to explain to people who speak only one language. So for another public service announcement, in the interest of world peace, I am going to give it my best shot.

When I was younger, growing up in Quebec, there was an almost constant state of negotiation going on between the province of Quebec and the federal government in Ottawa. Quebec had seemingly endless "demands", and English Canadians were always wondering "What does Quebec want?". A little known fact is that in French, the word "ask" translates to the French word "demand". Which unfortunately also happens to be an English word but with a slightly different meaning.

Ask (English word) means: To request; to seek to obtain by words; to petition; to solicit. Also may mean to ask more forcefully, depending on context.

Ask (French word): does not exist

Demand (English word) means: request urgently and forcefully; "The victim's family is demanding compensation"; "The boss demanded that he be fired immediately"; "She demanded to see the manager"

Demand (French word) means in English: To request; to seek to obtain by words; to petition; to solicit. Also may mean to ask more forcefully, depending on context.

The history of "ask" and "demand" go back to England in the time after the Battle of Hastings, when the French were the nobility in England, and the Anglo-Saxons were serfs and vassals. The French word was "demand", the Anglo-Saxon word was "ask", and since the French were the upper class, the word "demand" naturally assumed a more forceful tone meaning when it was absorbed into the combined language that English is today. And even today "demand" has a tone of upper class abruptness, rudeness, insistence to it, while "Ask" has a tone of subservience and meekness suitable to a serf.

You may wonder why that subtle difference didn't get translated correctly. In other words if the French say they "demand something" it should be translated as "ask something". Yes, it should, but even in English to English conversations, words get somehow changed, altered taken out of context and otherwise massacred. A different language adds layers of go-betweens to that plus the complication of same word but different meaning.

The next examples are more up to date, but they are from Persian, a language I do not understand, so bear with me.

The famous phrases "death to America" and "wipe Israel off the map" are often repeated in the American media. I would assume the odds are quite good that there is something lost in translation. For example, if you were a driver in rush hour in Tehran and a taxi cut you off, you would normally yell in Persian "Death to all taxi drivers!". You are not pleased, but you do not mean you will not rest until all taxi drivers are dead.

Next phrase that is possibly going to trigger a thermonuclear war is "Wipe Israel off the map." The literal meaning of the phrase in English: to use some means to get the Israel off a map, whether that be a dry eraser, some white-out, or a Mapquest delete function. For some inexplicable reason (to me anyway) the phrase "wipe x country off the map" has a figurative meaning in English, which is to kill everyone and reducing the entire country to rubble. I wonder if that doesn't tell you a lot more about the English speaking world than it does about the Iranians.

If you would like to look into this further go here.