Is the British disdain for foreign languages partly responsible for the cliff-bound clown car that is Brexit? “Among the many asymmetries that worked to Britain’s disadvantage in its negotiations to leave the European Union,” this study suggests, “was the 27 other nations’ fluent grasp of the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, unmatched by any corresponding British familiarity with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung or Bild.”
This beautifully written book is, indeed, a defence of cosmopolitanism against Theresa May’s nasty jibe: “If you believe you are a citizen of the world, you are a citizen of nowhere.” The author, a native Polish speaker, makes a powerful case for knowing more than one language as a life-enriching skill that may enlarge our sympathies in a world that wants to build walls. Though, as Kohn unsentimentally points out, linguistic differences can sometimes be erected as walls themselves. In Papua New Guinea, home to 800 languages, one village decided to change its word for “No” so as to be different from its neighbours.
We learn much here about the politics of languages in Latvia, India and the US, as well as the science of language acquisition in infancy and adulthood, and the pros and cons of growing up perfectly bilingual. Surprisingly, it was the expert consensus only half a century ago that this was harmful to intellectual development, but current research suggests the opposite.
To know another language is also to know more about how others think, since some weakened version of the famous Sapir-Whorf hypothesis – that different languages, because they carve up the world in different ways, cause speakers to perceive and think differently – is almost certainly true. Hence the book’s title: in Russian, one is obliged to specify one of four levels of closeness when referring to a friend. Other examples abound of subtle differences that influence thought: Turkish has “evidential grammar”, according to which one must mark whether the information one is conveying is first-hand or not. This might be useful if forcibly adopted on social media.
• Four Words for Friend is published by Yale (£20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
