The Malagasy Language: Part II (Nerd warning)

I like studying languages. That’s pretty obvious for anyone who knows me. But my curiosity with languages extends much deeper than a surface level “I-just-want-to-experience-other-cultures” mentality. Indeed, if you’ve read my blog post on the idea of language and identity, you know that my view of language is such that it is so much more than just a means a communication. In truth, it is a way of understanding, processing, and expressing truth, beauty, and existence itself. In this way, when we learn a new language, we, hopefully, learn to adjust our brains and adapt to a new way of thinking. This is extremely difficult for many of us to do because we have to abandon our native way of processing and viewing the world and try to rewire our cognitive functions to view and express things in a strange and alien way. Today I want to provide you an example of what I mean.

Esteemed psycholinguist Steven Pinker argued in his book, The Language Instinct, that rather than language affecting the way we think, the relationship is actually reversed. What we mean by this is that every language reflects how the creators of the language viewed the world. Every language’s vocabulary is built on a foundational view of the world and how it functions. There is always an emphasis on some aspect of the universe. That is, an emphasis on time, space, or matter. And it is interesting because every language family includes a set of vocabulary that subtly directs our brains to viewing the world in a certain way.

Take our beloved to be in English. We don’t often think about how much we use this verb. Nonetheless, to be is one of the backbones of the English language as well as other Germanic and romantic languages. It is literally impossible to speak English without the verb to be. In fact, as an auxiliary verb, we use it all the time in all the continuous tenses (e.g. I am going, I was going, I will be going, etc.) and in a lot of other ways.

English also has an obsession with the verbs to do and to have. I didn’t understand. Do not forget. I haven’t gone to the store. She has finished her homework. These verbs guide almost all of our actions in the past tense whereas the verb to go often dictates our future actions. We could say, “I am going to go to the store because I have to go shopping to get my job done.” It’s an awkwardly worded sentence, I know. But in this sentence, I used to be, to have, to do, and to go, all in a correct context.

English isn’t the only language with this obsession. French and German, the illegitimate parents of our bastard language, also have an obsession with these words. In French avoir, être, aller, and faire, which correspond perfectly with their English counterparts. And in German, haben, sein, gehen, machen, and, as a bonus, werden, which means to become, which is a closely related verb to to be. All other romantic and Germanic languages follow similar patterns.

What we can gather from these patterns in the romantic and Germanic languages is that these language families, which both descend from the Indo-European linguistic family, view the world with a lens that focuses on what we could call a state of being or of action in a certain time context. That is, these languages take the state of existence (of being) and autonomy (freedom to act) very seriously. More importantly, with the number of tenses (12 in English), we are armed with a plethora of subtle time expressions about when states of being were, are, or will be and when actions happened, happen, or will happen. Or if these things could or would be or happen.

I confess these ideas are a little complex. But let me give you an example of what I mean.

“While I was walking, I ate the cake that you had baked that morning, but which you had been saving for the party where our guests would have eaten the cake, so you will have to bake a new one.”

In this strange sentence, I have used, in order, the past continuous tense, the past tense, the past perfect tense, the past perfect continuous tense, the past perfect conditional tense, and the future perfect tense. That’s 6 different tenses. I also used to be and to have, a lot. I didn’t use to go, but I could have replaced will have to bake with going to have to bake and the sentence would not have lost any meaning. The interesting point is that you probably have no idea what all those tenses mean, but you know instinctually that each of them denote particular actions or states of being at certain times, which your brain has ordered correctly because of the combination of tenses and contextual indicators. This is all to demonstrate the romantic and Germanic languages’ obsession with states of being, actions, and the time reference in which those states of being and actions take place. All of this is guided by a few little auxiliary verbs.

Most languages don’t have the verb to be, which makes us English speakers very frustrated when we want to say something like, “I am hungry,” but have to settle for, “noana aho,” which translates to, “hunger I.” Moreover, such a statement doesn’t hold up in related languages where one says “j’ai faim” or “ich habe Hunger,” which translate to “I have hunger” in both French in German. On the other hand, you say “j’ai 25 ans” and “ich bin 25 Jahre” in French in German which translate as “I have 25 years” and “I am 25 years.” This suggests that in French, age is something you possess (an action) whereas in German and English, age is something that is part of you (a state of being). Wild and subtle!

As you can guess by now, Malagasy is not obsessed with the same things as the romantic and Germanic languages. Rather, the Austronesian languages are more focused on spatial awareness. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it because the Polynesian cosmogony (creation story) places heavy emphasis on the concept of space, nearly completely ignoring the concept of time and taking the concept of matter as a given assumption. Likewise, this worldview poured into the Austronesian languages with a particular concern on what we call demonstrative pronouns (this, that, those) and locative prepositions (which is a little to difficult to explain in English). And since Malagasy is a member of this linguistic family, it follows in suit.

What this all means is that whenever there is a location or a description of an item in Malagasy, there must be some indication of the spatial relationship between the speaker and the object being spoken about. Let me give you some examples.

Ao amin’ny and ato amin’ny are the ways you can say in or inside in Malagasy. However, they have different connotations. When one says ao amin’ny, the speaker is NOT located where the speaker is talking about whereas when you say ato amin’ny the speaker IS located there.

Misotro kafe ao amin’ny ny tranon’ i Raymond – Raymond is drinking coffee in his house. (I the speaker am NOT in the house where the action is taking place.)

Misotro kafe ato amin’ny ny tranon’ i Raymond – Raymond is drinking coffee in his house. (I the speaker AM in the house where the action is taking place. I cannot say this sentence and make it have meaning unless I were physically located in Raymond’s house.)

It works for demonstrative pronouns (this, that, those) as well.

Te-hividy ity aho – I want to buy this. (This is referring to an object in the speaker’s hand.)

Te-hividy io aho – I want to buy this/that. (This/that referring to an object that both the speaker and interlocutor – one being spoken to – can see but it is NOT in the hand of the speaker.)

Nahita iny ve ianao? – Did you see that? (That referring to an object that is moving, either close by or far away, but is nonetheless visible to both speaker and interlocutor.)

Inona izany? – What is that? (That referring to an object that is unknown – in a spatial sense – to both the speaker and the interlocutor.)

Confused yet? Try making sure to use the right demonstrative pronoun or locative preposition on the spot.

The takeaway is that rather than an emphasis on states of being, action, and time, the Malagasy language, like many Austronesian languages, focuses on the spatial relationship between the speaker, the action, the object, and locations. It makes me stop to think about how I view the world and what’s important when I’m speaking. I have to stop focusing on states of being, actions, and time. Instead, I have to start thinking about the spatial relationship I have with my actions and locations. It forces me to think in a new way, which is one of the reasons I love learning and studying languages. There is always something new to learn, always room to improve, and always a new angle to view things. And just when you think you have it, you discover that there is an infinite number of mistakes you have been making all along. It’s a very humbling field of study.

Language is one of those things that one can never truly master in its entirety. Nonetheless, the more we are able to grasp what language fundamentally captures, the better we understand ourselves, each other, the universe, and God. It allows us to better express ourselves, comprehend reality, and control how we act, think, feel, and desire. As always, know that you are in my prayers each morning. All I ask is that you do the same for me.

May God be praised.