The terroir of language

Some 550 million speak French (mostly in Africa, with parts of Africa having a birth rate of over 5 births per woman) and some 340 million speak Spanish. What part of this math don't you understand?

Here's the part of the math that I don't understand: how many of these millions of alleged Francophones in Africa really speak French, and how many of them are simply counted as the population in countries that have French as the (an?) official language, and where the educated elites speak French, but large numbers of the population really speak little or no French? (I would say that the same situation is probably true of English in, say, Nigeria.)

In addition, many of these African French speakers speak French as a second language. I don't think there can be any question that Spanish has far more native speakers than French does.

Re: In addition, many of these African French speakers speak French as a second language.

There's also the issue of French (or English) creoles. These are really separate languages that developed out of the parent language. Haitian is an example, as is the spoken "English" of Jamaica or Barbados.

I'm coming to this relatively late, but c'est la vie.

I have reasonable fluency in Spanish, having studied it in high school and college, and had many Hispanic students. I've never lived in a Spanish-speaking country, so long or complex conversations are still difficult, but I can get by. One of these days I need to read some of the Spanish-language classics, but I never seem to have time. I do like the sound of Spanish, though I'm inclined to like those of French and Russian better.

My spoken French is appalling--I read better than speak. I could probably minimally function in a Francophone country on the way to building up my fluency. I had about a year and a half of Russian, mostly forgotten, alas, though I know enough of it to see how its syntax allows certain effects, especially in poetry. I took one semester of Chinese (also mostly forgotten, though I remember enough of the stroke patterns to do calligraphy with Chinese characters) and have fiddled around with Biblical Hebrew and Arabic on my own, more to get a feel for structure in reading commentaries on the Old Testament and the Koran than to actually read them as such. You do get a feel for the comparative alienness when you study a non-Indo-European language. I would, however, argue that because of the shared cultural background and a (probable) nearer level of historical relatedness, the Semitic languages are not as different from Indo-European languages as, say, Sino-Tibetan, Austronesian, or Amerindian languages are. Check out Cherokee grammar or read the works of Benjamin Whorf to get an idea of how different languages can be!

I took two years of Latin in high school--something less possible now, alas--and it's my all-time favorite. I spent one summer teaching myself Koine Greek in order to read the New Testament, but never was able to complete it and follow up. Real-world considerations and all that nonsense--oh, well, someday.

Probably the best use of time is to improve my Spanish, but there is a large Hispanic community where I live, many of them in my parish, so that's not too hard. I'd like to revive my French and Russian, and work on the Latin and Greek. If I could make a wish to magically speak any language besides English perfectly, it would be French. It has, in my opinion, an odd affinity to English, probably because of the Normans. It seems more "like" English than the more-closely related German and Dutch, and it seems, to me at least, the most "natural" sounding living foreign language (I'd put Latin in a close second).

Finally, you really do get a certain ineffable feel in languages that can't totally be translated. My favorite example happens in Lent, when the singing of Stabat Mater always makes me wince. The traditional translation was deliberately made to fit the meter of the original song, but this exacerbates the insipidity and sentimentality of the translation.

What's usually sung is: "By the cross her station keeping/Stood the mournful mother weeping/Close to Jesus to the last."

The original is: Stabat mater dolorosa/Iuxta crucem lacrimosa/Dum pendebat filius.

This should be something like: "The sorrowful mother was standing beside the cross, full of tears, as her son was hanging."

You really need the mournful-sounding back vowels of the Latin and the overall feel of it, which I can't convey, but hopefully that illustrates some of what's lost. The standard version is as sweetly sentimental as a 50's holy card; the Latin is like a punch to the solar plexus which forces the starkness and sorrow of the Crucifixion into your face. That's really a lot of the problem with the Novus Ordo, in English, at least--really insipid translations that don't even try to preserve the feel of the Latin, while not even managing anything beyond pedestrian English. Understand, translation isn't the problem per se--you need to understand the liturgy--it just isn't often done very well.

Anyway, languages and their interesting uniquenesses are fascinating topics for me. Would this were so for more Americans!