Symlinks in the Brain

This post is for my unilingual anglophone readers... which is nearly all of you. I thought I might describe what it's like to learn a language, since it's something I'm actively observing about myself these days.

But first I'll start with a nerdy analogy because this is how I've been thinking about it. First I have to explain symlinks.

In a Unix file system, a symlink is a sort of shortcut to a file. Say you have a file called "résumé.odt" and it lives under "/documents/work stuff/résumé.odt". Now let's assume that you need to access that file a lot. Navigating to that folder is a pain in the ass if you're doing it all the time, so instead you create a symlink from your desktop to that file. From now on, click the new "résumé-link.odt" on your desktop, and the computer treats that file just like it would the original.

Now here's how this applies to language. Think of the original file as a concept, like "coffee". This concept in your brain carries all kinds of data with it, such as the smell, or a craving, or taste, but it's just a concept, not a word.

When we learn our first language, we tie words to these concepts in the form of symlinks in the brain. The word "coffee" points to the idea of coffee, and so we can talk about it with a shared understanding.

When you learn a new language, the temptation is to tie these new words to the old words, essentially linking to a link that points to a concept. This obviously leads to slow lookup times, as you first have to know that "klanten" means "customer" before you can understand the meaning of "klanten service". As the complexity of a statement grows, this double-linking becomes overwhelming.

The usual response to this, is that you have to learn to think in the language you intend to use. I'm not sure that's correct. Rather I think it's important to think about what you want to say in terms of the concepts and ideas without language and then frame it in the language requested. At least, that's what I've been trying to do with my own brain. I'll let you know how that works out.