Intentions versus vibes
One for the language freaks
Hi,
Up-front warning: this one falls decidedly under ‘things no editor would pay me to write about’.
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I wound up speaking a strange amount of Italian in Dublin last week, and it got me pondering a fun little distinction.
Basically, all three Romance languages I speak (Italian, French and Spanish) can use the verb most commonly translated as ‘to think’ (pensare/penser/pensar) to express:
opinion
reflection
intention.
For example, in Italian penso a lavorare meglio means ‘I'm thinking of working better’ or ‘I’m thinking about working better’, while penso di lavorare meglio can mean either ‘I think I work better’ or ‘I plan to work better’. The nuances of how French and Spanish most commonly handle these distinctions are slightly different, e.g. for casually expressing opinions in spoken Spanish creer is more natural than pensar*. But the big difference between all three versus English is that there are possible formulations where pensare/pensar/penser means ‘to intend’. In other words, the English ‘to think’ is not always an accurate translation for these Romance verbs.
There are gradations of certainty within the English ‘to think of’. If I say I’m thinking of quitting my job, I mean I’m still mulling it over; if I say I’m thinking of quitting at [specific point in time], I sound a good bit surer. But no ‘I’m thinking of’ formulation is as certain as the Romance equivalent can be.
This distinction is one that Google Translate has yet to master. I tried plugging in various sentences in all three languages using ‘to think’ to express a decisive intention, and the English translation sometimes claimed I was still just chewing it over. Perhaps the perfidious Albion tongue still stereotypes Catholics as unlikely to follow through on all we profess.
Even within fellow Germanic languages, the German denken cannot always be accurately translated as ‘to think’: the nuance of the imperative Denk an X often isn’t ‘Think of X’ so much as ‘Don’t forget X’, while Das kann ich mir denken doesn’t mean ‘I can think of that’ but rather ‘I can imagine that’.
Irish has no verb that directly means ‘to intend’. (More slippery Catholics for you.) You can say go bhfuil rún agat, go bhfuil sé ar intinn agat, go bhfuil sé i gceist agat etc.: that you have the intention, as opposed to that you intend. These constructions reflect a more general difference between Irish (a Celtic language) versus Germanic and Romance languages: in Irish you more often say you have an abstract noun (go bhfuil X agat) rather than directly using a verb. Also, though, there’s no Irish verb that literally means ‘to have’, so tá X agam doesn’t literally mean ‘I have X’ but ‘X is at me’. Aaaand besides ‘intention’, the word rún can mean a million other things ranging from ‘darling’ to ‘secret’. We have many such maddeningly polysemic words. Welcome to Irish!
I sometimes wonder why I didn’t become a Celtic linguist, and then I remember that I grew up in a recession. (Before you ask: I did not intend to become a full-time writer either, or even think of becoming one, oh ho. I was well on my way to training as a lawyer before my first book deal unexpectedly let me quit.)
*Caveat re: Spanish: I studied Castilian Spanish and have only used it in Spain and Mexico. It is highly possible that not everything I say applies to all of the literally half a billion people who speak it.
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The Italian-speaking week was good on many other fronts. I went to an event of Ferdia Lennon’s and another with Carlo Gébler and Mark O’Connell, on both occasions by yoinking a spare ticket from friends at Literature Ireland. Before this year, I’d never really got to experience having a literary community in Dublin. I did know a handful of people who were writing at university. But I wasn’t taking it seriously myself at that point so I never got particularly immersed, and then I left Ireland and stayed gone.
The last time I lived here as a student, I didn’t even know how to find out about literary events; I’d have been horribly intimidated by the idea of attending one if I’d even known they’d let me in. So it’s nice to do these things now. (To anyone wondering ‘How do I find out about literary events?’: via the socials of authors you like, especially if they’ve a new book coming out; by following local bookshops and annual festivals; potentially through arts/culture newsletters if there’s one for your area that does roundups of these things. In Dublin — and in the rest of Ireland as far as I know — most bookshop events are free.)
This week I also got to interview Torrey Peters, easily one of the wittiest and most thought-provoking new US literary voices, about her new book. The piece will run when Stag Dance is published in March. Pre-order it now; it's mindblowingly good.
One of the things we talked about was transition as a universal human experience, and not necessarily a traumatic one. A maximally frivolous example: I was in the National Gallery this weekend and saw Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ for the first time since learning Italian. His is not a name I am frequently prompted to utter aloud, and so the last time I said it, I was probably rote-repeating the five-syllable butchering we were taught in school, Ca-ra-va-gi-o (‘g’ undoubled, of course). But I parse Italian quickly enough now that one look at the name on the plaque instantly overrode the old mispronunciation. My brain went instantly ‘Ca-ra-va-ggio’ with four syllables, and then a moment later I was like: ‘Wait, I have chaaanged’. Nothing about this was upsetting. It’s just a weird little example of how with any form of life change, there’s always more processing to do.
I’m planning to visit Berlin in a couple of weeks. Let us hope Bulette the street cat is there to greet me.
Till next time,
N