INTERFERENCE

INTERFERENCE

Interference refers to speakers of foreign languages using base structures from their mother tongue when learning the target language.

Interference has very wide dimensions, which vary markedly from language to language: for instance, a cognate language such as German presents speakers with a range of interference-type problems. These include changes in vocabulary such as false friends (words like bald, fast and lust in German with altered meanings for the first two and a slightly modulated alteration for the third term, ie the German lustgarten – pleasure garden – doesn’t have the same sexual connotation as in English, although it may sometimes do.), but may also include unique problems and vocabulary. However the main interference problem facing German speakers of English is English grammar, for there is already so much common vocabulary between the two languages.

Within the context of Western linguistic development the great watershed for languages is obviously the changeover from inflected to uninflected languages. Interestingly German is the only major European language that still hangs onto its inflections, seeming in many ways to resemble Greek and Latin more than modern English and Italian and also in cultural terms to constantly reflect on the Classical origins of Germanic civilisation. Inflected languages indicate meaning by little tags attached to nouns, adjectives and articles, which form declensions (rather as verbs conjugate) in relation to case; nominative, accusative, genitive, dative (in German although Latin, for instance, added two further cases, vocative and ablative.) English also has nascent or discrete inflections which we can notice, for instance, in the transition from subject to object, from I to me (The connections between English and German began to fade away rather markedly in the 17th century sometime between Shakespeare’s authoring of ‘Hamlet’ and the Mayflowers journey to America. At about this time thee and thou, formal and informal you, disappeared from English too, although it was retained in most European languages, for instance German du and sie.) English and German are like two complimentary yet contrasting pieces that together seem to form the solution to a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. Because of the structure of inflected languages a German sentence can be rearranged in any sequence but an English sentence in only one, for meaning in English is determined by word order. For instance, a Latin sentence Cave Canem (Beware of the dog) is literally also Beware of the dog even when it is Canem Cave, but dog beware of the is, as we know, meaningless in English. For this reason nouns predominate in importance in inflected languages and might be called noun-based languages. Verbs are of secondary importance, and invariably shoot to the end of the sentence, (Mark Twain once went to see the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck speak and kept asking his interpreter why he wouldn’t offer a translation. The interpreter replied that he was waiting for the verb. The American author Mark Twain made a tour of Germany towards the end of his life, writing an account of his trip, The Awful German Language:
Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when at last he thinks he has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amid the general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns over the page and reads, "Let the pupil make careful note of the following exceptions." He runs his eye down and finds that there are more exceptions to the rule than instances of it. So overboard he goes again, to hunt for another Ararat and find another quicksand. Such has been, and continues to be, my experience. Every time I think I have got one of these four confusing "cases" where I am master of it, a seemingly insignificant preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed with an awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground from under me. For instance, my book inquires after a certain bird -- (it is always inquiring after things which are of no sort of consequence to anybody): "Where is the bird?" Now the answer to this question -- according to the book -- is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith shop on account of the rain. Of course no bird would do that, but then you must stick to the book. Very well, I begin to cipher out the German for that answer. I begin at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is the German idea. I say to myself, "Regen (rain) is masculine -- or maybe it is feminine -- or possibly neuter -- it is too much trouble to look now. Therefore, it is either der (the) Regen, or die (the) Regen, or das (the) Regen, according to which gender it may turn out to be when I look. In the interest of science, I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it is masculine. Very well -- then the rain is der Regen, if it is simply in the quiescent state of being mentioned, without enlargement or discussion -- Nominative case; but if this rain is lying around, in a kind of a general way on the ground, it is then definitely located, it is doing something -- that is, resting (which is one of the German grammar's ideas of doing something), and this throws the rain into the Dative case, and makes it dem Regen. However, this rain is not resting, but is doing something actively, -- it is falling -- to interfere with the bird, likely -- and this indicates movement, which has the effect of sliding it into the Accusative case and changing dem Regen into den Regen." Having completed the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answer up confidently and state in German that the bird is staying in the blacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) den Regen." Then the teacher lets me softly down with the remark that whenever the word "wegen" drops into a sentence, it always throws that subject into the Genitive case, regardless of consequences -- and that therefore this bird stayed in the blacksmith shop "wegen des Regens."

N. B. -- I was informed, later, by a higher authority, that there was an "exception" which permits one to say "wegen den Regen" in certain peculiar and complex circumstances, but that this exception is not extended to anything but rain.

There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An average sentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity; it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts of speech -- not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compound words constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found in any dictionary -- six or seven words compacted into one, without joint or seam -- that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteen different subjects, each inclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with here and there extra parentheses which reinclose three or four of the minor parentheses, making pens within pens: finally, all the parentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a couple of king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of the majestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line of it -- after which comes the VERB, and you find out for the first time what the man has been talking about; and after the verb -- merely by way of ornament, as far as I can make out -- the writer shovels in "haben sind gewesen gehabt haben geworden sein," or words to that effect, and the monument is finished. I suppose that this closing hurrah is in the nature of the flourish to a man's signature -- not necessary, but pretty. German books are easy enough to read when you hold them before the looking-glass or stand on your head -- so as to reverse the construction -- but I think that to learn to read and understand a German newspaper is a thing which must always remain an impossibility to a foreigner.

By contrast Turkish obeys neither English nor German grammatical rules and is instead known as the typical example of an agglutinative language (from Latin, literally meaning ‘glue together’). In basic terms extra vowels are inserted instead of forming declensions. Turkish is part of a wider Turkic language group, which is spoken all the way to the border of China, and has great similarities with both Korean and Japanese. It is neither a Semitic nor an Indo-European language, yet it has traditionally borrowed widely from Arabic (a Semitic language) and Farsi (an Indo-European language). The Turkish alphabet, for instance, is apparently based on Arabic, yet broad similarities with the English alphabet and other Indo-European languages can be noted, along with some rather dissimilar features. So the actual status of Turkish may be at variance with accounts offered by books or treatises on the language. Typically Turkish speakers experience far more profound problems in learning English than Germans, because of the geographical proximity of Germany and the salient fact that English is also a Germanic language. Yet Turkish also contains similar grammatical features as English, such as verbs, nouns, modals, conditionals etc. Because of this English may present fewer difficulties for Turkish speakers than at first glance.

English is itself a Creole or mixture of languages and calques* and it could be the tendency to absorb or make interesting, creative syntheses that accounts for its success as the premiere international language of politics and business. Obviously when we listen to an English sentence we encounter a range of loan words and calques which can be as various as words like pyjamas (a word found in Hindustani, the progenitor language or modern day Urdu and Hindi, literally meaning ‘leg clothing’), khaki (meaning ‘dust’, incorporated from Persian into Hindustani and coming to mean dust-coloured. Of course British soldiers initially wore red when they first came to India, but adopted khaki-coloured clothing in the later 19th century in response to changes and developments in guns and explosives. Khaki therefore began to refer to the uniform, ie British soldiers wearing khaki or a conflation of colour and uniform.) and sauna (The Finnish language carries indications of an early sauna culture. Words referring to the sauna and to taking sauna, such as sauna and related terms - kyly, loyly, and vihta - come down to us from a time when there was a common language in this wide area. This language evolved some 3,000 years ago, when it began to break away from its predecessor, early Proto Finnic. Words which are significant in reference to saunas were thus known in the earlier Bronze Age (1500—900 B.C.) and so also, of course, was sauna itself. It may not have been an actual building — log building was not known at that time — but still as some kind of sweatbath. There are no archaeological sauna finds from the Bronze Age, but information can be gleaned through deduction. The kota with a pole structure was suitable for a nomadic life and was common form of habitation at that time. However, it did not lend itself well to use as a sauna because of its great height and arched form allowed the heat to escape upwards quickly through the opening at the top. Where portability of the home was not essential, a good shelter could be made in a dugout in a sand hill, the sides lined with thin saplings and covered with layers of bark and turf as was later the case with the log cabin. Significantly, this habitation could double as a place for sauna.) I’ve given further details about these words and terms since it’s often assumed that the word ‘khaki’ is of Indian origin. It’s not and the word only came into Hindustani as a result of further economic and military contacts between Indians and Persians, yet another example of the complexity of the etymological roots of words and the complexity of our language. So when we come to study our own language unique issues of interference are already present.

Understanding issues of interference may lead us to look in closer detail at our own teaching practises. It’s not important that we speak the mother tongue language of our students and it mightn’t necessarily help us to teach them the target language (in fact most reputable schools insist on teachers desisting from speaking the student’s mother tongue. Only weaker schools advertise for teachers who speak good German or good Turkish, for lessons must take place only in the target language and the student’s mother tongue may not be spoken.). But it’s important that we become concerned with our student’s difficulties in learning English and a little more knowledge of their language can lead us to obviate certain restrictions and palpable bad habits in our teaching practice.


A calque is a word for word or root for root translation. Here are some calques taken from Chinese:

From Chinese
· English brainwashing calques simplified Chinese: 洗脑; traditional Chinese: 洗腦; pinyin: xǐ nǎo[4] — usage via U.S. military during Korean War.
· English long time no see calques Chinese via Chinese Pidgin English[5][6]
· English look-see calques Chinese: 看見; pinyin: kànjiàn or Chinese: 睇見; pinyin: dìjiàn(?) (via pidgin English)[citation needed][dubious – discuss]
· English lose face calques simplified Chinese: 丢脸; traditional Chinese: 丟臉; pinyin: diū liǎn[7]
· English paper tiger calques simplified Chinese: 纸老虎; traditional Chinese: 紙老虎; pinyin: zhǐ lǎohǔ[8]