Language is an extremely interesting topic that I never devoted much time to. I was born in Shanghai, China, and as a result, my first language was Mandarin Chinese. My parents brought me to Canada when I was 2 years old, and I would start learning English in kindergarten. With no formal education in Mandarin, I learned it organically from my parents who usually speak to me in that language. Today, I would consider myself a fluent speaker of Mandarin, but completely illiterate. I am able to entertain thoughts in Mandarin, but only if I make a conscious effort to do so. Even so, I feel like I can begin to understand the ways in which language affects the way you think.
For example, there are a ridiculous amount of homophones* in Chinese. Because of this, one must always pay close attention to context in order to infer the meaning that the speaker wishes to convey. I’ve noticed that I bring this attention to semantic detail with me in English conversations, much to the irritation of my friends. Additionally, verbs are never conjugated, thus blurring the distinction between the past, present, and future. In my personal life, I often find myself moping over the past or overthinking the future. Perhaps speaking Mandarin had something to do with it.
In Babel, R. F. Kuang takes us to an alternate history of the Victorian Era, where differences in languages can be harnessed in silver bars and cast like magic spells (it sounds corny when I describe it, but it's a pretty neat concept). The protagonist, Robin, is taken from Hong Kong by a British professor to study translation at Oxford. Robin lives a very contradictory life at Oxford. On one hand, he is given access to resources and opportunities he would never otherwise have access to. On the other hand, the research and silverwork he does further exacerbates the inequality between the rich and the poor, and Britain and its foes, including his homeland.
It was nice that the story is set in a university. Kuang spends many pages simply describing the lives of Robin and his friends through the ups and downs of school without really advancing the plot. It served as a nice reminder of how lucky I am to be in university and have an amazing group of friends. All in all, a real page turner that I enjoyed every sentence of!
IRL Update (06/19/2023): Well I already wrote an update yesterday for Waking Up and unsurprisingly, not much has happened since then. I ordered 3 chicken tenders from Popeyes but I guess the cashier thought I said 4 and I didn’t notice until I got my food. That was literally the most interesting thing that happened today.
*To illustrate this fact, there is a poem called Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den, which uses only one phonetic sound: shi, but still makes grammatical sense.