What does it mean to “know” a language?

I’d like to share with you an excerpt from the book Interpreting for International Conferences by Danica Seleskovitch. I recently reviewed this book for my medical-interpreting course and I bookmarked things on every single page. I think it should be -if it isn’t already- mandatory reading for all interpreters.
I found it to be not only full of useful information but also very inspirational. I have always admired interpreters and their ability to switch “from one mental universe to another”, and when some years ago I wanted to learn more about how they do it, how their mind performs such a complex task, I inquired in an online T&I forum about book recommendations on this subject. This book by Seleskovitch was the one that was most highly recommended to me by many colleagues. Among the numerous things that are worth quoting, I’m copying here a passage that discusses what it means to “know” a language. How many of us have been asked “How many languages do you speak?” when we told someone we are translators? Of course the number of languages is somewhat -though not entirely- irrelevant to how good a translator is, but I have long stopped trying to give long explanations about this, it’s just easier to answer with a number, or give a vague answer like “a few”. However, my answer always varies; first of all because I’m never happy with it, I find it inaccurate, so I keep changing it (inaccurate because… do I include the languages I’m currently learning and which I can speak moderately well? Is “moderately well” good enough?); and second, because my level of knowledge of each language has changed with time. French used to be my second language; now I think it is my fourth. I used to speak Dutch fairly well but now I can barely utter a grammatically correct sentence without first thinking about it for 30 seconds. Should I include Dutch in the languages I speak? Do I call it a “passive language”, forcing the other person to ask what that is (assuming he’s not a linguist) and to think “gee, who cares, all I wanted was a number”? So now I just say “I speak a few”. If the other person insists, I say “I work with four, but I speak a few more”. And then I usually change the subject. I think I’ll print out this excerpt by Seleskovitch and carry copies of it with me. Here is what she had to say:

Nothing is more difficult than defining linguistic knowledge. What does it mean to “know” a language? A language is not a finite or clearly defined mass, which you either possess in its entirety or not at all. You do not “know” a language in the same way you know a theorem or poem by heart. You can only know it more or less thoroughly. Some speak two languages with perfect ease, yet have a very limited vocabulary in both. Conversely, philologists or authorities on theoretical linguistics, for example, who do not study languages for the purpose of speaking them, may have a very thorough knowledge of the languages they study, but would be unable to use them to communicate. Their knowledge is thus also limited.

Anyone who has to deal with the realities of today’s world has some knowledge, however minimal, of a foreign language, either because his job requires it or because he comes from a country where the language is not widely spoken beyond that country’s borders (the Dutch, the Swedes, the Poles and, increasingly, the French are finding themselves forced to learn another language). But neither the scholar with his literary or theoretical knowledge nor the expert with his specialized knowledge, nor the polyglot can be considered to have an exhaustive knowledge of the language, but merely a working knowledge. Acquiring a foreign language is so difficult that few specialists in linguistics are at the same time practicing linguists.


Seleskovitch, Danica. Interpreting for International Conferences. Pen and Booth, Arlington, VA 1998. (Translation and adaptation of L’interprète dans les conférences internationales – problèmes de langage et de communication, published by Minard, Paris 1968).

8 thoughts on “What does it mean to “know” a language?”

  1. Hi Maria K!

    Very interesting posting! Thank you for sharing.

    I remember the first time I bought a computer. It was in 1998. I didn’t understand much about computers, so it was difficult to me to decide what computer I wanted, with what programs, applications, etc. Then one friend of mine told me a big truth: “there is no the best computer, there is the computer you need”. I always remember these wise words.

    I think these words apply to this issue. What does “to know” a language mean? What do we mean when we say “I know French”, “I know Italian”? My opinion is that to know a language is just to be able to do things with it, to develop skills in it. And we develop the skills we need, not all of them. If you’re going to work in a restaurant in Germany, e.g., you will need a fluently spoken German, but you won’t need the large vocabulary and knowledge of grammar structures that needs a person who is going to Germany to study philosophy. But both of you can say that “know” German; maybe you won’t be able to read Heidegger, but what is the problem? You don’t need to read Heidegger, that’s all, and I'm sure you can’t read his works even in your mother tongue. But you can live and work in Germany, you can interact with your colleagues, your boss, your clients. In a word, you know the German you need, as the student of philosophy does.

    I like to think that to learn a language is like to practice sport. We tend to compare the learning of languages with the learning of sciences, but in my opinion this “academicist” approach is wrong. Language is practice, not a corpus of theoretical knowledge to be swallowed. That’s why it is so easy to “forget” a language when we haven’t been in contact with it for a long time, and why there is no end to learning it when we are surrounded by it.

    Saludos,

    ALEJANDRO

  2. Another interesting post here! To know a foreign language is every interesting yet the problem is how to possibly know every words or vocabulary. I highly appreciate those linguists. They are all superb.

  3. Hi Cassy,
    Thanks for reading my blog! It's humanly impossible to know all the words of a language, and actually one of the reasons I wanted to read this book was to see what an interpreter does when he/she doesn't know a term used by the speaker. Does he skip it and hope that nobody notices? There are ways to overcome this problem. Seleskovitch says, for example, that if you're not able to infer the meaning of a term from the context, you can use it in the source language, exactly as you hear it. The reasoning behind this is that the audience -who most likely work in the same field as the speaker- are probably familiar with that term in the foreign language. Of course it depends on the language pair; this may work if you are interpreting a speech related to software or engineering from English into another language; the audience probably know the term in English. If you're interpreting from Japanese, Greek, Chinese, etc. it might not work. Or it might work if you're interpreting a speech in the medical field from Greek to English but not from Korean to Russian.

  4. Every language has its own importance. As Dutch language is one of the finest language. Its not much difficult to learn dutch language ,As there are many service providers who can teach dutch language .for more info click here.

  5. Hi ,
    i am lucky to read your writing, i was searching for something relates to second lang. acquisition, your writing inspired me, many new ideas are created, i hope you good luck and great success.
    p/s my research is about acquisition languages.(Arabic & English)

  6. Hi
    I am Hemn, from Kurdistan.
    Thank you so much for this sensitive topic, its really useful.
    I always ask my self , What does ''to Know language'' mean ?!!
    but fortunately I could get at least an idea about this.
    thanks again

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