Eight verbs

Since Saipan is a linguistic crossroads, it’s the perfect venue to air a rough idea I’ve got on the language front. It’s an old idea, one that got rolling when I worked for the merchant fleet. In those seafaring days, I worked with about a dozen languages and nationalities that emanated from Asia, Oceania, the Americas, and Europe. I wanted to craft a way to learn some basic survival-level skills in several languages. Being at sea, with limited resources, was a better way to outline the situation than to solve it, so it’s still more of a theory than a proven approach. Anyway, I settled on this idea for getting an entry point in a new language: Focus on eight basic verbs.

Hey, I’m a verb guy. Verbs are the engines of language. So, if we have to start somewhere, why not there? My eight-verb notion is just that, a starting point, something as minimalist and simple as possible.

Let me mention the verbs first, so we can get them out of the way: to be, to have, to go, to know, to speak, to like, to want, and to understand.

That’s not an arbitrary list. It comes from notes I took as I tried to get some ability with a variety of languages my shipmates spoke. Now, I don’t mean the ability to discuss Shakespeare or to contemplate the differences between classical physics and quantum theory. I mean the ability to have some rudimentary level of communications. And, in this context, these were the English verbs that were most essential, though they don’t always cross over neatly into foreign equivalents.

Of course, as great as verbs are, there are other types of words and elements that have to go along with them. I’m not ignoring that fact, but there’s no need to dwell on it, either.

As for verbs, they can be really tricky things. But at the level of field expedience, much of the complexity can be avoided by paring things down to the most useful elements.

For example, instead of getting a headache over things like every possible form of conjugation and tenses, I’ll note that being able to say “I don’t understand” is more useful than being able to say “They weren’t going to be able to understand us.”

Likewise, being able to reliably say an inelegant “I go to helicopter” is more important than trying, but failing, to memorize things like “I will be going to the helicopter,” “I went to the helicopter,” or “I’m going to the helicopter.”

In other words, getting the most useful juice out of a verb doesn’t mean that we have to get all the juice out of it. Textbooks take a comprehensive view of things, but in the field we can pick and choose the stuff that gives us the most bang for the buck. Sometimes, good enough is, well, good enough, especially if you’ve got other things to think about.

Even in my simple, Tarzan approach, I have to acknowledge that there can be distinctions between polite and familiar forms in verbs, and in salutations, and in how you address people.

In some languages I’ve nibbled at, the utter complexity of how you address someone can vary by, for example, if they are older than you, younger than you, the same age as you, and it can all vary by gender, social status, and so on. Egads, this can be complicated, and in more than one case, native speakers have given me different opinions on what’s right and not right for this stuff. But, for any given language, merely knowing that this situation exists is a step in the right direction, so notes can be compiled in advance, instead of in the field.

The field is the place to employ this stuff, but I don’t think it’s a good place to initially study it. For example, my colleagues at sea were always well-meaning, but many of the expressions I learned were a bit unpolished for shore-based use. It was sort of like learning English at a level where I’d call everyone “Dude.” Oh, wait, that is my level. Well, you get the point anyway.

My eight-verb idea certainly isn’t perfect, and it might not even be very good; I haven’t been able to test fly it in enough languages to draw any conclusions. But in a couple of cases it has been useful enough to keep refining.

Of course, in the final analysis, when it comes to communications, attitude is a lot more important than academic ability. Me, I don’t talk to textbooks. I talk to people.