As a campus with native speakers of many different languages, BYU–Hawaii is a place with opportunities to study and practice language. Language is more than speech, said students and professors, as it influences the speaker’s way of thinking, actions and even personality.
“Your personality might actually change a little bit,” said James Tueller, professor of History. “My wife served in Spain on her mission. When she met me, we sometimes talked in Spanish and she said, ‘You are different in Spanish. You are happier. You are more Español.’”
Tanner Cheel, a sophomore from Taiwan majoring in business education, speaks four languages: English, Mandarin, French, and Tawianese. “I use my language skills mostly for social benefits,” he said. “I can talk to a lot of people, make lots of friends and of course you can always impress people. I love it when people ask me about myself and I love talking about myself.”
Cheel continued, “I spent half of my childhood in the States, so I think like an American. I consciously chose that kind of thinking because it’s easier. When I go back to Taiwan though, I switch my personality back.”
He said what is funny in one language is not funny in another. “Humor is like an equation. In English you have problem + punchline = laugh. In Chinese it’s different,” he continued. “I have to crack different jokes in order to make people click and be likeable. I feel like I switch to a different part of my brain, too, in every language. Learning is your personality too.”
Tueller also made a connection between language and culture. “It’s probably wrong, but people will say Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow. It expresses an idea. People who live in their environment have a more accurate way to describe it.”
Tueller said the environment of the Hawaiian Islands is expressed better in Hawaiian than in English. “Hawaiian has many, many words to describe rain. Rain that falls swiftly, rain that is mist, rain that fills up the puddles, rain that produces a rainbow.”
Eric-Jon Marlowe, assistant professor in the Religious Education Department, said a miracle he sees at BYUH is when two people can speak to each other in a language in which neither one of them is very skilled. “I had [such a couple] in my ward. And now they are married. The key to communication there is that they want to understand the other person. The gospel gives everybody a deep regard and respect and requires this degree of sensitivity.”
The gospel has been able to move forward despite differences in language, said Marlowe. He said his success as missionary in Honduras came not because of his skill with Spanish, but because of his sincerity, goodness and desire allowed God’s miracles to work despite his weaknesses.
“There is a respect that comes when you try to learn a language. It endears you to other people,” Marlowe said, “God, in his wisdom, can do a lot with our effort, even if it’s small. He can make up the difference. Looking at the last 200 years of the gospel and the church rolling forward, language doesn’t seem to have been the big obstacle.”
One piece of church history that supports this is the Japanese Book of Mormon. There have been three Japanese translations of Book of Mormon, according to Deseret News. Once in 1909, again in 1957, and the most contemporary one in 1995. These changes were necessary because of the evolving differences between written and spoken Japanese.
Marlowe said, “There is a lot of effort involved, but it seems that God can break down these barriers of language quite easily.”