What a marvelous thing is language! With the usual sneering arrogance of being the big dog species on the planet for millennia we tend to overplay our place here but if there is one distinct advantage we have over other animals, it is encodable language by the grace and favour of the FOXP2 gene woven into our DNA.
I think I’ve touched on this subject in an earlier blog, but I was reminded of the power of language just recently when a Finnish friend of mine who lives in Spain spent a couple of nights at our house with his new partner, a vibrant Spanish lady by the name of Yolanda.
Despite a lack of vocabulary and syntax on both sides of the fence, we had a fantastic two evening together speaking a mixture of my English (apologies for the primacy of the lingua franca), my (bad) Spanish, my better Finnish with my friend Jorma, and French with Yolanda to compensate for the lack of the Spanish. We ate, drank, smoked, laughed, shared jokes and funny stories and understood each other almost perfectly. Even my Spanish rescue dog, Pablo (di Malaga) was given a refresher course in the language of his native Spain (I noted the glimmer of recognition in his eyes mixed with a slight confusion).
My conclusion is that when there is a common will to understand one another, people find a way to get past language roadblocks and find the delights of conversation unimpeded by poor grammar, a lack of vocabulary or dubious pronunciation.
One thing I noticed was that the whole social exercise of that weekend truly invigorated my thinking on so many levels. It was as if (despite the various intoxicants that go with a fun weekend) my capacity to express ideas had been given a spring cleaning. Not only that but there was a joy that came with knowing that strangers divided by language across the world can do the self-same thing, which fills me with hope that one day, we actually might be all able to relate, albeit augmented by ubiquitous technology, once we get past the vile hangovers of imperialism and outdated racist tropes that anyone culture and language is better than any other.
This notion was already growing in my mind long before since I come from a multi-ethnic family. I can recall from my childhood visits from Hong Kong relatives speaking Cantonese with my father, my mother’s Irish mother speaking in a thick brogue and one cousin coming from Sweden with his mother on occasional visits. Growing up I was always aware of other languages and cultures, and it always piqued my curiosity. I later married a Finn and have three children with her, continuing the tradition of absorbing other languages and cultures into our family fold.
I was reminded of the importance of true multiculturalism when I went to see that wondrous cinematic experience last week, Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer we are reminded, was the son of German Jewish emigrants to the States who prospered and allowed their son to achieve a high level of education, as well as status in the comfortable American middle class of New York’s Manhattan.
His exposure to science was always tempered by a liberal education, an appreciation of art and literature and a gift for languages that allowed him access to some of the greatest scientific minds of his time in Quantum Physics — notably in Germany and Holland. He also seems to have taken an interest in Sanskrit giving him access to the long extinct thoughts of scholars and philosophers of the Indian Bhagavad Gita, part of the epic Mahabharata.
His by now famous quote after the successful detonation of the Trinity bomb aka ‘Gadget’ from that work was ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds’. As ever, the problem with language is its intrinsic bond with the culture that created it and many misinterpret the placement of this quote. As much as it is an admission that he has unleashed a new force for destruction, in its proper context, it is also a defence of a just war’ within the Bhagavad Gita, the definition of which in 1945 had already been tried by the indiscriminate use of all other weapons of mass destruction available before it.
While this reference to Oppenheimer seems to be a side thread to my blog, please allow me to explain it within the context of wars, which as we know are almost all propagandized to their people as ‘just wars’ but invariably more about power and resources. In that context, language itself becomes a weapon of war. To that end, we are fighting endless proxy wars in the internet and disinformation is every bit as destructive in its way as a bomb dropped on a city.
Language is the ultimate dual use technology; it creates powerful bonds between people and it can also cast us asunder, much in the way that the Tower of Babel, man’s pathetic attempt at unity through language was struck low by another destroyer of worlds: God in the book of Genesis.
And the LORD said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.”
Myths like Babel exist for a reason and their very nature is the sum of their transmission orally before they were ever encoded in words. If that myth was not lost in translation, one could assume that God performed a massive disservice to the people of this earth by denying them the one thing that could have allowed us common purpose and understanding, irrespective of geography or tribal allegiance. Imagine what humanity could have achieved with a universal language? This was clearly not the act of a loving God, but rather a creator frightened of the potential of his own creation.
In some respects, languages can enshrine a whole lot of other cultural baggage which should have been dropped a long time before. English as the lingua franca of the world is perhaps the worst grab bag for all other cultures and as the saying goes, it invites many a slip twixt cup and lip. The most spoken language in the world is apparently ‘bad English’.
It’s interesting when one assumes another language as the common communicator. I recently went for a haircut at a barbers, which regularly employs people from everywhere. I have had interesting conversations with barbers as far afield as Iraq, Greece, and China but the latest one to cut my hair was a young woman from Ukraine, with whom I spoke Finnish for the length of the cut. (English usually cuts it, but not in this case).
Naturally enough, the talk moved to the war, and she explained her sense of longing and both guilt that she should live freely in Finland while her parents resolutely stay in Ukraine to weather the assault on their country from the Russians. The most interesting thing I observed though during that conversation was how when speaking of the Russians, she lowered her voice distinctly despite the shop being otherwise empty. It was as if she had internalized the idea that they sought to silence her, even remotely.
It’s no secret that the Russian Czar has decreed that Ukraine, despite its close historical and familial ties to Russia is not, in his opinion a real country and that the Ukrainian language is little better than a regional Slavic dialect that can be erased alongside anyone bold enough to wish to continue speaking it. Not only this but there is an active campaign to kidnap Ukrainian children to Russia and reprogram them culturally as Russians.
Clearly enough, he made a grave error of judgement that I hope will cost him his crown. I don’t wish for Russia to be erased but it’s clear that their failed attempt to delete Ukraine will serve as a lasting reminder to all nations that language enshrines rights and ties people to the earth as surely as bonds of blood. People are sustained through their genes, while languages and cultures have their own inviolable memetic pathways.
I will leave this blog with the thoughts of another man of science, Carl Sagan, who like Oppenheimer has dropped over the event horizon but for whom, the cosmic view extended far beyond national and linguistic boundaries:
“Human history can viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group… Groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds, working in some sense together is surely a humanizing and character building experience. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth.”
It’s clear that if we are to survive the challenges of this century and the next, we must learn to celebrate our differences and the richness of the human experience. Technology may yet help us build the tower of Babel to overcome our worst misapprehensions, but more important than anything, we must learn and relearn the universal language of the heart. Then nothing we propose will now be impossible for us, the world may yet be healed, and God be damned.
