Jean Paul-Sartre once penned that “hell is other people.” According to Euclidian logic, it would follow that heaven is no people at all. In fact, Jean Paul’s heaven is quite like what most moderate-to-progressive (and all relevant) theologians call “hell.”1
But to hell with hell! This is about the way we live our lives here: from DAY 1 we beginning picking up on ways to communicate with other people. To the academic this is called the communication-instinct. For the rest of us, it’s finding heaven-in-communion. We are not alone and everything in life calls us to throw our mainsail toward the divinity in other people. Language is the way to sucker-punch loneliness and see it treated and transfigured.2
For some reason I keep trying to be widely–if not entirely–fluent in Brazilian Portuguese. There are people who learn a language to get in with the locals, impress their friends, and woo foreign lovers, but this cannot sustain a lifetime commitment to language: For me, the most conducive part is a faithful, unflinching peering into the way others create symbols and glyphs and words and phrases to understand the world.
Language-learning, for the rest of us, is a reconcilitory activity. We are estranged and if you’re like me, there is little you can buy that feels better than solo-time. But the great task of life–and that which makes it worth living–is participating in the de-alienation,–that is, tearing down the Babellian walls, that keep us in tidy distance from the Other.
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The Brazilian kids I know say “que massa!” all the time, and it literally means “what pasta!” But now I know, from the context, that it’s just an arbitrary cry of jubililation. And why do multicultural kids revert to their mother-tongue when emotionally charged (regardless of their multi-fluency), if not to speak from the deep places that coincide with their first attempts to lingually engage the world?
Sartre spilled a lot of words3, but what were they to a man who, at last, was not a fan of other men? His sometime pal, Albert Camus, often wrote that all attempts to speak order and meaning into the world were futile, and that we are left desolate. They had this great sense of our fraility even to describe our estrangement and smallness and isolation–life is absurd! And so they wrote plays and talked over appertifs and cigarettes and edited journals and dithered on either side of communism and anarchy–but for what? Absurd comes from the Latinate surdis, meaning deaf. The great irony of the 20th century French thinkers is that absurdity is likened to a major revolt against the chief purpose of communication, and the better half of lingual participation:–HEARING.
Most of the words for mother are simple iterations of the “M” and “ahhh” sounds. Mom. Oma. Maē. Mama. Maman. Manmika. The cooing, gurgling infantile lips press together and make the labial mmmm and then exhale an uhhhh, and then come back together. The great joy of MOM (and the still great but lesser joy of dad), is this sudden bridge and the baby feels the dissilusion of that traumatic alienating breach of the apocalypse of their first terrestrial day.
The dynamo at the center of language acquisition is the desire to dissolve the illusion of our separateness. There are some sponge-like android geniuses, and multilingual rhetorical jetsetting superstar–this is the charm of a bottle-rocket. The reason we keep digging into meaning and the world of the Other is to reconcile our own estrangement, and enter the life of the Other.
When I speak to the guy with the red bike that delivers water, I’m making a small transaction. I’m also getting a glimpse of a spacious and quiet and beautiful world that is alarmingly different than mine while maintaining some deeper kinship.
vandenboomen In 'What I Talk About When I Talk About Running,' H Murakami says that his limited English helps him to refine and distill what he wants to say. He is not intimidated when asked to give a reading or a lecture at Harvard, because (a), he's this international literary superstar, but also (b), he can "only" say the essential. You know I appreciate how you and mloigeret and others write in your second/third tongue--I can't imagine a better way to gain mastery of a language than to articulate yhour ideas about a subject (like travel) into distilled and solid prose.
Mark_Robertsonmloigeret Thank you Mark. I just read that Murakami book some months ago and indeed he has a very interesting view on language. Great to see that in his writing he always creates multiple layers (other dimensions, different worlds, etc), while in these lecture situations he can only say the essential! Now I can understand why he rather talks in English when giving a presentation: otherwise he would be talking too much!
Mark_Robertsonvandenboomenmloigeret Also Mark, there's a kind of freedom one experiences when one is not fluent. It's almost like an automatic, permissible and excusable passport to making mistakes. For example, when a non-native language speaker writes in the foreign language of choice, one inevitably makes 'mistakes', and those 'mistakes' can turn out to be gold in the way of self-expression.
tanjabulatovicvandenboomenmloigeret I love this, Tanja. Anxiety inhibits the joy of mistake-making: that shuck-and-jive attempt that kids make. They claim that adults don't pick up on language as fast bc their brains are fried: not so, right? We're just far more likely to blush.
Was 'Mae' from Thai? If not, you can add it to the list.
I just read a post by someone who is into meditation et al. He thinks language is the problem, as language implies dividing the world conceptually, and all division is bad (lack of unity).
I tend to think more like you. I crave solitude, but I will never stop coming out of myself, recklessly opening my heart.
oldmankit I I think humans are the a priori cause of conceptual division. Language becomes infected with our "clan-instinct." But the infection is from "without" language. Further, language has the power to reconcile, through acquisition: the more I become "textually involved with other" (and not only with letters and phrases and sentences), the more I feel like my "nation is the world," and strangers are only brothers and sisters wearing foreign threads. I do see the power of meditation--but this too is a text, for which most people don't have access. It is a language that also tends to estrange people who don't no, or cannot access meditative states. Interesting idea though--IU can understand
Mae (with the diacritical mark) is Portuguese; it's uncanny that it has the letter formation as Thai!
Mark_Robertson Yeah, I gues that's what he missed, the power of language to reconcile. There's power in the silence, and there's power in the talking.
Isn't it funny how words for Mom are so damn similar?!
oldmankit "There is a season." The preacher (Qoholeth) pretty much nailed the whole of life from his distant climb in the Ancient Near East.
And MOM, yes, so strange. Perhaps this is the power in the first line of The Stranger: "Maman died today. Or was it yesterday."
I am in a place with 8 different languages being spoken and it's easier to communicate through silences and smiles than actual words. East and West speak from different parts of the brain to begin with. It could not be more true that when "emotionally charged" the only exit -is "a mother tongue"
Thank you for this Mark.
Haripremkaur Where is that? Kathmandu? I'd love to see the way that people communicate in the market. I wonder the kinds of "texts" and "subtexts" that people design when they have an urgency to communicate and no common language.
Thanks for reading :]
Hi Mark
Yeah I'm in it. Have had to acquire a new language (French) over the past 4 years. At first I was frustrated at my inability to communicate. Now that I'm somewhat able, I'm wondering whether or not 'words' are all that necessary.
By being able to speak foreign words we can communicate on one level. But there are so many more layers of communication, most of which are far subtler than words...
Layer 1= what is said
Layer 2 = what is implied
Layer 3 = subtext
Layer 4 = body language and so on...
And I think this, perhaps, is the saving grace. 2 layers down is where it's at :) The rest is just embellishment.
Even poor old Sartre admitted (on his deathbed) that every word he ever wrote was a pile of crap.
tanjabulatovic Yes and yes! I've been thinking about how "texts" are much broader than written words. I like your "four layers." Texts are everywhere: in the mien of a friend we can easily trace hope, sadness, despair, joy...sans language. I'd love to know French, but it seems daunting a little less forgiving than Latin American langauges.
Poor old Sartre. I also recall Thomas Aquinas (author of "Summa Theologica") claiming that all his work was "just straw," before an almighty God. Scary, but humbling.
Language is a transaction, a way to get into the life of Others. Interesting insight indeed.
English is not my native language so I have a limited repository of words. But it is not the quantity of words, it's the sequence. My stories are similar to others, I just put the words in a different sequence.
Language learning is important, it allows you to have a peek into someone else's world. When you travel, the language barrier is a big hurdle, but some make it bigger than it actually is. We are not that different from each other; we have the same kind of worries, the same kinds of dreams. People just use different words (and some need more words than others). I am glad MOM is understood almost everywhere....:)
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