Bija Andrew’s Zen Blog

This book by Arika Okrent is pretty cool. I’m only halfway through it, but it talks about the growth over time of pre-planned language systems. Some were designed for the purpose of practical communication, and some were designed for fictional universes.

I’ve always loved foreign languages, but I’m afraid I don’t have much aptitude for them. (Evidence for the first claim: the first rock record I ever owned was 99 Luftballons, which had one side in English and one in German. Evidence for the second: I studied French for nearly eight years, and when I overhear people speaking French in public I understand almost nothing.) So I don’t think I could join Okrent on her journey of studying Esperanto and Klingon, but I’m enjoying the ride.

Something struck me in the part about visual languages. One became used in the Ontario Crippled Children Centre for those patients who could not speak. Previously, their communication had been isolated to a practical matter, a way to signal caregivers that they needed something. I’ll quote: “Kids whose communicative worlds had been defined by the options of pointing to a picture of a toilet, or waiting for someone to ask the right question, started talking about a car trip with a father, a brother’s new bicycle, a pet cat’s habit of hiding under the bed.”

This may be why I grew disillusioned with phrasebooks the times I’ve traveled. A phrasebook gives you a set of problem-solving indicators of needs, and a handful of conventional phatics (such as “hello” or “thank you”) without social context. Sure, you can use them, but you don’t learn the language, and you don’t learn to listen or anticipate what someone might say back to you. At best, you get a momentary smile of amusement at the foreigner who learned to say “Buenos dias” or “Ni hao.”

That’s why I’m a little moved by the communication of the speechless children in Ontario. Their frustration wasn’t from being unable to demand a drink or announce that they needed to pee. Their frustration was that the interesting world around them–the cars, the bicycles, the cat under the bed–had no way to be shown.

I saw this quote on Twitter a few weeks ago, and it speaks to what I’m thinking about here: “I truly believe that one of the most wonderful and reverent things you can say to another human being is ‘look!'”–Kathleen Dean Moore.

The times in India when I was trying to talk to someone who spoke little English, I felt the same thing. I could get what I wanted easily enough–but what I really wanted to say was, “Look at that cow walking over the bridge” or “The people selling corn on the roadside remind me of my home in Nebraska.” If I were writing a phrasebook, the first phrase I’d want to know is “Look!”

And yet, sometimes that wasn’t an obstacle. You can say more through a glance and a gesture. It takes practice, but when it works, it’s also a wonderful and reverent thing to say.