Language Rocks!

The Open starts on Thursday this week at Turnberry, just 60 miles south from my location in sunny Gourock.

As a keen watcher of golf, I am relishing four days glued to my TV to watch sportsmen at the top of their game exhibit their prowess (and see how they fare against the legendary Scottish deep rough, which is sure to yield plenty of shankers), as well as beautiful scenery of Turnberry with its coastal views, especially of Ailsa Craig.

I checked out the official Open Golf website and was bowled over by the video content available portraying The Open Championship; and the tournament hasn’t even started yet!

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“Words are dodgy things”

A colleague of mine once uttered these words. I don’t believe he intended them to become legendary, but within my circle of friends they most certainly are and, I think, rightly so.

What is a word anyway?

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I’m not usually a fan of e-mail anecdotes, especially the ones that start with “Fwd” in the subject box, but this one hit my language-loving funny bone, and sent my train of thought immediately from impulse power into warp drive out of the station (or should that be spacedock):

An English professor wrote the words:

‘A woman without her man is nothing’ on the chalkboard and asked his students to punctuate it correctly*.

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In my post “The Zen of Communication, Part 2“, I wrote about a fellow who said “hello” as he passed me on his walk. About that encounter, I wrote “I’ve had this simple, spontaneous thing happen to me many times, but every time it happens, it reinforces to me the beauty of friendly connectivity and communication between people.”

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What is “upspeak“? Upspeak is when you make a spoken statement sound like a question by raising the pitch of your voice at the end of a sentence (technically called a high rising terminal). If you want examples, just watch any Wayne’s World or Bill and Ted movie, or eavesdrop on teenagers’ or 20 somethings’ shopping mall conversations.

The written equivalent is the simple question mark? However, there is a world of difference between upspeak and a question mark.

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It’s pointless me writing a treatise on Zen. There are plenty of ways for you to read up on it if you’re so inclined. However, I’m going to write about it anyway, and how its ethos can open up our ideas on how we can learn more about ourselves, life, and the marvelous way that ideas are communicated.

Zen Buddhism doesn’t have any formal sacred texts. It has no equivalent of the Bible or Qur’an. So how do Zen Buddhists learn? Well, Zen is about experience.

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Linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt said that language is “infinite use of finite means,” perhaps because it has to satisfy the infinite array of potential human experiences. To me this suggests that the roots of language lie deep within us as a universal well of kaleidoscopic expression, and that speech is not solely a learned or conditioned behavior, but is an essential aspect of the journeying pilgrim within each of us: the inner immortal hero that relishes life’s battles, quietly learns from victory and defeat alike, and suffers human weaknesses while urging onward courageously day by day, life after life, towards the light.

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Spoken language has existed since the earliest times, and all the oldest written texts were originally transmitted orally. This oral transmission requires, by modern standards, superior powers of memory since, for example, the Rig Veda alone comprises almost half a million words. In Plato’s Phaedrus (§274) Egyptian King Thamus tells Theuth, the inventor of writing, of the superiority of memory:

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OK, my next two posts are for the geeks, although I hope anyone with an enquiring mind will derive even a little understanding and put it to good use.

A few years ago I embarked on a study of speech and language, because I wanted to learn as much as I could about current and ancient thoughts on what language and speech are and how they developed. The finished article was originally published in October/November 2003, December 2003/January 2004 in Sunrise, the official magazine of the Theosophical Society with International Headquarters in Pasadena, USA.

This piece is long (6436 words according to MS Word), so I’ll split it into two posts.

Part one deals with the history of language and speech and it’s development, drawing from ancient and modern sources.

Part two addresses how we use speech and language, it’s impact on the world around us, and the ethics involved in their use.

As I’m no expert, this study is by no means exhaustive, and only scratches the surface, but I hope it gives a deeper insight into the amazing natural gifts we call speech and language.

“See it all, till tomorrow”

I drove my son to swimming training this evening and had a near miss with another car. Rounding a bend, I saw another car on my side of the road, then it swerved into it own lane just in the nick of time. But just before the driver passed me, I noticed something.

But wait…wait…What has this got to do with language?  I’m coming to it…

…Almost before the other driver passed me in a flash, out of the corner of my eye I saw his hand go up in apology, and saw him mouth “sorry.” So…there’s where language comes into this. In a potentially disastrous situation the other driver sorted his road positioning and had the time, and manners, to apologise to me in two ways: both visual, but both using different forms of language.

Everyone appreciates an apology, or should do anyway. It costs nothing and mends broken bonds.

So, what did I take from this? There are many forms of language, not just written. Sometimes a simple gesture can speak volumes and make a bad situation that little bit better. It’s knowing what to say and when to say it that’s important.

“See it all, till tomorrow”