Language Rocks!

Language and words are of vital importance in all human relationships. A bold statement to be sure, but what does it imply? How do we use them, why, and how?

We humans communicate with each other in a variety of ways: bodily, sensually, mentally, linguistically. All human communication involves highly evolved and complex processes. To me, language is particularly interesting because it can be expressed both in verbal and written forms, and both are powerful tools in our communication arsenal that we all too often take for granted.

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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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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”