Something boring

Soz guys, I’m in the mood for something serious..! Obviously something vacuous and light-hearted shall follow shortly!

When I was very young, I used to read all the Enid Blyton books and I used to watch musicals. Feel free to lol gratuitously at this point, I promise you that this will only get worse from now on. Since this was what I was exposed to as a child, I obviously based my impression of the world on these things and I thought that that was the way life was. I used to make toy wooden swords with my granddad, and we would head into the woods together – him probably wondering how he’d ever ended up with such a bizarre sort of granddaughter and me looking for the adventures I spent all my time reading about. But we’d go into these ‘woods’, and I never managed to find something that lived up to my considerable expectations. I wanted a wood so thick and dense that the sun was barely visible; a place where one could spend days looking for a way out – a place in which mysteries could be found and solved. But all I found was a couple of square metres of saplings, pi r squared of disappointment and horribly obvious exits.  Clearly I must have misunderstood all these books.

A little older this time but not significantly, I was in a field, lying down and playing with the grass. There is something rather impressive about grass, I have always found – there’s nothing like the myriad stalks so easily pulled from their roots to illustrate the condition of living things, I think – and it is certainly a striking impression I have that it was amongst the grass that I first realised how amazing language is, despite the connection between the two appearing tenuous!  The idea that someone could make some motions with their tongue, that some subtle tones and affectations could make the world of difference to what was being communicated and the fact that so many people could understand these odd utterings was just so fascinating to me. That so many different people conceived so many different ways to represent the image of a tree, or a person.  That not only could we represent solid beings and creations by these special intonations, but also feelings and imperceptible things, was astounding and not just a little overwhelming. The question of whether these imperceptible things truly existed or whether they were just constructs of our desire to communicate was also an infinitely fascinating one to me.

As I have gotten older (if not in maturity, certainly in years) this concept of the human as a being in desperate need to communicate has fascinated me.  Our communications seem to raise a dilemma: why are we creatures with an inescapable need to be with others, to tell them our deepest desires and secrets and to try unceasingly to portray ourselves?  Do we need to have this correspondence with others to stimulate our minds and find solace in the other, or just to distract ourselves from less enjoyable practices? Is it possible that language, in fact, is the ultimate expression of vanity; rather than a means to find happiness through another's company and persepctive, is it instead a means through which we insist on foisting ourselves – or the selves we would like to be – on others; to force them to listen to what we have to say in an attempt to validate our own self-image? In short, does language exist so that we might share another’s existence, or so that we might share our existence with another?

For me, one of the greatest flaws of the English-speaking (as a mother tongue) world is that, since we conquered sufficient parts of the world that a vast population now speaks our language, we choose not to study other languages. The stereotypical 'British tourist' and other such ‘linguaphobic’ (neologism, bitch!) peoples can go to Mallorca or Ibiza and not only order a beer in English, but head to British pubs and watch the football. The prospect of speaking another language is supplanted by the fact that it is ‘necessary neither to communication nor need’. We are finally masters of the world in which we choose to inhabit. However, the point that modern British people are choosing to ignore is that the mastering of foreign languages is not just about being able to order a sandwich while sunbathing next to the pool. Every language has words that cannot be translated into English, sentiments that cannot be expressed simply through an equation of verbs, nouns and adjectives. Language is not something that is concrete, it is an ever-evolving device used to express emotions that certain cultures have identified as important. It is a tool with which we may understand the world, but it is also symbolic of the hope that one day we might find someone that thinks that what we say and feel is worth listening to – who will think that our words are worth tuning out the constant stream of communication that runs through our consciousness. Language is nothing but our desire to be heard, and it is – make no mistake about it – the most brilliant creation of the human race, and the ultimate expression of humanity.

For the child that grew up living in stories, the adventure is always seemingly out of reach. The tale is always too exciting to be true and the forest is always too small to hide the depths that we are looking for. But what contains the most exciting revelation in these books is not the thrill of the unattainable goal, it is the fact that anyone can (at least attempt to..!) understand what exactly was the author might have been conceptualising at that particular point in time. The idea that we can siphon the persuasions of someone’s mind into our own is something that is infinitely miraculous. So study languages, kids, and love your own one well.