Lingual barrier? What’s that?

Wherever you are, wherever you go, your destination is waiting to greet you in a language you don’t understand anymore.

A language is effectively not dead as long as there are at least two people speaking the same tongue. By this yardstick, neither is Sanskrit dead nor Manx. They are endangered. But if you ask a layman, he’ll choose the morgue when it comes to classical languages. That’s the extent of apathy we have for our lingual foremothers. The irony being, chances are, the person would be using words derived from the very language he’s happy to bury alive.

Speaking of words, i’ve always been interested in them. Language is heavy. Words are light. For the record, my recent fascination is with Sanskrit. It’s a magnificent language and the more you read, the more you’re like “WTF! I don’t know shit!” But i’m not keen on speaking it fluently someday. (The sweet hypocrisy of our times: You love a language so much that you wouldn’t pick to save it from extinction.) Which is why i keep telling everyone that i’m not learning Sanskrit. I am learning about Sanskrit. There’s a massive difference. I tried to learn Urdu but ended up embracing a few words because i got too entangled in the beautiful mesh of silky-sounding vocabulary.

To each his own taste.

Regardless, there are several books on linguistics that will blow your minds but most of them require patience—a lot of patience — something that is already in short supply—for you to process. So we turn to gifted writers like Bill Bryson who break down boring studies into simpler conclusions for layman like you and me. They are masters of tidbits who help us understand complex theories without forcing us to yawn. If books don’t agree with your ergonomics, then videos such as this can keep you on the brink of curiosity. And there’s always space to learn more.

L-sign is for language. L-sign is also for learning. Coincidence? Nope.

As far as one can see, language is vaster than anything else you can imagine. We might have germinated in Africa but our actual birth took place in the millions of languages that we created and destroyed since time immemorial. Furthermore, when a language dies, nobody attends its funeral. It departs like a rich pauper who deserved better.

Enough of gloomy stuff.

On the shinier side, i’ve scribbled down some notes while reading about origin of words irrespective of where they are spoken. I took the trouble to type them out because, manas maidan.

• Different words are missing in different languages. Romans have no word for grey. 50 Shades of Grey doesn’t mean anything to them. Irish Gaelic have no words for yes or no. To make things worse, they don’t even have an Indian nod. Italians can’t distinguish between niece and granddaughter or nephew and grandson. Just like Americans can’t distinguish between real and fake news anymore. Russians don’t have a word for take care or have fun. Explains the crazy videos on the Internet that they keep throwing at the world. We often read that Eskimos have a hundred words for now. They don’t. They have words for fresh snow, white snow, grey snow, light snow… but no definite word for snow itself. French can’t distinguish between mind and brain. Not really a huge problem for the orthography the French enjoy. Spanish don’t see the difference between Chairman and President. To be honest, nor should we.
• English is the most powerful language in the world today. With over 800,000 words (250,000 being in common use) it is HUGE. German has 185,000 words while French has about 100,000 in active usage. The extent of English’s reach can be gauged by the way non-English speaking populace has interned Anglophone words.
• English has limitations too. Mostly emotive. When you compare it to Hindi. You don’t have a word for jhoota (food that was tasted by others before you did). No equivalence of ‘neendh aa rahi hai’ (sleep is a distinct entity) and so on. Similarly, there is no samdhi or samdhan in English. The concept of in-laws is too strong for in-love to take place.
• Latin is called a dead language, conveniently forgetting that it’s the official language of Vatican City, arguably the most influential country in the world.
• Japanese don’t have the equivalent of a, the and an. They can’t even distinguish between singular and plural the way English (ball-balls) or French (chateau-chateaux) can. Even its tense is a bit confusing. Over half their sentences don’t have a subject keeping you guessing who are they talking about. Unless you are fluent, of course. Easy-peasy-Japaneese? Naaaaa.
• When a north European is conversing with a south European, you’ll notice that the latter keeps getting closer to the other person’s face while the former keeps retreating. Why? Because the Mediterranean/Iberian culture is about proximity while the frigid north is more about personal space.
• No other language is more uncomfortable with silence than English. That’s why we have fillers like OMG, oh gosh, weather is nice, who killed your dog, etc.
• Like Basque (spoken by less than 700,000), Lithuanian is one the least corrupted languages in Europe with Lithuanians having the capability to understand simple Sanskrit phrases. Old time Indo-European bros.
• Celtic was once a prominent language in Europe but declined due to the lack of nation-state. The tribal nature of existence ensured that Celts decline and so did the Celtic language. Interestingly, modern cities like Paris, Dundee and Belgrade are named after Celtic tribes and rivers like Thames and Seine have Celtic roots. As of today, the Celtic-speaking populace of Scotland can’t communicate with the Celtic-speaking populace of Wales although they are barely few hundred miles apart.
• India has the most diverse variety of languages in the world (1600+) but the problem is we can’t distinguish between a language and a dialect anymore. Tribes in Papua New Guinea — the birthplace of banana — can. Hence they score higher on the language meter.
• Tamil could very well be the strongest classical language in the world. Nothing else (Gothic, Celtic, Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Persian, etc) comes close to retaining purity. Sri Lankan Tamils speak a slightly different version of Tamil, again indicating how geographical and political scenario influences a language.
• Sinhalese and Bengali are similar. Digest that.
• Remember that old lady in Andaman/Nicobar who was the last person to speak Bo and how the National Geographic was documenting her to learn more about her mother tongue? Well, in 1984, Oubykh faced a similar crisis because this Crimean language had only one speaker left.
• When Columbus arrived in the New World, there were close to 1000 languages. Today, there are less than 600. Slow claps for discovery and exploration.
• Iceland, thanks to its isolated geography, managed to maintain the purity of its language to such an extent that Icelanders today can read and understand sagas their ancestors wrote in Icelandic 1000 years ago. Also, Iceland has the world’s oldest functioning parliament. No wonder the continuity of language played a key role.
• People who can read English today will find it very difficult to understand even a line penned by the father of English poetry — Chaucer, not Shakespeare, mind you — although he lived barely 700 years ago. English was a different beast altogether back then.
• Romantsch (one of the 4 recognized languages of Switzerland) is spoken in the eastern parts of the country. However, there are 5 types of Romantsch depending on which canton you visit. Also, the pronunciation and the spelling changes with the religion (Catholic or Protestant) of the Swiss you’re talking to.
• German and Bavarian aren’t the same, actually. The riverine spirit of Oktoberfest might have helped you assume that they are. They are as similar to each other as Medium is to Blogger.
• Italian is not the national language of Italy. It’s merely a dialect spoken in Florence and Tuscany. It is, in fact, a dialect spoken by more than 50% of Italians. Why this confusion then? The decline of Rome coincided with the decline of Latin coincided the rise of Vulgates. Got it? The origin of ‘vulgar’ is not what we think it is. Vulgar languages are basically corruption of more popular languages, giving rise to dialects.
• Anyway, going back to Rome, Dante (Divine Comedy) composed his work in Latin, not Italian dialects, because he was nostalgic of Italy’s Latin roots. Just like Tagore wrote a lot of his work in classical Sanskrit although Sanskrit was declared dead even before William Jones made that historic speech at Asiatic Society suggesting that Sanskrit is part of an Indo-European languages!
• Soviet Russia spoke 149 languages in total but the Soviets ensured that Russian was forced on all the states. Regardless, Russian was eventually spoken by 75% of Soviet Russia. A systematic way of letting language become the unifying factor in an otherwise inhospitable geography.
• Lastly, how can we end a lingual list without mentioning Bengali? After all, it is the only language in modern history which practically gave birth to a nation. When Urdu was being shoved down East Bengali throats, students protested and some were shot dead. That fateful day (Feb 21) is still commemorated as the International Mother Language Day.

That’s all for now.

PS. At the risk of sounding hopelessly poetic, may the blood of any language never smear our benighted palms.