From
time immemorial, if not earlier, and at the insistence of a
stubborn gene sequence that is apparently immune to amendment,
man has been devising, scheming, concocting out of the givens
of his life (location, climate, culture) the means to erect
barriers (physical, psychological) for no other reason than
to exclude others.
The
mistrusted other typically belongs to other races, religions
or social classes, subscribes to an alternative political vision,
and more recently is of a different sexual orientation. Unable
to escape his otherness, often a lifelong sentence, he will
come to know well the slings and arrows of hostility and rejection;
and if he happens to be exceptionally gifted or talented, the
envy he awakens will be used against him. Anthropologist Arthur
Keith famously referred to the 'you're with me or against me'
reflex as the amity-enmity complex, which privileges members
inside a particular tribe, group or community, and stigmatizes
all those on the outside. Ethologists (Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen)
have observed same behaviour pattern in the animal world, in
particular among the higher apes.
This
primordial pre-disposition to exclude those who don’t
belong remains one of the decisive activating agents and predictors
of human behaviour. Without exception, traditions and institutions
that span generations are rigorously formalized by rules and
rites that are jealously protected within the tribe or group
matrix, while serving strict notice – you are not one
of us -- to everyone else. It seems that no matter what the
endeavour, from the trivial to the consequential, ever resourceful
man is always at the ready to exclude those outside his group,
forcing the conclusion that he is prey to deep seated impulses
over which he has very little or no control. Xenophobia, from
the Greek meaning ‘fear of the stranger,’ is a condition
whose universality remains unchallenged despite man’s
extensive legislative efforts to domesticate the proclivity.
We
are all familiar with the long and unflattering history of the
most oft used means or basis of exclusion -- skin colour, education,
religious affiliation, status - - where every category begets
a formal hierarchy that matricizes one’s kind while leaving
on the outside all those towards whom one is unkind. India’s
caste system, formerly abolished in 1949, was (and to a certain
extent remains) a crowning achievement in respect to enforcing
the rigid (ruthless) stratification of trades and occupations.
One
of the most overlooked and least suspected of exclusionary tools
is language, especially when we consider that there was once
only one language in the world -- when man first began to speak.
It must surely confound the mind that out of that one language
there are now 6,500 (excluding regional argots and dialects),
which is all the more remarkable since the existence of the
thousands of tongues everyone doesn't speak betrays the original
purpose of language : to communicate. Language, viewed as an
organizing principle, is an entropy-resistant, centripetal force
that provides the cohesiveness that allows societies to form
and endure, and vouchsafes for the viability of every social
contract.
When
man first appeared (approximately 100,000 years ago), an advent
that coincided with self-consciousness and rudimentary speech,
he occupied one location (Africa). From that narrow compass,
in response to necessity and curiosity, he began to explore
the world, taking his one language with him. Over time, that
one language morphed into a second and then a third. To better
understand what caused this dimorphism, or language mitosis,
one must dig deep into the inner workings of human nature much
like an anatomist, to better understand the circulatory system,
dissects the human body. In endeavouring to account for the
incredible diversity of languages, we are asking what causes
a people, in all likelihood a splinter group, to vary its language
to such an extent that the original speakers no longer understand
it and are therefore excluded from the emerging new group.
We
know from psychology that one of the constants in human behaviour
is for an abused individual or group to become the abuser if
circumstance permits. In a tribal or group context, abuse can
arise consequent to repeated discriminatory distribution of
limited resources, or a territorial dispute which unjustly advantages
one party over another. Ethiopia’s Messay Kebede, in ‘What’s
Wrong with Africa,” speculates
that Africa has been shamefully served by its post-colonial
leaders (Idi Imin, Robert Mugabe, Charles Taylor, Sani Abacha
et al) because during their formative years, they were
subject to colonial abuse, and to such a degree that, post independence,
when they wrested the levers of power unto themselves, they,
in turn, became abusers, subjecting their citizenry to horrors
once thought to be the sole prerogative of the colonizer. As
it concerns the recurring behavioural pathology of world leaders
who have ruthlessly and remorselessly betrayed their people’s
hopes for a better future, it constitutes one of the least recognized
patterns of history that abuse and exclusion beget abuse and
exclusion, that “the blood dimmed tide” is an every
widening circle from which there is no escaping but for those
with means and influence.
A careful
reading of historical change suggests that the agency behind
the birth of any new language is retribution against an abuse
of power or privilege that has rendered unhappy or scarlet lettered
a faction within a group, such that the excluded or disenfranchized
individuals must coalesce into a break away group, where they
begin to secrete a new language in order to erase the memory
of and permanently separate itself from its abuser. Predictably,
the break away group, in forging its new identity, not only
spurns the language of the group it has disaffected from, but
significantly alters its religious practices, dress protocols,
culinary accents and aesthetic preferences.
One only has to look at the splitting of Portuguese and Spanish,
an event that cannot be separated from the history of the region
where there was once only Galician-Spanish spoken, until the
12th century, when Portugal split from the Kingdom of Leon,
at which point two distinct languages began to develop as a
consequence of mutual hostility, each bent on securing its territory
and carving out a distinct identity. Over time, the separate
languages, word-brick by word-brick, took on the likeness of
battlements erected to ensure the safety of those behind them
and to exclude everyone else on the outside. And while the written
languages are similar, that is accessible to speakers of both
languages, Portuguese pronunciation is such that Spanish speakers
don’t understand it while the Portuguese, however imperfectly,
understand Spanish, which gives them a decided linguistic advantage
over their once hostile neighbour. The words for the number
two, dos in Spanish and dois in Portuguese
resemble each other orthographically; but their pronunciation
is radically different: dohs and doysh. The same with bread
(pan and pão), pronounced pahn and
peh-o.
What
is essential in any new language is that it instills in its
speakers a sense of community and identity, hard earned values
the group will defend to the death. Speakers of a common language
enjoy the privileges and empowerment that come from belonging
to a group. And where you have two contiguous groups contesting
a limited natural resource, the either/or – you’re
in you’re out – binary promises not a reason-based
but gut response to the conflict.
Language,
conspicuously colourless, scentless and weightless, and yet
capable of causing great physical and psychological pain, is
the metaphysical equivalent of region, province and country.
It is employed both as a fence and rampart to mark out and defend
a territory like an animal marks its own with its scent (its
urine). Even breakaway groups that have not been abused or disadvantaged
will evolve their own language consistent with acquiring and
defending a new territory. Language hovers over a people and
its real estate like an aura that when seen from afar denotes
a secret sharing of a way of life that is a firewall against
foreign meddling and influence. To non-speakers, every language
is a secret language. To be able to speak behind someone’s
back in front of his back speaks to the natural advantage of
the home tongue that obliges every visitor to acknowledge his
otherness, his status as visitor or outsider. I remember in
grade school a friend and I would speak backwards just for the
pure pleasure of one-upmanship, of confounding our friends:
“I aveh ot yub klim.” I have to buy milk pronounced
backwards. “Mot si a kcid daeh.”
New
languages are often born in the bile and spleen of revenge,
as the abused turns into the abuser. In the Caribbean (Trinidad,
Jamaica, Grenada), the indigenous inhabitants have evolved a
local pigeon or argot (dread-talk or Rastafarian) which throws
up a barrier between themselves and their former colonizer,
(the white man). As the indigenous populations were being exploited
for their labour, they discovered that a new language would
allow them to speak behind the back of the oppressor. It was
a form of revenge against being economically and educationally
excluded from the wealth they, themselves, generated with their
sweat and toil. Linguists have proposed that if slavery in the
United States had endured for two or three more centuries, the
language of the slave would have evolved into a separate tongue
unintelligible to the slaveowner. Most distinct regions in the
world, and sometimes even in towns separated by no more than
a few kilometers, use words that are unique to their geography
for no other reason than to exclude those that don’t belong
while asserting their unique identity.
Since
the birth of a language and birth of a nation are one and the
same, the new language, especially during its formative years,
can be likened to a double-edged sword that underscores man's
xenophobic temperament as well as his willingness to defend
at all costs his territory and identity. In the spirit of the
conquistador, and in the absence of deterrents, a stronger language
will crush and devour a weaker language.
Every
language operates like a gatekeeper; you’re only allowed
in once you’ve paid your dues (the time required to master
the language). The same holds for computer languages, and the
many languages of music (classical, jazz, pentatonic, diatonic,
atonal), all of which, however unconsciously, are exclusionary
until you make them your own. That language both facilitates
and intentionally impedes communication is an imponderable,
a dichotomy that speaks to the obscure workings of human nature.
What all the world’s languages have in common is that
it’s either the language you speak or it’s a secret
language.
To
an uncertain extent, a person’s mother tongue predetermines
his relationship with the world. If you’re an English
speaker huge chunks of the world are already familiar (US, Canada,
Australia, South Africa, Hong Kong), just as an Inuit speaker’s
world is limited to the range of his mother tongue and its relationship
with surrounding tongues.
That
man is by nature obsessed with power (control) and is intolerant
towards all those but his own is the unflattering truth behind
the birth of every language, which accounts for the incredible
diversity of languages as proxies for both man’s lust
for power and predisposition to exclude all those outside his
group.
And
finally, as it concerns the highly specialized glossary of profanity
aimed at the other, much of it inspired by the proctologists's
area of concentration, every language includes in its operations
the ways and means to weaponize language.
If
there were an 11th Commandment, it might read: Thou shall not
language, aim and fire.
COMMENTS
Mark Goldfarb
In the spirit of dialogue I suggest
that while language can serve to exclude others or take revenge
upon them, more likely and usefully its seminal and primary
function was as a unifying and communicating force regardless
of one person or group's antagonism towards another.
That the impetus behind the birth of any language
or the transformation of a preexisting one is retribution or
disaffection is not necessarily so and a narrow view of its
purpose. Why couldn't open-mindedness and not xenophobia, democracy
rather than tyranny or any one of a thousand other motives have
been the precipitant of it's birth and continuous remodelling?
Exploration across oceans in search of resources
or more livable habitats and expeditions across continents for
the same reasons would have resulted in the complete or partial
loss of contact between original and splintered groups which
in turn would have generated alterations of the original language
and over time a substantial or complete loss of it. In addition
to separation and loss of contact, the language of the new found
land's indigenous population coupled with its climate, geography,
flora, fauna and a gaggle of other factors would have influenced
the original language and in due course possibly eroded it beyond
recognition.
Were a Brazilian agronomist skilled in coffee
farming asked to pass on her knowledge to an Israeli agronomist
in exchange for the Israeli's expertise in cotton farming bilingualism
would be a must. Animosity, revenge, power politics and religious
differences would have no bearing on the contract. As well,
Portuguese and Hebrew evolved separately and not because of
any friction between the two groups.
Language's advantage is most apparent in the form
of storytelling. A verbal discourse on the art of buffalo hunting
is much more effective than the combined media of sign language,
body language and a glossary of grunts and pictures drawn in
dirt with a stick could ever be and consequently guarantees
increased success in the hunt and increased representation of
hunters and storytellers in the gene pool. Chief among the benefits
afforded by human verbal language is the ease with which it
conveys tenses. Koko, a precocious gorilla with a vocabulary
of a thousand signs and a comprehension of two thousand English
words, could not articulate to a human the sequence of events
– past, present and future – essential to storytelling.
Perhaps gorillas have the facility to express past, present
and future in their own language to other gorillas. Perhaps
dogs, whales, crows and deer can do the same amongst their own.
I don't know. I do know they can't tell a story to humans the
way humans can tell a story to humans.
With regards to your hypothesis presented as fact
that there was once only one language in the world when humans
first began to speak, I submit that verbal language(s) could
have developed independently amongst more than one group of
humans unbeknownst to each other. If language could develop
within one group I can't think of a reason why it couldn't have
developed within another. And another. And another.
Languages change for many reasons. Look at the
recent enlargements English has undergone much of which was
owing to necessity. An entire lexicon was minted to accommodate
AI technology that sprang up over the last forty years. Owing
to a dissatisfaction and growing realization that human sexuality
is as diverse as that of the rest of its co-species, the binary
of male-female is presently on a course for obsolescence. In
its place is a shifting alphabet soup of more than a hundred
terms related to sexual orientation and gender identity. But
who knows? Several generations from now that much beloved binary
might return with a record high moral majority. Maxwell Smart
might have summed up his career of battling KAOS with the trademark
quip “And loving it!” but the statement “Chief,
I'm needing to stop KAOS from destroying the free world”
was an utterance that would never have left his lips much less
reached the script of any self-respecting screenwriter except
perhaps Adam Sandler, no offence intended. The demise over the
last three decades of English's stative verb is amply demonstrated
everywhere you look and listen. Not merely dethroned, it's been
stood on its head.
Inevitably, the meaning and usage of words change.
Nonplussed, which for as long as I've been around has meant
bewildered, perplexed, at a loss, has recently come to mean
the exact opposite: unfazed, clear, convinced. And though the
new meaning has not yet gained wide spread acceptance among
publishers, its day will come. The writing is already on the
wall and in more than a few dictionaries. For my part, the confusion
and frustration such changes wreak are sometimes enough to make
me want to put on my jammies, curl up with a good book and bring
down The Cone of Silence.
