On Languages
The most important invention of all. Or is it?
On Christmas Day after we have had our feast, we love to play charades. This year we continued on the tradition. We had a good laugh, we acted silly all the while being competitive. A thought occurred to me, this is a non-verbal communication that we were doing, and how good or bad we are at miming, demonstrating, communicating our thoughts, is comparable to the fluency of a language.
As a lover of languages, of course my mind could not let go of this idea. I never thought of charades in that way, it was only a game. But when I thought more about it, I realised it’s much more than that. When we play the game, we’re actually learning and practicing a different language – both the one miming and also the guessers.
It got me thinking, how many “languages” does the average person practice or master then? I mean languages as the means of communication. I think we all have more than one language under our belt. I was lucky that I was born in West Java, Indonesia. Like most Indonesians I had two languages at home since I was born: Indonesian, and being in West Java, Sundanese. The two languages are completely different, traditional Sundanese even has its own alphabets/characters. The language is heavily influenced by Sanskrit. The Indonesian language itself is influenced by Sundanese, though not by a lot. I guess, I and most Indonesians in theory are primed to be polyglots – each province in Indonesia has their own language and dialect. According to Wikipedia, Indonesia is home to over 700 living languages, making it the second most linguistically diverse nation globally. Sadly, I only speak 3 languages that are from there. But this priming, being born and raised in such a place, makes learning a new language easier for the brain as the path has been set up. So they say. But I’m curious, does this only apply to verbal languages or is it transferable to non-verbal languages?
In reality, a language doesn’t consist purely of words if we are thinking of it as a means of communication. I wrote about Art as a language here before and how Art is a tool used to communicate feelings and experiences more effectively. By that logic then if you’re an artist, then you have an additional language at your disposal. If you’re good at charades, then you are fluent in mime – doing and reading the mimes. While I did win the game of charades with my family during Christmas, I’m nowhere near fluent in mime yet. After all this is a language I practice roughly once a year. (A slight tangent, I’m planning to modify charades by playing it not in mime, but in a language that is not our mother tongue. Since I’m learning French and my husband studied French for A Level we’re planning to use that. We’re also currently learning Spanish, so that’s a possibility for the future. I’m sharing this just in case some of you are also lingo nerds like me).
The mastery of a language, be it verbal or non-verbal, is so essential to a human being. I honestly believe that one of our most basic desires – if not the most – is to be understood. If we were to look at the fundamental causes for discomfort, conflicts, frictions, pain, and suffering when it comes to our interactions with each other, I would say being misunderstood would be in the top three. Our desire to be understood is something I find so fascinating. But being understood is not only reliant on one side being able to communicate their thoughts/opinions/feelings effectively, but also on the other party’s effort(s) to follow what was expressed. Communication, then, is a two-way street, to state the obvious.
I often notice, and experience it myself, be it in an in-person or online interactions, that frictions happen when one party fails to communicate or the other fails to follow – I am deliberately excluding the instances where one party is hell-bent on misunderstanding or misrepresenting the other. When I was miming Master of Puppets to my family, I felt like I was really hitting a wall, fortunately our reactions were to laugh it off. But in a more serious situation, as we all know, miscommunication could lead to the breaking of relationships. Writing this, one thing came to mind when it comes to effective communication: Mr. Bean. Back in the 90’s, my family would watch and enjoy the series, none of my family members actually spoke English. It’s the perfect example of mastery of non-verbal communication.
So I wonder, is language then the most important invention humanity has created? The invention of the wheel, circa 3500 BC, is often considered as the most important in our history as mankind, the hallmark of human innovation*. As someone who lives millennia after that, where the technological advances have been in leaps and bounds since – to put it mildly – it feels sinful for me to say that in my humble opinion, the invention of the language to be fundamentally superior. Especially when that opinion is formed based on my observations alone. It looks to me sometimes, it doesn’t matter how brilliant a person is, if they cannot communicate their ideas well, or well-enough, then the ideas fail to be transferred. It’s probably why we have scientists and science communicators, the skills involved are intertwined but different.
There’s another side to language that I find equally, if not more, fascinating; it’s the power it holds. If you’re familiar with Orwell’s 1984 then you know the control of language equals the control of minds. I used to think that money was the ultimate power, aah… to be young and naïve. Now I think the ultimate power lies in controlling minds, and this is something we need to pay more attention to. (Does this mean hypnotists are megalomaniacs??? Haha). I think to comprehend the power of language is to be in control of one’s inner universe – our own mind, and our agency.
I mentioned before in my blog about how language shapes ideas and it is our tool to perceive and interpret reality. And one of the most powerful applications of language to me is the power of reframing, it is the seed skill that can change you, the way you view reality and ultimately change it for your own benefits.
In a world where information is to the excess at your fingertips, I think it’s important to also think about the way language is used and the way we use it as a tool, and how it affects our lives and well-being.
As this is still the beginning of the year, are you planning to learn a new language, verbal or non-verbal?
* Apparently, it took humanity a long time to invent the wheel as there was nothing in the natural world that looked like it. We were, arguably still are, copying Nature. There were tumbleweeds that used its form (the sphere) for locomotion, but no disks. And the first wheels were created not as a means of locomotion, but for pottery. Isn’t that interesting?
Missus loves Mr Bean too, and her mum was orang Sunda, but she's not much of a linguist, cunning or otherwise 😁
All interesting thoughts... I think I agree, the invention of language is the most important invention. I believe there is a hypothesis out there that in fact the development of language was closely tied to the development of our brains.