32/ LANGUAGE
“One way to think of
language is as an ecosystem, with words like organisms pitted against one
another in a fight for survival. Their fitness is how useful they are: if they
help us communicate more easily, they’ll thrive”.
One word that
would survive in any crowded ecological
niche, as resilient as ‘rat’ or ‘rhododendron’, is the word ‘huh’.
Unaccompanied by body language, as far as is possible, this word lays claim to
occurring. and remaining the same, in any language on the globe - from the Amazonian rain forests to
the Arctic tundra to teenage discos anywhere.
John le Carré
takes this claim one step further, citing
Charlemagne, he suggests that becoming proficient in another, language
different from your own native tongue allows us to adopt a new personae. But then he is a confirmed Germanophile
so perhaps his insight doesn’t
count - grunts and growls and guttural rasping.
I’m a confirmed
Francophile who doesn’t enjoy the benefit of speaking German but I can see
where he is coming from. I’ve been
intrigued to imagine what connection my musings can possibly have with some of
the countries across the globe from apparently very different cultural
backgrounds from my own who regularly
look in on this blog. It’s like putting on a mask.
With a bit of
advance notice to all around me I shall test out the theory, ‘Huh? Huh! Huh...’. That's all I need. 'Huh'.
• https://www.newstatesman.com/martha-gill/2013/11/what-one-word-thats-same-every-language
• John le Carré cites Charlemagne, “To have another language is to possess a second soul”. Sunday July 2nd, 2017, The Observer
