Language Says It All

Mikhail Iossel mentioned language; and I love it when people make me think. It’s valuable: useful, purposeful, fun. Makes me feel good, feel alive; like creating. Ask any artist - there are few rushes so good as the feeling of creating. But I digress (intentionally).

Language is an intergral part of being. I wish they'd taught Noam Chomsky when I'se in school - with all that eager yearning to know everything. But...missed out. Still alive tho, so let's have at it. Dr. Ronnie Shepherd's book Learning to Write, Writing to Learn postulates that writing and thinking are the same task. The organizational mind-working of writing a coherent sentence is the same mental function as forming a coherent thought.

I liked him, liked his book; thought he was really onto something. And while I won’t rehash Chomsky’s linguistic theories (cuz I don’t know them) perhaps we’ll brush up against them inadvertently, or advertently, who knows.

Language is the most essential part of each of us. It defines us, especially to others. We

are - what we can communicate ourselves to be. People only know us through how we present in words and actions. My immediate reaction to Iossel was - some folks present as very limited verbally. So...are they equally limited mentally. Because if you think in words, how much you know affects how much you can think - a mathematical variable equation.

But uneducated people aren’t doomed. Anyone can learn, grow and expand thought-making through an increase in words and knowledge. I took Reader’s Digest - it pays to increase your word power - to heart; and did pretty well in Stanford-Binet testing. But it struck me watching the Scripps spelling bee, that those kids know so much because they’re so thoroughly versed in the linguistics of word origin. If you know root words (and a few suffixes and prefixes) you have the key to the beginnings of knowledge. The Etymological Dictionary is an essential tool - knowing of how words were developed.

But there’re other chasms besides the educated and the un (even within those). Iossel says his native language is Russian, and his English is acquired. Not bad, he teaches English at university. But think of the significance - like the Tower of Babel - one of our truly amazing myths. If everyone thinks in their own language...well, every language is different in structure. Some mildly, some greatly. We write - right to left; Muslims write left to right. We write in letters, Orientals in pictures. Russians and many others have a different alphabet than ours. So how do we ever communicate. How can we ever be even mildly assured that what we meant is what “the other” heard, in the way we meant it - re-Sartre “we can never truly know the other”. 

One of the nice things about studying philosophy (and science) is the demand for precision.

When studying why we exist, what we should do, and how we should treat others - it’s best

to be exact, specific. Which is why Heidegger’s demand for “the ground” is so necessary.

And while we can’t grow beyond “self” unless we communicate with others, there’s no point

in trying to communicate unless we’re all “speaking the same language” that is - we all

adhere to agreed upon facts and truth. Life is kind of a Catch-22.