LANGUAGE
by Bjorn Sletto

Every Day We Greet, Accuse, Deny, Agree, Describe, Persuade, We Tell Jokes and Stories, and We Tell Lies. Language Surrounds Us, Shaping Our Thoughts and Being Shaped in Turn. But Are We Its Masters or Its Slaves?

     MAN'S VOCAL ADVANTAGE

     Our Domination of the Planet Is Largely the Result of Three Unique Human Abilities: to Conceive, Utter and Interpret the Coded Sounds We Call Speech

     Every day, unless we're suffering from laryngitis, we open our mouths and words come out. Sometimes, they're not exactly the words we intended to use, but they're usually pretty close. Without much thought we can casually express our feelings about the latest election, complain about the weather or, if we feel particularly philosophical, engage in a conversation about the meaning of life.

     This ability to combine symbols with sounds to project information about abstract concepts is what language is all about. Language enabled our ancestors to share complex information, which eventually gave us the power to dominate the world. Imagine if people couldn't pass on the information for building a wheel without laboriously demonstrating it. The concept might even die out and have to be reinvented by each new generation, until there were at last enough wheels to serve as visual models. With language, the concept of a wheel can spread as fast as a rumour in the corridors of parliament. Other people with different skills improved on the original wheel, and in a blink of geological time, the worldwide chatter helped us develop wheels with spokes, tyres and hubcaps.

     But even though language is one of the most useful of our skills, no one knows how it originated. Some linguists speculate that it was sparked off by the need for cooperation; a hunter would have a fighting chance to take down a woolly mammoth if he could organise a crew of spear-wielding colleagues. Others believe language stems from the desire to control and manipulate others. What better way to reinforce a blow to the head than with a few well-chosen exclamations? And others again attribute speech to the same spark of creativity that spurred our distant ancestors to draw animals on cave walls. To this group of linguists, language is primarily one way to express abstract notions that somehow form in our minds.

     But the most likely answer is that language is an innate ability, much like a dolphin's use of sonar to judge distance. According to this theory, language developed through natural evolution as a result of convenient genetic flukes.

     There is much evidence to support this theory, both in the fields of biology and linguistics--and such evidence might upset speakers of the major languages who believe their language is innately superior. If, for instance, you think languages spoken by "primitive" people are going to be simpler--perhaps lacking in vocabulary or grammatical complexity--think again. In Kivunjo, a small Bantu language in East Africa, each verb has seven prefixes and suffixes, two moods, 14 tenses, and has to agree with the subject, the object, and 16 genders, covering humans, objects, clusters of objects, as well as body parts. The number of possible forms of each verb is half a million. English verbs have four forms.

     Thus, since complexity of language is a worldwide phenomenon and not culturally related, it's reasonable to assume speech is a universal human instinct. While some cultures have retained an enormous linguistic complexity, others--such as English and the other Germanic tongues--have not.

     Still, we all have the innate ability to speak any language. Research on infants has demonstrated that they all make exactly the same speech sounds, or phonemes, no matter where they are born. An infant born in Liverpool, for example, can learn to speak the strange clicking language of the Khoisan bushmen in southern Africa just as easily as a Japanese baby can learn to speak Welsh. As children learn to speak, they will simply forget the phonemes they were born with which their parents don't use. As adults, it's very difficult for them to relearn the linguistic skills they had as a child.

     To become a fluent speaker, children have to learn to use a finely tuned system of speech-related organs, including the vocal cords, the tongue and the lips. On the receiving end, language engages several parts of the brain which decode the stream of phonemes and somehow create meaningful mental pictures.

     Speech begins when air travels from our lungs up through the windpipe to the glottis, or vocal cords (which are not cords at all but two flaps of skin), at the base of the neck. As muscles in our throat relax or contract, they regulate the amount of air that rushes between the flaps. If they contract enough, they create a vibration, which we use to make vowels. Just put your fingers on your Adam's Apple when you say "ee" and "oo". The tighter the vocal cords, the higher the pitch.

     Next come the voice amplifiers. The roof of our mouth--the palate--and the space in our mouth and nose increase the volume of the vowels, with a lot of help from the tongue. For example when our tongue moves up to the palate, we create the high "ee" sound. If we move it down, we form the "a" in "bat". The lips help with diphthongs and consonants, closing off the passage of air a split second before it escapes from the mouth, forming sounds like "b" in "bat". When they work in concert with the tongue, they form diphthongs like "th" in "think".

     This finely tuned voice mechanism is useless without a receiver to match. Of all animals, only humans have a brain with all the following requisite abilities: to register different sounds, to connect a particular sensory input with another (for instance, connecting the word "cat" with the sight of the cat, the sound of its meow, the feel of its fur), to analyse the meaning of words based on learned words; to transfer words to the area of the brain that controls the face, mouth and throat muscles.

     But most importantly, no other species has the ability to create unlimited amounts of information with a limited number of sound codes. Just take the linguists' favourite, "Dog bites man" and "Man bites dog". The sentences contain the same sounds, but the different sequences of the sounds make one statement fairly dull and the other highly unusual. This ability to use a handful of codes to manipulate events precisely in the minds of listeners is the true miracle of language.

     * * *

     THE POWER OF THE WORD

     Advertisers, Dictators, Healers and Leaders All Blind Us by Language. Words Aren't Straightforward Items of Information: They Always Say More than You Think

     Whether we like it or not, we live our lives under the spell of language. We stay up past midnight, mesmerised by a new novel. We fall blindly for ads touting new, improved toothpaste or new imported beers. We vote for politicians who promise to save everything from aardvarks to zebras and reduce our taxes in the process. And we grudgingly agree to take out the rubbish, do our homework, or perhaps buy new curtains for the sitting room, just to get some peace and quiet.

     Language is both a blessing and a curse. Without it, we couldn't share and receive information vital to our existence. But it also has a further, powerful dimension, as a tool of persuasion. Through clever use of language, people make us do, say or think what they want. They employ many tried and tested techniques. And much of the time, they're more successful than you'd like to believe.

     The reason language has such a strong influence on us is not simply that we are pushovers. Language, especially the written word, exerts a strange, almost supernatural pull. Even thousands of years after we discovered language, we still unconsciously feel that if a thought is spoken or put in print, it somehow assumes greater significance.

     The earliest recorded incident of people using language as a tool of supernatural power comes from the Israelite tribe five thousand years ago. Each year, they would gather around a goat and speak aloud the sins committed during the past year. Thus cursed with the sins of the tribe, the goat was banished into the sweltering desert to sacrifice itself on behalf of the tribe-- hence the contemporary expression, "scapegoat".

     A few thousand years later, Teutonic tribes--including the early English--inscribed curses onto pieces of wood and slipped them into the huts of intended victims. The written words were somehow imbued with evil power, and the unfortunate tribesman would soon meet a sudden death. In all probability, if the tribesman knew he had been cursed, his fear of the sorcerer would, in itself, lead to ill-health.

     And today, people still believe fiercely in the power of words. Religious faith healers use this power to impress their followers and induce miraculous recoveries. Instead of quietly laying hands on afflicted limbs, they call out prayers to create a sense of mystique and mass-suggestion. Equally, we try not to use four-letter words although these are merely a collection of letters, not a presence imbued with some sort of power. And among the Comanche Indians of North America, elders still hesitate to teach non-Comanches their language. If outsiders know the language, the old tradition goes, they will achieve power over the tribe.

     Among the tribes--or subcultures--of modern society, language is still used as a code to achieve a sense of domination over other tribes. Just think back to your last visit to the doctor. Chances are he used words you didn't understand, even though he knew you wouldn't. By using such obtuse jargon, doctors --as well as lawyers, politicians, investment bankers and other white-collar specialists--try to convey an almost supernatural level of skill and competence.

     Of course, codes are also used in other levels of society. Criminals have always had a code of their own to prevent their plans from being overheard by guardians of the law. In South America, one code involves reversing words and saying them quickly. A French criminal code places an "av" before all vowels, and a German code repeats each syllable a second time, replacing the first letter of the repeated syllable with "b".

     During times of national intrigue and war, codes are essential for strategic purposes. Mary, Queen of Scots, was beheaded when one of Elizabeth's courtiers intercepted and decoded secret messages she was sending to her co-conspirator, Anthony Babbington. Napoleon is said to have lost at Leipzig and Waterloo because he used codes so complicated his commanders couldn't decipher them correctly. And the US Navy was able to crush the Japanese fleet at Midway during World War II because they had broken the Japanese "purple" code.

     In times of war, governments also try to influence and confound the public, both in their own and in enemy countries. The various language techniques used to control the public fall under the term propaganda. Propaganda is known these days as "public information", which is in itself an excellent example of a euphemism--one of the two main tools of propagandists. The other important tool is emotional language, which is used to directly influence the public's opinion about the enemy.

     One of the most successful emotional slogans of all times is "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite", which Republicans used in the French Revolution. In America during World War I, Americans renamed sauerkraut "liberty cabbage" and hamburgers "Salisbury steaks" to distance themselves emotionally from the Germans. And during World War II, Winston Churchill's speeches did wonders for the spirit of the Allies. Most people still remember his famous, "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat".

     Today, war is often presented as a scientific, rational act, hence euphemistic terms such as "surgical strikes", "defoliation" and "neutralise" used during the Vietnam and Gulf wars. But even as early as the 1930s, Stalin slaughtered millions in the Soviet Union under the legitimate-sounding guise of "eliminating counter-revolutionary tendencies". In World War II, Hitler's "Final Solution" was a masterpiece of propaganda, reducing the slaughter of millions to a mathematical exercise.

     The euphemism is also an important tool in advertising. Just look around for the euphemisms in use every day: people are not fat, they are "full-figured", "large", or "weight-watchers". They don't smell, they have "body odour". They are not old, they are "senior citizens" in their "golden years". They don't fly second class, they fly "coach". They don't buy second-hand, they buy "pre-owned".

     Euphemisms aren't restricted to the English-speaking world. The Swedish government once attempted to rename welfare recipients "paid consumers", but withdrew the proposal after general ridicule. In France, a vendor of hot roasted chestnuts is l'hirondelle d'hiver, "the swallow of the winter". In Italy, a maid is a collaboratrice familiare, "family collaborator", or colf for short.

     Advertising has introduced yet another linguistic concept designed to turn our heads: power words. Decades of practical experience have taught advertising professionals that we tend to fall for certain words, no matter how many times we have heard them before. The list varies depending on who's compiling the list, but it includes at least the following eight: "new", "improved", "time-tested", "doctor recommended", "miracle" and "now". Most of the advertisements you read every day probably contain at least one of these words--just check for yourself.

     Along with euphemism, propaganda and jargon, these power words hold us unconsciously in their grip, cajoling us into acting or thinking a certain way. George Orwell wrote in his classic 1984 about a new language with a limited, controlled vocabulary invented by the government of the future. This language, Newspeak, was intended to make "...a heretical thought --that is, a thought diverging from the principles of [the official ideology]--literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words." Although Orwell's vision of 1984 has not yet come to pass, he knew that language exerts more power over us than we'd like to admit.

     * * *

     GNALSKCAB--BACKSLANG AND CODED WORDS

     Popular among children, criminals and shopkeepers across the world, secret languages come in a variety of bizarre forms. BACKSLANG inverts words, so prefect becomes tceferp and stupid becomes piduts. In CENTRE SLANG the front and back of the words are swapped, and another syllable added--so horrible becomes ibblehoer and Latin is inlater. AYGO-PAYGO speech adds the same extra syllable to each word, eg: Geget rigid ogof thigis cugustogomeger, wigill yugou (Get rid of this customer, will you). In PIG LATIN the first consonants are put at the end of the word and "ay" or "e" added, eg Vehay youay theay uffstay? (Have you got the stuff?). In the less common T'ING IN I, or TALKING IN INITIALS, some words are replaced by their first letters, so, she's a very pretty girl becomes: she's a v p g. Examples of many of these can be found in many languages. For example in Panama, there is a form of Pig Latin and Aygo-Paygo where "pp" or "r" is inserted. And Backslang has been recorded in French, Javanese and Thai.

     * * *

     HOW THE VERBAL MANIPULATORS HIDE THE TRUTH

     PROPAGANDA: euphemisms, power words and, especially, appeals to the emotions (commonly nationalistic): propaganda uses all the same tricks as advertising and can be equally effective.

     JARGON: "...a lien on the goods is asserted and all conditions shall apply thereto." Confused? You should be. It is in the interest of all specialist professionals to confuse everyone with obscure terms.

     POWER WORDS: two magic words, "good" and "new" are used twice as much as any other adjective in advertising. Among other favourites are "fresh", "delicious", "special", "easy", "clean" and "wonderful".

     * * *

     MAKING IT SMELL OF ROSES: THE EUPHEMISM

     The uncomfortable or unremarkable can be disguised with that handiest of linguistic sleights-of-hand, the euphemism.

     PASSING AWAY--dying
     RE-EDUCATION--brainwashing
     COLLATERAL DAMAGE--killing the people who get in the way
     SURGICAL STRIKE--killing the right people
     FRIENDLY FIRE-- killing the wrong people entirely
     DISENGAGEMENT--hasty retreat
     I'M VERY BUSY AT THE MOMENT--I don't like you
     COMFORT STATION--lavatory
     DOWNSIZING--sacking people
     ATHLETIC SUPPORTER--jockstrap
     SLOW--stupid
     INTERESTING--horrid
     UNUSUAL--tasteless
     LOOSE BOWELS--diarrhoea
     DIFFERENTLY ABLED--disabled
     ADJUST YOUR DRESS--do up your trouser zip
     FUNDAMENT--buttocks
     EXPECTORATE--spit
     DOWN BELOW--genitals
     FOOTWEAR MAINTENANCE ENGINEER--shoeshine boy
     UNWELL--hung over
     LARGER--fat
     GOING FREELANCE--being sacked

     * * *

     6000 WAYS TO SAY YES

     The Number of Different Languages Is Staggering, Yet Some People Say They Can All Be Traced to One Mother Tongue

     Chances are, you don't talk quite like your grandparents did. Every day you use words that didn't exist in their time, such as "computer" and "sustainable development". They in turn used phrases that have now disappeared or changed sense. When did you last hear a farmer call for his "villain" instead of his farmhand, or a friend going out to buy a "wireless"?

     Such change is one of the defining characteristics of language. After all, language is an intellectual construct, which means there are unlimited ways to get the point across. No wonder, then, that mankind eventually developed the 6000 or so current languages. But did they develop independently from each other? Probably not. Many linguists agree that all languages stem from an original Mother Tongue. As people migrated, they formed new cultures and, eventually, languages.

     But some languages were lost. Warring tribes subjugated other tribes and forced them to speak their tongue. In Europe during the Middle Ages, for instance, the Magyar language brought by invaders from Russia displaced the original language of early Hungarians and Finns.

     Most commonly, however, languages changed as they came into peaceful contact with others. This usually occurred as a result of trade, or when tribes outgrew their territories and settled among neighbouring tribes. During the Viking invasions and early Middle Ages, Old English absorbed so many words and phrases from Norman French, Gaelic and Norse that it was virtually transformed into a new tongue. To modern readers, 1000-year-old texts in Old English seem just as foreign as Norwegian.

     Failing such a wholesale convergence, people often resorted to a language everyone knew, but which was not native to anyone. This language, known as a lingua franca, was usually a major international tongue such as Swahili in East Africa, and Bazaar Malay and Indonesian in the Far East. By far the largest and most common lingua franca today is English, spoken daily by about 450 million people and as a second language by an additional 400 million.

     English achieved this position through British colonial expansion, and through America's cultural influence this century. In Nigeria it is the official language by default: the country has 400 languages and a decision to impose any one of them as an official language might provoke war; when the Indian government chose Hindi as the official language in 1965, the Dravidian- speaking south erupted in riots.

     Lingua francas are no more static than any other language. In fact they can quickly change as some speakers introduce words from their own languages, simplify the grammar to make it easier to learn, and modify the pronunciation. When this happens, it turns into a pidgin language. And if this language eventually replaces the former native tongue of its speakers, it becomes known as a creole.

     There are hundreds of examples of such pidgin languages, including a Russian-Chinese pidgin used in the Siberian border areas from the 18th to the 20th century, and a pidgin created by Inuits and Alaskan Indians a century ago. But again, pidgins and creoles composed of English interspersed with words from native languages--such as the Melanesian New Guinean pidgin--are the most common.

     Still, pidgin languages and creoles are relatively recent phenomena. The original tribal tongues only changed when families migrated and became separated from each other. Linguists speculate that this process, known as linguistic divergence, is a fairly predictable and stable one and thus can be used to date an original language. In one study at the University of California, linguists compared the grammatical structures of 200 languages and determined that it would take about 100,000 years for one language to diverge into the current 300 language families.

     This figure correlates nicely with archaeological evidence pointing to the emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens the same number of years ago. Geneticists also support the thesis. They find, for instance, that the genetic difference between Africans and other races is greater than it is between any other two population groups, which supports the theory that the move out of Africa was the first migration, and the first linguistic divergence.

     These divergences can be played in reverse. By comparing old, stable words in different languages--such as words for relatives and common animals--linguists can extrapolate the original language from which these languages diverged. For instance, most European languages, as well as Sanskrit, Persian and other Near East languages, can be seen to stem from one proto-language.

     Similarities between current-day languages are obvious, which enables us to group languages in language families and sub- groups. Sanskrit, Afghan and Hindi, for instance, have a common Indo-Iranian progenitor. Norwegian and German grew out of Germanic, while Breton, Welsh and Irish come from Celtic. When you compare words from these different language groups--say, Sanskrit, Irish and Greek--you'll also find many obvious similarities: the Sanskrit for brother, for instance, bhrater, is virtually the same as the Irish brathir and the Greek phrater.

     From this point on, however, things get dicey. Most linguists hesitate to compare the reconstructed Indo-European tongue with other hypothetical proto-languages, but some researchers believe they have recreated a proto-language from which Indo-European diverged around about 15,000 years ago: Nostratic. Composed of the proto-languages Uralic, Afro-Asiatic, Altaic and Indo-European, Nostratic is one giant limb on the proverbial language tree--and theoretically a direct descendant of the original Mother Tongue.

     While the proto-languages changed at a truly glacial pace, today languages change virtually overnight. New words are coined each week by scientists and pundits, foreign terms are beamed into our house each day on TV, and languages disappear as children learn creoles or lingua francas instead of their mother tongue. But this constant ability to change and adapt to our needs is what makes language such a remarkable and uniquely human ability.

     * * *

     THE LANGUAGE FROM NOWHERE: The one million Basque-speakers who live on the French/Spanish border speak a tongue unrelated to any other. It only bears vague similarities to some Asian languages

     DOOMED TONGUES: American Indians are among many people around the world who are losing their language. In protest at the effects of Western society on the younger generation, some elders refuse to pass it on

     A COMMON LANGUAGE: Limited by their own little-known languages, many small cultures use more widely spoken languages, or lingua francas, to communicate with other cultures. An example is Swahili, used in East Africa

     KEEPING ENGLISH OUT: In an attempt to keep French pure, French authorities have banned many English words. However le bulldozer has slipped through the net and countless other English words are commonly spoken

     * * *

     HOW WORLDS BETRAY US OVER THE CENTURIES

     Words change. Over time, irregular verbs become regular--the old Anglo-Saxon verb, helpan, to help, had holpen as a past particle, but by the 14th century this became helped. Equally, meanings change, sometimes in the space of one generation. Here are some examples of English words followed by their former meanings:

     NAUGHTY--worthless
     TAXATION--fault finding
     CHEATER--rent collector
     PRESTIGIOUS--deceitful
     PRETTY--ingenious
     TREACLE--wild animal
     VULGAR--ordinary
     SLY--wise
     VILLAIN--farm labourer

     * * *

     ALL TALKING WITH A SINGLE VOICE?

     Languages Are Dying Out Even as We Speak...And One Universal Language Might Be the Result. Would This Bring Peace--Or Just a World with Only One Way of Looking at Things?

     More than anything else, language shapes the way we view people. Try to remember the last time you heard French spoken. Perhaps you passed a group of French-speaking tourists clustered in front of Parliament, or you sat next to them on a ferry to Calais. Even though you didn't know them, you probably instantly formed an opinion about their personalities, based on your view of the French language. Likewise, the time you overheard snatches of Russian or perhaps Japanese as you sauntered through the Grand Place in Brussels or Hyde Park, you unconsciously labelled the Russians and the Japanese with cultural stereotypes.

     But in all likelihood your stereotypes wouldn't have fitted the individuals you so briefly encountered. Indeed, the tourists speaking French might have been Belgians or Canadians; those speaking Russian might have been diehard Lithuanians; and the ones speaking Japanese might have been second generation Chileans speaking Japanese for the benefit of a distant relative from Tokyo.

     Nevertheless, according to many linguists, our language does speak volumes about us. The existence of certain words, phrases and grammatical constructions in a particular language influences the way speakers of that language perceive the world, and thus colours their outlook on life. Each language has its own personality, what the Germans call Sprachgefuhl, or "speech- feeling", which limits its speakers to a certain mode of thought. According to this linguistic school, it's not genes or culture but Sprachgefuhl, that sets the French apart from the Finns, and the Russians from the Rumanians

     Is Sprachgefuhl a good thing? Would the world be better off if we all spoke the same language? The prevailing view of our Western, Judaeo-Christian heritage is--yes. Just remember the Biblical analogy of the Tower of Babel, which holds that God forced people to speak with many tongues in order to reduce their power. During centuries of colonialism, hundreds of European missionaries and colonial administrators cajoled or forced Third World people into abandoning their languages. Such homogenising of world languages continues today, as many countries--such as India with its many native tongues--see a common language as a prerequisite for progress.

     As a result of such policies, languages are dying. Of the world's 6000 or so tongues, half will disappear during the next century. More pessimistic estimates hold that only about 200 languages, those protected as official languages or spoken by more than one million people, will survive until 2100 AD. The languages that are expected to die include most of the 1000 languages spoken in New Guinea--the majority of which are as different from each other as Chinese is from English--the 250 aboriginal Australian tongues, the 1000 American Indian languages, the 105 tongues spoken on the tiny Pacific island of Vanuatu, and the 160 in the Philippines. Most of these are languages spoken by less than 1000 people; some, such as the Native American language Wikchamni, once spoken in California, have only one speaker left.

     History, of course, shows that fewer languages doesn't necessarily mean fewer wars. Some of the worst bloodshed has occurred between and within nations with similar or identical languages. A common language didn't stop the American Civil War, the bloodletting in Northern Ireland and Lebanon, the slaughter of Khmer-speaking Cambodians by other Khmer-speaking Cambodians during the regime of Pol Pot, or the vicious fighting that continues between Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosnians, all of whom speak Serbo-Croat.

     What history doesn't show is how this incredible diversity of languages came about. Most linguists speculate that as people migrated to new areas of the world, their language changed as they adjusted to their new environment. Indeed, the expressions used for natural phenomena, and the technology and methods designed to relate to and manipulate the environment, offer the most striking differences between languages.

     The various Inuit (Eskimo) words for ice provide a popular example. Depending on how many peripheral terms are included, there are more than 17 such terms, including uguruguzak, the beginning stage of ice on water; maullik, slush ice; pogazak, slush ice formed along the edges of ice floes or cracks; migalik, circular pieces of young ice; and salogok, a thin, black membrane of young ice. At the other extreme, the Arabic word for water, kharir, means "the sweet sound of water falling gently upon water", and indicates the reverence with which Arabs hold that rare commodity. And in many New Guinean languages, dozens of words distinguish between different types of cordilyne leaves: one type is useful for dressmaking, another for decoration, some for magic, and so on.

     But what about theoretical concepts, including words for attitudes, feelings and world-views? There are thousands of examples of terms for states of mind that only exist in some languages and not in others. Did these unique words spring from the philosophy of each population--or did the existence of these words serve to mould the people into what they are today?

     Take some existentialist terms: the Mandarin Chinese word ta means to understand a situation so well that you can take it in your stride. If you lost your job or a sale but had ta, you wouldn't fret about it but see the event as part of a larger pattern of life. Likewise, those lucky few with a grasp of the Chinese term tao have a type of wisdom that cannot be explained by mere words, a sort of inner conviction that governs their entire life. Everything and everybody is tao and part of tao, from the drift of the galaxies to the ridged patterns of sand on the seashore, and to live is to try to comprehend your place in this existence.

     In Sanskrit, meanwhile, the concept of dharma means to be yourself, to follow your path. It conveys your search for the essential truth of existence, and the practices you need to follow to realise it. In the aboriginal Australian language Aranda, the term altjiranga mitjina describes a timeless dimension of dreams, a state of consciousness when eternity, the life of your ancestors and the dreamtime are the same. And in Hebrew, the word davka expresses the inexplicable reasons some things happen the way they do: why does it rain the day you forgot your umbrella? Davka.

     Other terms unknown in English cover interpersonal relationships. Take the Tierra del Fuegan word mamihlapinatapei, listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's most succinct word. It is defined as the act of "looking into each other's eyes, each hoping that the other will initiate what both want to do but neither chooses to commence". Meanwhile among the Native American Iroquois people, the term ondinnonk denotes the soul's innermost benevolent desires, the angelic part of our nature that gives us the sudden, unconscious desire to do a good deed. And in Japan the term nemawashi describes the gaining of a consensus to avoid strife before a meeting is held--a reflection of Japanese culture where harmony comes before all else.

     A final category of words covers our relationships and attitudes towards the natural world. One is hozh'q, a term in the Native American Navajo language which means "beauty as a way of looking at life". To "walk in beauty" connotes a harmony with your surroundings, a peace that grows within you and colours your life. In French, a bricoleur is a person who creates something by tinkering around without a plan, and who relies on intuition in his relationship to the world. And in German, Gestalten and Zwischenraum, respectively, are admirably succinct terms for all the little things that make up the whole, and the space between these things. They imply a systematic approach to existence, a view of life as integrated structures rather than disconnected parts.

     This leaves us with the ultimate linguistic question: will learning such terms bestow on us some sort of innate knowledge and worldview that the English language has failed to instil in us? Can we share the inner peace of the Chinese and Navajo if we understand the terms ta and hozh'q? Can we learn to tap into our ondinnonk and emulate the generosity of the Iroquois? Will Germans be more intuitive if they learn the French bricoleur, and the French more systematically inclined if they absorb Gestalten and Zwischenraum? We will probably never know the answer. Ultimately, all we know is: our language allows us to formulate our own worldviews. And that is a gift all humans share.

     * * *

     AN EASY ANSWER TO A DIVIDED WORLD?

     Esperanto, devised in 1887 by Dr. Lazarus Ludwig Zamenhof of Warsaw, has proved the most successful of the hundreds of artificial languages. It is very easy to learn; all grammar rules are consistent and a small number of root words can be expanded into a wide vocabulary using suffixes and prefixes. For example, the word for "chain" is ceno while "link" is cenero. "Rain" is pluvo and "downpour" is pluvego. "Rooster" is koko and "hen" is kokino. The French Academy of Sciences has called the language "a masterpiece of logic and simplicity". Despite over a million speakers, the language is under pressure from the English language and from those who object to it because of its East European background.