Talk, Talk

by E. L. Konigsburg

  The English language has more borrowed words than any other language—just like the borrowed cuisines in the restaurants of any large American city. English has a larger vocabulary than any other language—one-third larger than French, I believe—and that, too, is American. Bigness is American.

  English is vigorous because of its peasant roots. Take the matter of food. It is calf on the hoof, but veal on the table. Ox in the pasture, beef on the table. Sheep in the meadow, mutton on the table. Calf, ox, and sheep are all of Old English derivation; veal, beef, and mutton are from the Old French. The peasants handled it on the hoof; the Normans at table. House comes from Old English; mansion from the French. That part of the English language derived from its less refined sources is not only rougher but more colorful, too. Just like the American people. Gut is a word with more punch than intestine. Gut is of Middle English derivation and so is groan, and so is groin. And so, too, are many of our more famous four-lettered words. Both the f-word and the sh-word derive from the Anglo-Saxon.

  I love the English language. I think we should consider ourselves lucky to have it as our native tongue.

  Where would we be without it?

  But worse, where would we be without language altogether?

  The Pyramids, the smile of the Mona Lisa, say many things to many people, but when people want to tell you what they mean, or how they got there, they resort to language.

  Man is the only species to have a culture, and he has a culture only because he has a language.

  It is language that separates man from beast, and it all started with Adam. God did not name the animals. He let Adam do it. Genesis, chapter 2, verses 19 and 20:

  … the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them; and whatsoever the man would call every living creature, that was to be the name thereof. And the man gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field.

  Other animals can have a tradition—rats transmit to one another a knowledge of poisons; a monkey can teach all of his relatives and friends how to clean potatoes and even how to salt them by dipping them into salt water. He can teach a whole population how to salt potatoes, but his transmission of that knowledge is dependent upon the presence of the potato and the salt water. The monkey can show, but he cannot tell.

  He cannot tell because he does not have the gift of language.

  Mark Twain said, “I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because He was disappointed in the monkey.” I believe God invented man because She wanted someone to talk to.

  Man may be a naked ape. Certainly, he is that. But that is not all he is. He is more. The ape is surely in man, but man is nowhere at all in the ape. Because the ape does not have language, and man does. Words as symbols, words as servants of conceptual thinking, belong to man and to man alone. Not to the ape, not to the elephant, not to your cocker spaniel who can let you know he wants to go out and can let you know when he is hungry. Language does not even belong to the parrot who can say she wants a cracker. Polly may say she wants a cracker, but she is like that word processor sitting on top of my desk at home; she has been programmed to say she wants one, and she does not know—any more than my PC knows—what the hell she is asking for.

  Hell is another good four-lettered Anglo-Saxon word.

  Polly has the words, but she does not have language. Contrast Polly with Marlee Matlin. When Marlee Matlin, who is deaf, wanted to tell a television audience how she felt about winning an Oscar for her performance in Children of a Lesser God, she used sign language. The following year when she was presenting an award, she spoke, but her first communication was every bit as moving and successful as her second because in both cases—signing and speaking—she used the symbols of language.

  Language makes it possible to maintain a tradition independent of environment. We can tell our children how to salt a potato because we have a word symbol for salt and for potato and action verbs to tell what to do with each.

  With language something new came into the world: immortality of thought and immortality of knowledge.

  An entire race can perish, but their culture-their recipe for salting potatoes—can stay alive in libraries. We can see Stonehenge, but we must guess at how it got there and why. Because stones are not words. Stonehenge remains much more isolated in our collective cultural consciousness than the Pyramids—which were built at the same time. Why? Because we have no words to connect the builders’ philosophy with their temple. But in the Pyramids there are indeed sermons in stones, and archaeologists have uncovered the language that keeps the thought and the philosophy behind them alive. And that is why the Bible, the Old Testament, has been a more pervasive monument than either the Pyramids or Stonehenge: it is made of material stronger and more durable and more portable than stone—language.

  It is language that truly reflects a nation.

  On a recent return flight from Australia, I found a magazine called ITA that is published in Australia. In it appeared an article about a young woman named Heather Glass, who spent four years at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and who became a language consultant for her state government. Japan is Australia’s principal trading partner. In the short article, Heather is quoted: “The Japanese have no word for truth. They say: ‘Don’t do that, you’ll be seen,’ rather than ‘don’t do that, it’s wrong.’”

  I was shocked. When I read, “The Japanese have no word for truth,” I asked myself, Have we sold Rockefeller Center to a nation that has no word for truth? Is Saks Fifth Avenue now owned by a people who do not know a true Louis Vuitton bag from a fake? Has Hollywood, our chief maker of images, sold out to a nation that has no word for truth? I couldn’t believe that a whole society exists, can possibly exist, without a word for truth. In a court of law, don’t the Japanese swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? How can a nation exist without a word for a concept that is at the core of our system of justice? Truth is more than the core; it is the whole apple.

  So I wrote to Mrs. Okamoto, the woman who translates some of my books into Japanese. I sent her a copy of the article, and I asked, “Can it be true that the Japanese have no word for truth?” How’s that for asking a dumb question? Isn’t that a lot like shouting to a person who cannot hear?

  Mrs. Okamoto answered by return mail. Here is part of her letter:

  As for your question ... I understand what you say about the word ‘the truth’ and we Japanese do have the word the truth. I don’t know why this person Heather says such ridiculous thing!! … we have the belief and thought and idea and conception and words for THE TRUTH! SHINJITSU, or SHIRI, or MAKOTO etc. How can we live without the truth??! I even feel angry when I read the part—They say: ‘Don’t do that, you’ll be seen,’ rather than ‘Don’t do that, it’s wrong.’That’s wrong!!! Big mistake!! I think it’s almost insulting Japanese. We believe that if we do something wrong, even if nobody knows or sees, we must go to Hell after the death!! Believe me, please!

  Mrs. Okamoto’s defense against the assassination attempt made on the Japanese character by Heather Glass is heated and righteous. Language can join nations or separate them. Language is not just a tool of the writing trade; in politics and business, it can be a lethal weapon. A hundred years ago, Oscar Wilde said, “We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.”

  In his New York magazine review (April 29, 1991) of Daddy Nostalgia, a movie in which Dirk Bogarde plays the title character, a spoiled British businessman who has fallen ill, David Denby cites a particular scene where Daddy Nostalgia says to his daughter that life was “sweeter when there was servants.” I noted that he was not quoted as saying that life was “sweeter when there were servants” but “when there was servants.”

  Doesn’t that tell you something about that man? Doesn’t that tell you that to this upper-middle-class Englishman, servants were not individual
s? Isn’t he saying that to him servants was a class? That second singular verb— life was sweeter when there was servants—tell us that to Daddy Nostalgia, they were not faces, they was a service.

  I cannot imagine a do-it-yourself American erasing the individual and saying life was sweeter when there was servants. An American would say, “Life was sweeter when there were servants.” And then he would quickly add that he paid his full share of the Social Security taxes for each of those individuals.

  What was true for Oscar Wilde a hundred years ago is still true today. The differences between British English and American English reflect some of the differences between us, for language does reflect the culture of a nation.

  Consider some words that other nations have that we do not. The Italians, for example, have a word, culaccino, for the wet ring left by a wineglass on a table. Does that tell us something about what matters to the Italians?

  The Germans, on the other hand, have a word, schadenfreude, that means taking delight in the misfortune of others. We may all do it, but in English we are not so proud of it as to have a word for it.

  In Yiddish, the language that rose out of the ghettos and shtetls of eastern Europe, where families that prayed together stayed together, there arose a word that reflects their—dare I say?—life-style. The word is machatonim. Machatonim is the Yiddish word for the relationship between your parents and your spouse’s parents. When I got married, my mother and my mother-in-law became related. They became machatonim. When your children marry, you acquire machatonim. Their in-laws are your machatonim. Machatonim is a cozy puppy of a word; it is a word that reflects the importance of the extended family in Jewish ghetto life. Isn’t it wonderful to have a single word that expresses a complex relationship? Machatonim. I would like to give you that word today. But be careful. Be careful before you accept. Because if you accept this word, it is a lot like accepting the gift of a puppy. You will have to deal with it; your life will change. When you adopt a word from another culture, a word that reflects another culture, it begins to shape yours.

  We adopted croissant, and our menus changed. We adopted glasnost, and our thinking about the Soviet Union changed. If you accept the gift of machatonim, you will have a degree of awareness that you have not had before. And that is because language certainly does reflect culture—not only of a nation but of an individual—but it also defines culture, and therein lies a responsibility. If you have a word for the parents of your child’s in-laws, for the relationship between your parents and your parents-in-law you will think about them more. You may even think about them differently.

  Our way of using language actually influences our view of the world. It shapes our thinking, and that shapes our culture. There are evenings when I sit in the bathtub feeling sorry for adjectives. In a few years, I think they will be whittled down to two: Jantastic and unbelievable for adults and neat and gross for kids … unless, of course, you are discussing wine.

  “Smooth, concentrated and well behaved,” said a recent New York Times review of a California wine. Another connoisseur declared the same wine to have a “full luscious bouquet with an intense finish.” Yet another found it “harsh and discordant on the palate with an astringent nose.”

  I feel sorry for the verbs ruminate, saunter, and warble. I believe that people in our society no longer ruminate or saunter or warble because we’ve forgotten the words for them. I sincerely feel that if we could resurrect the word lullaby, we would stand a good chance of hearing one on MTV.

  A few years ago, my local paper ran an article under the headline “Audiences Find Howie Mandel a Real Scream” (Florida Times-Union; July 21, 1986, syndicated article by Larry McShane). It begins like this:

  When words escape Howie Mandel, he screams—at the top of his lungs. “When I’m screaming, there’s absolutely nothing else in my head,” admits the off-the-wall comedian, whose new concert album … opens with a sequence of Howie howling. “People think the scream is funny, but I’m screaming because I’m standing in front of a lot of people with nothing to say.”

  Maybe Howie Mandel can act, but he can’t talk. When he appears on talk shows, it becomes obvious that if a writer, someone who knows how to use language, has not given him something to say, there’s absolutely nothing in his head. What if, instead of a scream, he had a few words in his head, then a random thought might form. And that thought just might be worth listening to. Just might be funny. Who does he think he is? Asking people to pay money for a record to hear a sequence of his screaming? Since when is a scream a substitute for wit?

  People quote Woody Allen: “I am not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

  People still quote Groucho Marx: “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member.”

  Who will quote Howie Mandel? The expression is: you have to be there. Isn’t his scream like the monkey salting potatoes, something he can communicate only to members of his audience? I hope that like the boy who yelled wolf, Howie will scream once too often, and people will simply stop listening.

  Can you think about any concept if you don’t have the word for it? Try to think about making brownies without words. Now, try to think about privacy or conformity or loyalty without thinking about the words for those concepts. If we have a word for something, our thoughts about it are clearer. Words define our thinking. And that’s the truth.

  When language gets sloppy, thinking gets sloppy.

  Don’t knock good sentence structure to me.

  Don’t tell me that Winston tastes good like a cigarette should. That commercial should have been banned for its bad effect on grammar long before it was banned for its bad effect on health. Can you see where it has taken us? We do it like you’d do it when we do it like you’d do it at Burger King. I passed a Village Inn on State Road 13 that had a huge banner proclaiming that they served Breakfast Like You Like It. Surely, this world would be a sadder and less magical place if William Shakespeare had taken us to Arden Forest in a play called Like You Like It.

  In one of my books, Up From Jericho Tel, a character in the story by the name of Tallulah says, “Never have a long conversation with anyone who says ‘between you and I.’” Another time Tallulah says, “Always use good grammar. It’s like wearing designer clothing. People may not like your style, but they will pay attention to the cut of your cloth.”

  Listen to John Simon’s review of Miss Saigon (New York, April 22, 1991):

  Though the surface sound is vaguely with-it and tough, underneath is … the fake gentility of our composer’s … comment about a news photo … showing a child being snatched from a Vietnamese mother: “This photograph was, for Alain and I, the start of everything.” That ghastly genteelism … “for Alain and I,” tells it all: Miss Saigon is a show for people who say ‘for you and I,’ but not for me.

  Let me give you another example of how language actually influences our view of the world.

  There was once a boy who could not begin a sentence without repeating the initial sound or syllable in it. This boy had a wise father who told everyone in the household to listen to the child as if he spoke as normally as they did. Friends were asked to cooperate, and when the youngster started kindergarten, the father went to the teacher and asked that she do the same. The teacher replied that the school had a speech therapy program that would help a stutterer.

  And the wise father said, “No, thank you. I don’t want him put in therapy. I don’t want him called a stutterer. If he has no word for it, he can’t think of himself as one.”

  The teacher cooperated, and so did friends. Even relatives did. And the little boy said to me once when he was about ten years old, “You know, Mom, I used to have trouble saying some sounds. Like at the beginning of a sentence, I would go I-I-I-I-I. That was a funny kind of baby talk.”

  At a critical time, that son of mine did not have the word, the language tool, to identify himself as a stutterer, and so he never feared being one, and he is n
ot one. Today he is a happy and successful man and the father of two of my five perfect grandchildren.

  Think about how language shapes reality for the farmer. A farmer has a whole vocabulary of words for soil. In a single acre he can find combinations of silt, sand, clay, loam and gravel to which he assigns a whole poetry of names. Whereas he sees silt-loam as Kendaia and gravelly silt-loam as Honeoye, we see only dirt.

  Don’t tell me that everyone is entitled to “their” opinion, and don’t tell me any athlete or rock star or TV star who says “you know” four times in a single sentence deserves to be listened to. Don’t tell me that. Because when I hear such groping, sloppy speech, I know that it is the result of sloppy thinking, and furthermore, I know—and I can’t make this point strongly enough—such sloppy speech causes sloppy thinking.

  Language, then, is not only our link to a whole cultural past, it also shapes the way we see the present. But when one writes for children, one must also consider something else—the future. All writing for children is, in a sense, writing for the future.

  A child is, in a sense, a stranger to even his own language. When an adult writes for children, she is writing as one who is living somewhere within the language pattern of culture, and she is writing for someone who is standing on its edge. So, as an adult writing for children, I must have my language reflect a culture, but I must also allow my language to be a tool that pokes holes in its hard outer edge. I want my books to let my readers move—saunter— a little bit deeper inside the pattern. I want them to be aware of other scenes, to ruminate on other thoughts, other kinds of soil.

  Upon hearing a French song, my daughter, Laurie, once said to me, “Listening to a song in a foreign language is like looking at an abstract painting.” She is right. Listening to a song in a foreign language is like looking at a painting where all the components—color, line, form—are familiar, but the pattern just doesn’t make sense.