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March 2005

THIS MONTH's THEME:

A World Language?

The limits of my language
are the limits of my universe

Ludvig Wittgenstein


A World Language?

I am focusing the more and more on global issues in my life, and consequently also in my blog.
This is happening because I feel very claustrophobic in the short-sighted frames of the local and national issues.
They distract us from what is becoming fundamental: a global compass.
I am trying to provide you with it, by my UnitedPeople , which is unfortunately very little visited, and I am not happy for that, as I consider it the most important part of all what I write.
So please, do pay it a visit if you haven't done it yet.

There is no doubt that globalisation is the phenomenon of our time.
One of its consequences is that we are travelling the more and more, and exchanging more and more wares through the national borders and even between continents.
So, how do we communicate? Which languages are we using most, and which will become more important and dominating in the future?
Is English meant to become this universal language, or Chinese or...?
Will dialects and languages spoken by few people disappear completely?
Are we going to create a new, universal world language?
I will try to answer these very important questions during this month of March 2005.


Kind of Darwinian linguistics

There has always been a dominance of politics, and power in general, about languages. If the world was based on global democracy and equality, than it would be natural that the most used languages internationally would be the ones spoken in the countries with the highest number of inhabitants, like China and India.
But that is not the case, English has become a kind of world language and it is very easy to understand why, historically.
It has been just a matter of colonialist dominance. Like with Spanish or other European languages.
The language of the fittest, one could say.

In the world, the number of people speaking English as a second language has outnumbered that of people speaking their mother tongue one in all countries. It is the first time in history this is the case.

And the Internet is accelerating this process. About 80% of all information on it is in English.

Is this global evolution fair, practical or desirable? What will happen with all other languages, and will English as we know it now, stay unchanged or evolve to a completely new language itself?


Linguistic biodiversity

We have seen the same pattern many times before: the global evolution as the product of rational decisions.
Humanity is shaping the world the more and more according to some of its practical needs. Forsaking the fact that those are only a limited part of the whole that is needed to maintain a certain balance.
We have seen that in biology, where Genetic Modified Organisms have been developed;
in nature, where modern agricultural methods have replaced the traditional ones;
in music with the shift to digital, and so on.
All these changes happened because there are some governments, lobbies, scientific communities, ideologies that believe they have the knowledge and the right to change the world according to some rational laws and/or material needs.
The problem is, they only take some factors into account, but the world is a whole, you can't just use what you need and forget about the rest. Because the rest is fundamental too. If you touch that, the whole world won't work any more. Not necessarily in the short run, but surely in the long run.

The same seems to happen about languages. On one side it seems practical and necessary to have a world language in such a globalised world, on the other side, the richness of thousands of local languages is steadily been lost, and with that invaluable cultures, societies, resources.

What to do then?
In my opinion the process of creating a world language is inevitable, and even desirable. I will write more about how that can happen in the most appropriate way.
At the same time, it is needed to preserve the local languages and even dialects. As usual, National borders are quite meaningless, and they have been responsible for many of the problems we have now.
National languages are artificial and stiff in comparison to dialects, and create borders in global communication.
So, I am basically proposing at least a bilingual education from birth. A local and a global language. Which is not a problem at all, scientific evidence has shown that, in fact, it is even desirable, as it enhances the brain possibilities.
Or a trilingual education, or even more.
That wouldn't be a problem, only an advantage, and would both preserve richness and diversity on one side, and the global needs for communication on the other.


False global

At present time there are already a few languages that pretend to be universal and the future of humanity.
The most evident is English.
Somehow it could be very practical to just adopt it as the world language we need.
But would that be fair?
Not really, as the fact that this language has become the most widespread doesn't depend so much on its features, but mostly on the fact that the nations speaking it have been dominating the world in a colonialist manner for long time.
There are also further reasons not to consider English as the ideal candidate.
For example, the fact that the pronunciation is difficult, as there is not an easy correspondence between the spoken words and the written ones. And there are some difficult sounds, like the 'th', that are not easy at all on many peoples in the world. Chinese, first of all, as they are one and a half billion and English is not easy at all for them.

Other languages are not natural languages, but have been created with the conscious goal of becoming a universal language.
One of the most famous is Esperanto.
I wouldn't mind it becoming the world language as it is very easy for me to learn, but the problem is that, again, it is Eurocentric (and then colonialist again) and it is nearly incredible that the people supporting it doesn't realize it, blinded by their undoubtedly good intentions.
A similar one is Interlingua , which has my sympathy, for its maccheroni kind of flavour. It sounds like what could come out of a meeting of a sleeping Spaniard, a drunken Italian, and a Romanian in love. Again, too latino-centric to be universal.

Where are world candidates that take tonal languages into account? Or African sounds or Aboriginal Australians and so on? What about Indians and Hindi or Sanskrit, the mother of all Indo-european languages?
Are they nothing worth, not even to be considered as sources for that desired world language, just because they are frightening many but with no power?
It should be about time all the world's linguists met and started to do some serious work about this issue.
For now, you have to be content with my spaghetti English.


Who is the enemy?

Just a pause off the language issue.
Yesterday something unbelievable happened in Iraq.
An Italian journalist was liberated after about one month of kidnapping. She is a passionate journalist, who was actually in Iraq to document what is going on there. A huge activation happened in Italy to save her life, with all kind of initiatives and an enormous demonstration in Rome, where about 2 to 5 hundred thousand people participated.
So, when the news about her liberation appeared there was an explosion of joy in Italy. But it lasted very short time as it was followed by the disconcerting news that she was nearly killed, and her liberator was killed and other people injured too. By who?
By American soldiers! Now, obviously everyone was alerted, so why did they shut wildly at her car with all that people inside? Why kept they on doing it for minutes as it seems?
The journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, as reported by her man, was told that the Americans would never let her get free alive?
Why? I really don't think that all this weird story can be explained by language problems.
This is the final proof that either there are a lot of strange and dirty things going on in Iraq, and that wouldn't be a big surprise.
Or that they really shoot at anything moving in Iraq.
Or that we are in the hands of a completely meaningless, absurd, psychotic world empire.
I let you choose what is worst.


The language one would use in such a day...

Yes, what a day. It started very well, a sunny day with the brightness of the snow still covering Copenhagen; a very nice mail in the inbox and the perspective of finishing my teaching job soon. But then, a series of bad news, enough to beat even the most enthusiastic mood.
When I went out to bike to work I couldn't find my bicycle, it was stolen! Unbelievable, who could do that? That bike was absolutely nothing worth, but all my life for me, I really can't live without it, and it is the worst moment to buy a new one, right now.
So, I guess you wouldn't like to hear the kind of language I would use in this special occasion.
I actually wanted to write a bit about Wittgenstein today, but it will have to wait for tomorrow, sorry, I need to sleep and get over it.


My proposal: Women's day every day

Yes, honestly, just the fact that we still need to even think about discrimination or violence or lack of respect for more than half the world's population!
And just look at the shameful events in Turkey today, where a demonstration for the women's rights has been repressed with a revolting violence, right while an envoy from the European Community was in Ankara for scrutinising the progresses made by Turkey in order to become a member of EU.
Now, who dares protest after that Italy was not expelled from the EU after the massacres in Genova, during the G8, in 2001?
This last episode in Turkey was disgusting, and only the last of a long and horrible series of repressions against women, but some things happening in that country are not so different from what happens in some other countries already member of EU.
Who protests against the infamous conditions of the prisoners in Italy, or against the racism and violation of civil rights in Denmark, or the proposal of separating white and black students in schools in the UK, or the discrimination of minorities in many other countries?
The list is long, but the important is to stress, once more, that it is time to respect universal rights anywhere, in stead of letting some nations do as they please, against their own citizens.


One word I can never spell: time

Due to the concluding part of my job and the stolen bike, that is delaying everything and making my life much more complicated than the infamous thief could ever have the fantasy to imagine (or take care of), I have been too busy to finally write about this month's stuff. The situation will be much better from tomorrow on, so do expect much more happening here than in the last times.
For the moment, good night to everyone (you know already I am a blogger, that is a journalist in pajama :)


Logic and shades

So, finally the situation is less stressed and I will have more time to dedicate to you faithful visitors.
Before I will finally write a bit about Wittgenstein, tomorrow, I would like to come back for a while to the whole world's battleground: Iraq.
It has very much to do with this theme, actually, as nowhere else the contrast between truth and hypocrisy, daily reality and official lies, poor every day needs and greedy international profits is so sharply evident as in Iraq.
This apocalyptic war makes us face the same problems we have in language, the difficult coexistence between the need for a logical and clear communication on one side, and the even stronger need for flexibility and creativity on the other.
The latter due to positive needs, like enriching and extending the capacity of the language to render very complex feelings or impressions or subjective intuitions and associations.
But also to negative needs, like keeping the language unclear and ambiguous enough to serve personal white or big lies, or collective ones in diplomacy, politics and so on.

Today this is particularly evident in the reports about an episode I mentioned in the last days: the mysterious kidnapping of an Italian journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, in Iraq and her liberation ended in tragedy, as her car was shot by American soldiers, injuring her and another diplomat and killing one of the most expert and respected agents from Italy, Nicola Calipari.
I can't go in details here about this story, but if you can read Italian there is a very good article: "Le due versioni del ministro" ["The Minister's two versions"] in today's LaRepubblica, by an outstanding journalist, really one of the few in that league, Giuseppe D'Avanzo, whose always thorough, detailed, logic and very clear language should be an example for all journalists.
Another one that is often interesting (and amusing) to read is Curzio Maltese, in the same newspaper. His article is titled "Il trionfo dell'ambiguità" ["Ambiguity's triumph"], and it is very much indeed on what I am writing about.
The funny is, as usual, that they criticize the official versions about that shooting from both the American and Italian governments, as they are clearly filled with obscure points and contradicting facts. They criticize the reports in the media, especially the TV-news from RAI, Italy's state channels.
But their very own newspaper does exactly the same, publishing those very good articles, while the big titles tell another story. So: brilliant journalism is good, but populist business is better, it seems.


Language is logic but...

I didn't forget yesterday about my promise of writing about Wittgenstein, just took one day of readings and thinking before writing about this. It has been a real pleasure to dedicate some time again to reading some of the books I have usually never time or energy enough to read.

So, who was this Ludwig Wittgenstein?
A philosopher born in Wien [Vienna], Austria in 1889 (died in 1951). He later moved to Cambridge, UK, and was a very influential philosopher for many years. He can definitely be associated with the rationalist tradition, of people trying to solve the world's problems by sensible thinking, mainly using rationality, logic, science. Like Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, Charles Sanders Pierce, Bertrand Russel, Karl Popper and so on. Naturally inclined to consider logics, mathematics, analysis, as the royal means of understanding and decoding facts in our existence. Which is never so bad, as we also need rationality in our life, but we then inevitably come to realize also, soon or later, that is not enough, and that reality is much more complex and sometimes disconcerting than that.

Our Ludwig definitely experienced that too. As he wrote his main work Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in 1921 and simply thought it was done. That was it, he had donated the world a solid ground for all its problems, a logical analysis of language that sorted all ambiguities out.
This is called "the first Wittgenstein", while the second had to reluctantly admit that its first project was way too naive. It seems a constant in so many thinkers' life, that they write very important works when young, but then modify their positions when older.
It's true for another Austrian like Sigmund Freud for ex. and the same pattern can be found in so many others.

So the lesson to learn is: never taking anything like absolute, but as the best that can be produced by mortal human beings, in a certain limited historical time, and to wait for having gone through life before stating anything as universal and unchanging...

Anyway, to come back to language: the attempt of Wittgenstein was heroic indeed.
He meant that practically all problems were false problems, that is, there is nothing mystical in the world, all is a matter of using the right language in the right context, and then the problem will be solved. Eliminating ambiguity and illogicality in language then lets us understand the world, somehow adopting its own logic, that is the mathematical-logical structure of it.
The funny is I do basically agree, and that could surprise those of you who know how incarnated phenomenologist I am. But there is no contradiction in reality in between the two concepts.
I would personally add the category of chaos to that of logic and then you have the key to understand the world. Because you can understand it rationally to some extent, but when you realize that it is way more too complex than that, then the degree of chaos grows and grows, and then your rationality it's not good enough any more.
Then I am afraid you will need the good old intuition and feelings and divine inspiration to get further.
More about these issues tomorrow, and being Sunday, I will be more gentle to your mind again :-)


Language: one word, many implications

So, the younger Wittgenstein thought he had solved the main problem in knowledge, that is giving it a solid rational foundation, by analysing language. It being the representation of reality we use to communicate.
The older Wittgenstein realized, that is a very limited view at language, as it serves not only that function of describing reality, like a paint is a virtual representation of a landscape for ex., but also a lot of other functions that cannot be reduced to the logical structure of it.
A language is also conveying power, cultural references, humour, emotions, subjective meanings.
The latter was the most evident obstacle on the way of Wittgenstein's attempt. And it is not by chance that soon a radically different approach at philosophy exploded in the world: existentialism.
Especially in a Europe shaken by wars, crisis, industrial revolutions, the feeling of alienation and loss of meaningful values grew strong.
Even some rationalists like Bertrand Russell distanced themselves from Wittgenstein's approach.
His work remained very influential, and it is still a powerful tool, but it was never the meaning it should be the only one.
So, I could conclude with a: the limits of Wittgenstein's language were the limits of his universe.

Or with an even more extreme diminishing of its role, by Albert Einstein:

“The words of language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought.
The physical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images.”

And, sorry, I forgot it was Sunday, today :)


Wo ting bu dong

It seems like the whole world is not getting it fully, yet, but are you really aware of what is going on in China?
A few question to you.

Which city is the world's biggest attraction for gamers?
I am sure you will think about Las Vegas, but it is wrong. It is Macao, in China.

What is Lenovo?
A new French brand of washing powders? No, one of the biggest Chinese electronic multinationals. Incidentally, the one that bought IBM's informatics sector recently.
At the ongoing CeBit, Europe's biggest informatics fair in Hanover, Germany, practically all the new products were Chinese or from other Asiatic countries like South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan of course.

How cheap do you think a new car can get?
4000€! I even don't need to add that it will be the first entirely Chinese car, the Happy Emissary (I would rather call it Sad Emission :-(

Last question: what's the meaning of today's title?
I will answer that tomorrow...

A last news too: as you should know USA and China are the worst and second worst producers of Carbon Dioxide, the responsible for Greenhouse effect. But China has now approved a law that will boost the use of renewable energy, mostly wind, solar and thermal. They are committing to get at least 10% of their energy needs covered by renewable sources in year 2010.
So, the Danish Vestas, world's leader in wind energy, is warned.

How naive it is then to think that English will became the world's global language, just like that, without any problem?
Do you think the little sweet Chinese billions people will keep on smiling and graciously decline any ambitions on the world scene?
Forget about it.


I don't understand

Yesterday I asked you a question: what was the meaning of
"Wo ting bu dong" in Chinese,
and the answer was correct for all of you:
"I don't understand".
Unbelievable, how could you know that? You can see it, Chinese is becoming the world language very rapidly :-)

That of understanding is actually the main function of language, it is communication, first of all. But I don't want to fall into the same mistake as Ludwig Wittgenstein, and I must add that also many other functions of language are very important.
For example that of carrying sounds. They are not just that, sound can be healing, can evoke feelings, can hurt, can motivate and give energy.
I think you start to see how creating a new language and even making it universal is a very, very difficult task.
But I insist that we should start thinking about that and initiating the work necessary for the task, not just letting events happen in a meaningless way.


I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky

Another big problem with language is its ambiguity.
It reflects the way our brain is built, with its layering of different strata, all carrying different functions and often being in conflict with each other.
This is more than evident in our every day life, and has become kind of epidemic also in public life, not the least in many politicians.
That famous sentence by Bill Clinton for example was based on a half lie. The literal meaning of it was formally correct, according to a very restricted definition of sex as only the complete sexual act, Not any intimate contacts as everyone else meant it, and being the personal and political relevant ones.
There is a joke about that (one of the infinite ones produced, as ambiguities are exactly what feeds humour):

Hillary asks Chelsea:
«Have you had sex yet?»
«Not according to Dad»

I am actually very fed up with all these politicians blundering all the time and then right after accusing the journalists of having "misunderstood" them. When there is no honesty in people, admitting what the real intentions for what they say are, then we will need a more unambiguous world language to start with.
The truth is too important to be carried by such an infidel messenger. How to still maintain the possibility for subtle nuances and creative use of the language would be a big task.

I know that I am constantly giving more questions than answers, and well, that's pretty honest having to deal with such a complex universe, but I will also write my proposals for how we can build this world language in practice, in the last days of this month.

By the way: I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky, either, and that's completely true, this time.


Words of Mass Deception

So, now we know what we already knew. That's what history is all about, reading the truth about events when it is too late.
Anyway, Gregg Palast has done it again. This naughty journalist has made an investigation for the BBC's Television, and found out what the real reasons for the war in Iraq were.
Weapons of mass destruction? Dictatorship? Saddam Hussein? Forget about all that rubbish, the reason was OIL.
What a surprise, uh?
The war against Iraq was simply ordered by the American oil industries, long before the 9/11.
Please read about this investigation at the journalist's site::
"Gregg Palast"
Or at the BBC's one, where you also can watch the program:
"Secret U.S: plans for Iraq's oil"

Can we now finally get the American President and all his fellows in crime, be arrested and brought to the International Court of Justice, and possibly as soon as possible. Thank you.


Antiwar and propeace

I would like to explain once more that the reason why I am proposing a conscious work toward a new world language is because this process is happening anyway.
As anything else happening in our global world, it does not that in a 'spontaneous' way, but forced by economical, political, commercial forces.
So, better do it in a more appropriate way, than leaving it to those irresponsible forces, considering it would happen any case.
And I stress many times that I will never mean this universal language should be taught and learned at the expense of other local or natural languages.
Also this negative evolution, of languages being abandoned and disappearing, is happening anyway, and in a very fast way actually.

I am really determined in this inviting to a global responsibility, also in a very tender hard polemics with the people that continues to use the expression 'no global'.
This is a powerful example of how much language is important to convey some meanings.
The use of the expression no global has been a complete political suicide from the beginning. Right today I read an interview with Naomi Klein where she still uses those words.
It is somehow typical of the eternal suicidal inclinations of the leftist people. Always conveying messages of critics and opposition and distance, which are perfectly understandable and fair in this horrendous world, but being unable to affirm positive alternatives that can unite people in the world and not divide them further.
Yes, they mean that, to be fair, and when I read writings by the no global people I do agree strongly with most of what they say, and appreciate their motivations. But they keep on using this negative and depressing no global term, and that annihilates their own idealistic message.
If they still don't get that most people doesn't want to be different or politically smart or damned alternative or always in conflict and opposition and struggle, then it is a big pity, as the positive power of their will for change will be lost completely.

We do need positive and coherent and responsible and joyful global solutions.

Look at today, a lot of people will demonstrate in the world marking the infamous two years 'jubilee' for the beginning of the war against Iraq. They are so damned good in shouting at the problems, but each time I propose real alternatives they disappear, most of them. Back to their war-creating habits.
Just to make it clear: I have been using years of my life demonstrating against wars. I have participated to practically all of them in the last 25 years and all those against the war in Iraq.
I have even dedicated a whole album, "War-ning" to this.
It is needed to fight what is wrong, but we also need to fight for what is worth to live for the day after the demonstrations.

[p.s. after finishing reading the interview with Naomi Klein, I must partially apologize to her, as she explained that it is only in some countries the movement is called "no global". That definition is unknown in the USA, and she never understood what people using it meant with that. So it was actually the journalist and not her to use this 'no global' stuff.
Her famous book still called "No Logo" though... but I wrote from the beginning that I admire her huge work and of many others in the same movement and that my critic was only toward those who still contrast the negative only, while not willing to personally change for the positive]


Language Links

Tonight I will link to some sites where you can explore the richness and complexity of all the languages in the World:

Finally, today I found some pages that address exactly the same issues as in this blog, and the thoughts expressed there are very similar to what I have been writing.
Of course with a much richer depth and thoroughness, being the author a Ph.D. in Philosophy who studied Linguistics.
His name is Marcelo Dascal and the pages are very interesting and about Endangered languages, but more in general about all world languages' issues.


Basta!

You are learning an Italian word today. It means: Enough!
There are so many uses for that word, so it would be absolutely useful in a world language.

Basta with all these teenage killings and school shootings. To anyone who produces weapons and guns. To governments and nations that make money on the life and safety of billions of people. Guns are the weapons of mass destruction, and the countries that still allow people to posses them are the worst form for immoral criminality.

And I could use that word for so many other things, but I have to say basta to myself too. What am I still bothering for, for doubling my liver while not obtaining anything at all?
I have been writing these things for 30 years or something, now it is your turn.

Any case, do pay a visit to ControlArms.


egaugnal dlrow A

Just an homage to Leonardo Da Vinci, a true genius.
Also an introduction to what I would like to write about today, to complete this quick examination of many issues related to language.

We saw the rationalist approach at it, trying to create a solid logic grounding for thinking and communicating. I reported also some wider views at it, including more subjective and existential point of views.

There is still a lot to mention, as there have been many philosophers and linguists in the last decades that considered language as a central issue.
Many of them interested in general theories regarding how language is developed in the child, and about the old dispute: if it is a natural and genetic ability or if it is developed socially, or how much the two factors mix and interact together.
I'll just mention some of them. As usual you can use the always well done Wikipedia as a starting point, and get lost in its meandering paths, for a more systematic approach. I will never express appreciation enough for this formidable open-source success in providing the world with a continuously growing encyclopaedia.

Some names you will encounter will range from Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky to Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky and Catherine Snow.
From innate abilities (nativists) to complete tabula rasa (social interactionists), the range is extreme and you are basically welcome to think what you please, as these controversies have been going on eternally and still are debated vividly.
So, tomorrow I would like to mention some of the most interesting thinkers of the last times, who have been controversial but definitely adding depth and innovation to linguistic theories, and social sciences in general.
I am thinking about Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and so on.
Definitely a French liaison and something about deconstructive linguistics.

Then our journey from naive absolute logic to nihilist and relativist gibberishism will be completed, and I will propose my humble steps toward a meaningful world language.


"Have I been clear enough?"

Never say tomorrow: every time I promise to write about something the day after, things happen and I disappoint you.

Anyway, today it is supposed to be about some theories that have stressed how language has a lot of connections to the society where we live; the individual, subjective perceptions of the people; the structures and classes in society, economy and work; and the anthropological and psychological symbols it conveys.
In other words: language as intertwined with all other social sciences.

There is no doubt Paris in France has been an infinite source of those theories and has been a very fertile soil for their growth.
In the period of Existentialism, Jean Paul Sartre had an enormous influence on culture in general. At first friend with and then in controversy with Albert Camus. The former staying faithful to the communist ideology, while the latter taking a distance from its violent consequences.
Another very important French philosopher from that time was Henri Bergson. Common for all these thinkers was that they all chained philosophy with language and literature. All of them were outstanding writers.

While those intellectuals dominated the scenes, many others emerged, and interesting enough, they were significant and brilliant but they wrote in an honestly horrible way, and that impaired their message a lot.
I am thinking first of all about Jacques Lacan. I was very fascinated by the depth of his writings, but at the time I did, the first years at university, I honestly didn't understand a word of it!
Or Jacques Derrida too.
Anyway, Lacan had a big role in Structuralism, a way of looking at any text, or anything else as well, as the expression of an underlying structure. For example a literary work then, would be analyzed to find what this structure was, more than focusing on its content.
An example of this theory applied to Anthropology were the books by Claude Levy-Strauss.
Lacan was a psychoanalyst, and reread all Freud's works analysing them with the tools of Structuralism, originally inspired by the theories of the linguist Ferdinand De Saussure.
He meant that the unconscious was somehow crystallized in the language.

The paradox of these theories is that it is practically impossible to describe them without getting obscure yourself, so I will leave it to you and your own research, but my humble opinion is that they even more paradoxically confirmed one of the fundamental aspects of it: the relation between language and power.
This was actually the focus of Michel Foucault's works.
He considered any conversation as an expression of power hierarchies, and a similar approach was also the one by psychiatrist Ronald David Laing, a genius in decoding the psychotic language and giving it a meaning related to the power relationships between a client and his therapist, or health care structures.
My point was, anyway: were the structuralist theories actually mostly expression of intellectual arrogance, once again (thinking about the first Wittgenstein), of a limited logical analysis that became hegemonic only because of the prestige of its creators? Isn't any theory just condemned to fail and be substituted by another hegemonic one, even if it should be clear by now that none of them will ever be perfect or even complete enough?

Another very interesting philosopher I would like to mention is Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and his very original focus on the body's role in consciousness and knowledge.

As said many times before, I can't write philosophical treaties in this blog, but I wanted to quote all those thinkers to stress once more how many dimensions are involved when we look at language. And, as a consequence of that, how risky it is to even think about creating a new world language. This risk is the same as with any theory and system, and ideology and structure of power: human limitations and reductionism.
Life is a complex whole. Will a language, any language ever be able to represent it fully, allowing meaningful communication and, even more difficult, in a globalized world community?

The answers in the last days of this month.


First rule of communication: the most important first

Here the journalist in pajama has managed to get late and sleepy again, don't know how much I will manage to write, and if I continue like this, commenting on something else, in stead of getting to the point, I will soon fall asleep before even writing anything about this fundamental issue of a world language and...zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Sorry...see you tomorrow and in the next three days, with the final remarks about this month's issues.


Second rule: never believe when I write 'tomorrow'

Unless I could pretend "tomorrow" doesn't mean tomorrow, but just "later", a couple of days later or more. This interpretation could be surely possible and acceptable in some cultures.

I am really trying to confuse you in these last days of the month.
Why? Well, first of all it happened by itself, it was not premeditated. But it was good anyway to play with the ambiguity of language once more. Because as long as it doesn't become a clear agreement that we should only tell the truth and not play games with the ambiguities of our languages, then practically anything is possible.
When you don't have an absolute reference, then anything else becomes relative and equally possible.

That is an enormous problem, as truth is the fundamental essence of all our universe.
It is a long story to explain why I mean this, but you can experience it in language, as we have seen so many times.
Maintaining our language ambiguous is a choice, due to the simple fact that that way it is possible for anyone to cheat. And many too many are interested in that possibility. Forgetting that, that way, they are killing the truth, the most precious thing we have.
It has always been normal to trust institutions, for example. Most people is still so naive about that. When I point to the fact that you can't count any more on any of them, people always react with skepticism and even irritation, as if I was the liar and not them.

The fact is that truth is an absolute value, may be the only one in the universe, and that to communicate it, we then need an equally absolutely unambiguous medium.
If it has to be language, then the most important condition for it is to create a new language that is absolutely clear and unmistakable.
It doesn't mean that all the other languages should become like that, I know it is naive to think that is even possible, and besides no one desires that, but at least one common, universal language should be like that.
Kind of the references we have for measures.
One meter is one meter, you can't begin to say "..but..may be...it could also be 70cm...", what a mess the world would become (well, it definitely is, but I mean a real Babel Tower chaos)...
I know that talking about anything absolute sounds ridiculous in these modern times, when commerce and relativism of everything are God.
Well, you know how old-fashioned I am, I am still trying to save this world, just imagine that.


Shopping memo

So, a new world language should be definitely unambiguous.
What more?

  • be created out of a conscious and fair effort shared by all linguists in the world.
  • be 'beta tested' by real people and groups of populations in all the world.
  • be composed of sounds, structures, patterns from all over the world.
  • have a correspondence between the written and spoken form, like in Esperanto and Italian.
  • no unhealthy sounds, as the ecology of sounds and of the throat is very important.
  • an easy and intuitive grammar, with no exceptions.
  • be pleasant to hear and to speak, be musical.
  • be very precise in describing both logical structures and complex concepts and emotional and subjective impressions.
  • be open to incorporate new words and ideas.

Well, what a wish list, who will take the challenge and start working on it?
A final consideration: I hope it won't be computer languages creators to get that task. It is in fact the story of an infinite series of failures, as none of those languages would pass the examination, when using the above criteria.


A final word (in a world language)

"A la ai ma"
What's that now? Well, just a very primitive attempt at starting a world language, as our dear linguists are lazy and have not started the work yet.
What's the meaning of what I wrote, and how did I find it?
First, before reading on, try to guess what the meaning of this "A la ai ma" is.

Well, according to me that means:
"I love my mom" [whether that is true or not is not important right now].

Did you guess that?
Not sure, just some of it may be.
Anyway, it is fairly intuitive to guess why I chose those words, at least to indoeuropean languages speakers.
Here we are back to eurocentrism, I am afraid, but I tried the best I could to find some sounds that could be the most universal imaginable. Just to give an idea not pretending it to be 'right' (as no one knows what is right yet).
Those sounds are actually somehow universal.
For example the syllable 'ma' is, as it is easily generated by the child when using the first words and when using his mouth for all the oral activities.
So, all languages in the world tend to use those kind of sounds to indicate the concept 'mom'.
Again, it was just to give an idea of how one could start building a world language, based on the comparison of all world languages and of human behaviours.

Finally, if you still wish to dig more into this issue, here are some other links to sites discussing it:

So, this was the last one about this month's theme.
Next one will unveil some important events happening in my life soon: Tadaaaa....