Reading versus Speaking

I have an Italian friend intent on learning new languages, in particular English. So, when we have a few minutes, we take out an English book and he reads a few pages aloud, marking words or phrases that are new to him, particularly those he feels he can use. There are some of course I warn him not to use in polite society and others I doubt  he will have much use for, like for instance nappies, which is more British than my American. Then there are others which are specifically British, such as the boot of a car which in my American English I would call the trunk.

But there’s more than just enunciating words. I find that often as he reads I have to see as well as hear what he is saying. I have to tell him that attaching one word to another is not how it is done: “efficientreadymadeimages” read as if it were one word doesn’t really make sense.  Until you break it up into “efficient, ready-made images”. A string of words, if not read intelligently, turns into nothing but a string of sounds.

Look, I  tell him, there are those small black marks, which in themselves aren’t really words although we have given them names, that tell us how to read. A simple dot or period means stop a moment. A comma, a period with a tail, means pause. What we call a question mark tells you to raise your voice to let people know they can expect more information to follow.  Then there are the pauses in themselves. If the “no” goes with the preceding word, it means one thing. If it goes with the following word that’s another. We have to know where to pause in the right place. I’ve discovered that poets often are terrible readers of their own poems.

Take the following paragraph. “If the goal is to get information about the world into your brain (comma – brief pause) a video should be much more efficient (colon: brief pause before continuing) for ready-made images (comma separating with pause from next piece of information) require no concentration (period – full stop. Catch your breath before continuing.) The skill of reading is unnatural like other skills learned, say macramé and chess.  In fact, for most of history only a lucky few people could read and write.”  Not only that but the symbols for sounds varied greatly depending on how they eventually evolved into languages, from cuneiform to Egyptian to any of the hundreds of languages we are barely aware of. There’s more to learning to read a new language, or any language, than the words.

Words in themselves, black marks on a white ground, are miraculous. As is the idea of a language that can transmit ideas or experiences. We still don’t really know how Language came to be.

Rudyard Kipling’s idea of how writing developed, transforming a sound into a symbol, is turned into a children’s tale. An open-mouthed carp with the sound you make pronouncing it soon comes to be identified with the sound, with that of an A.  

Now how do I explain to my friend what the Italian equivalent would be of “I feel like a heel”? That it has nothing to do with Achilles. Then I discover the multiple meanings of heel. He looks at the word, mentally removes the H and asks me if it refers to the fish. True the Italians often aspirate an H where there is none.  The fact that his mother tongue, until he was five or six, was French where the final S is not pronounced, doesn’t help.  There’s an S there, I keep repeating, you have to say it. Back to heel. Can mean quite a few things. You have the heel of a loaf of bread. You have someone who is well-heeled. You can be head over heels in love. Telling the dog to heel makes sense since that is where you want your dog to come, to your heels. You can take to your heels. That also makes sense since when you are running away the last thing one sees of you are the heels of your feet.  Down at the heels, I suppose that makes sense too, since when your shoes are really worn down that means you can’t afford to have them resoled and are therefore down at the heels.

I’m not a linguist and while I love words, I deeply admire linguists such as John McWhorter whose opinions I look forward to reading in the NY Times.  One question though that doesn’t seem to have an answer is when and how we humans first discovered words and language as means of communication. Now what would we do without having invented a way of telling others what we feel or sense? What would I do if I couldn’t play around with words and write my blog every week?

I am ever grateful, fortunate, thankful that I have lived (and still live) in the hand-written letter era, before iPhones and emails. But more on that in a future post.