The power of words.

Did you know that “Fitz” in a surname means “Son of”? Like “Johnson” now would technically be “son of John”, “Fitzwilliam” meant “son of William”? Well I didn’t, though maybe I should have. After all, it forms part of many, albeit aristocratic, English surnames. I suppose it had never ocurred to me to ponder the root, but there it is. Now I know. But there is something about this discovery that gives me great pleasure and that is; how I came upon this information. Reading avidly and almost addictively the Philippa Gregory Cousin’s War and Tudor Court series, I am currently engrossed in Henry VIII’s reign. There is a character named William Fitzwilliam, and I think; now there’s an unfortunate naming of a son, though it may be for a reason. Then I remember the previous character mentioned with a Fitz in his name; Henry Fitzroy, the bastard son of the King. Fitz: son of, Roy: King. It all becomes clear. Just to make sure, I consult the all powerful internet, and it confirms my suspicions. Yes! I was right, I smirk to myself. Self-satisfaction creeps over me like a snake as yet unwilling to bear its fangs. (Too pretentious with the metaphor?…) Anyway, the point is this: regardless of whether I should or should not have been aware of this historical nomenclature, I wasn’t, and to me it was new, and I discovered it on my own through reading, my clearly prestigious powers of deduction and love of, and curiosity about, linguistics. And hey! It’s fun to learn things without having to study them. You can kind of feel superior. Comes in handy when you need an anecdote of sorts.

The written word, indeed language, comes from our necessity to have a name for things, to give living creatures and inanimate objects an identity, a description, a place in our understanding of the world. Now, that is not to say that there are not dangers in our system of naming. Clearly at times a name can be used as a judgement on somebody, going further than a simple description. But that is an article for another day. As I have talked of (or ranted about) before, the roots of the languages we know today were planted in so many different civilizations that in some cases it is hard to discern their origins, yet we know that they come from our human need to communicate on an equal level with other humans so that when I call a spade a spade you know I am talking about a spade and not a trowel. So much easier, so much quicker. Especially when gardening. Just like Facebook or text messaging when we always know what people are trying to communicate. Full stop. In case you didn’t realise, that was the beginning and end of that thought. Moving on.

Some years back I had the pleasure of going to see “Tricicle” a Catalan trio of ingenious mimes who had been successful for nearly 35 years in Spain. Their comedy was fresh, slapstick, based on tried and tested techniques brought with a contemporary twist. What was so fascinating about them, apart from their longevity, was their lack of need for spoken language. I’m not saying that what they did was revolutionary in the sense that there has been non-verbal communication since time began. But apart from the physical comedy and gesture which they perfected to a sublime level, what surprised me constantly was when they communicated with each other and with the audience “vocally”. In general their vocal interventions relied on sounds. It is incredible that simply by the intonation of an “Eee ooh” a person can transmit exactly what he or she wants to say. In that sense they were universal, they transmitted through sound a type of language that all of us can understand, though accompanied by gesture. Another case of non “verbal” communication is that of animals other than humans. They have their language and only occasionally communicate intentionally with humans, usually when food is involved. An interesting BBC documentary, “Cat Watch”, suggested that cats only “meow” to humans, that their sounds and expressions to other cats did not include that familiar sound that may drive us crazy.

So, given that mimes and animals can survive on sounds and gestures, who needs words?! It seems crazy to think of it, right? Well, I’ll tell you what. Mimes and animals, believe it or not, have their place in giving us joy (often)…or irritation (more often), but language, words, aside from making expressing ourselves easier and quicker, also give us a means of awakening our curiosity as humans for learning, for developing, for opening our minds and imaginations. Bet you never heard that before.

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” (Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare) . But would it?…
Well of course it would! Yet we do have a name for it, and that gives it a greater glory even than its scent. Because we associate the name with something of beauty, of delicacy. Much easier to have a name than to try to describe the flower with its thorns, its petals, its colours and compare your beloved to it. I’d be a bit insulted:

“My love is like a red red rose” (Robert Burns) = “My love is like a bloody flower with thorns, that opens and then dies in a week”.

Hey, you’ve won me over, let’s get married.

Espanglisher will be back after the Easter break

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Episode Twenty-Three: Interview: Foreign Language Learning for English Speakers

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