I Speak Therefore I Am

by Madeleine Kando

I am fascinated with language. When I was little girl, I liked to play language games in my head. If I heard a new word, which was quite often since I had to learn three languages consecutively, I immediately deconstructed it. In Holland this tendency of mine was very useful. The Dutch like to string words together to make up new ones (arbeidsongeschiktheidsverzekering, which means disability insurance) and trying to find the roots of a word helped me learn Dutch.

So here I am, reading yet another book by Steven Pinker, the all-time expert on language. This one is called ‘The Stuff of Thought’. This has stimulated me to play another game in my head.

It is generally assumed that, other than ‘onomatopoeia’, the sounds of words are arbitrary: a train might as well be called a ‘tsorp’, it would not make any difference in its meaning.

But Pinker points out that some phonemes carry meaning in and of themselves. Take the sound ‘sn’ for instance. Many words with that sound in it have to do with the nose. Snout, snooze, snot, sneeze… you get the idea?

So, if I throw out another sound, let’s say ‘gl’? what does that conjure up in your mind? Glance? Gloat? Glean? Obviously the ‘gl’ sound has to do with vision. What about the sound ‘cl’? clan, clot, club, cluster? This sound probably has to do with people banding together…

Boy, language is funny. It makes you think about thinking, doesn’t it? It can keep you busy for days, speculating on the endless intricacies of this incredible tool we have developed to communicate with each other.

Pinker is a proponent of the ‘language as instinct’ theory, which means that humans are born with an ability for language, as instinctive as walking or breathing. Others say that people are born a blank slate and that everything has to be learnt, including language. I’ll leave it up to the the experts to fight it out. For me, it’s enough of a miracle that we are able to enjoy language, enjoy it almost as much as a sunset on a beautiful Hawaiian beach.

Words are being created all the time. But who are these Einsteins of language? I’d like to know. I suspect that language is so dynamic that it is being invented by people like you and me. Not by anyone ‘special’. New words come into a language mostly by necessity (texting, emailing, browsing etc). Other words enter our language because of major historical events, like ‘Ground zero’ or ‘wmd’s’.

Some words can be made up very easily. I just read the word: ‘preheritance’, (that is when parents give money to their children during their lifetime.) So why cannot we talk about going ‘pre-shopping’ for a wedding gown? (I guess that would mean going window-shopping), or say ‘I went on a pre-vacation to Hawaii?’ (I didn’t like it so I went to Bali instead.) It might generate an entire new industry or virtual experiences.

Language in itself is so mysterious. We take it totally for granted because we can all speak, but if you really think about it, it is one of the most incredible feats of the human mind. I would like to go on record by correcting what Descartes said so long ago (‘I think, therefore I am’) and change it to: ‘I SPEAK, THEREFORE I AM’. leave comment here