CHAPTER 13 THE UNIVERSE IN SINGLE WORD (in progress)

Words shape consciousness. 

 

“If you want to change the way people think, you can educate them, brainwash them, bribe them, drug them. Or you can teach them a few carefully chosen new words.”

--Howard Rheingold.

I still haven’t figured out the why.  Why I knew early on the importance of using precisely the right words with my students.  Maybe its because their faces gave away emotions when I chose the wrong term.  I understood right away that I could get a much more positive response by the quick tweaking of a single word.  I noticed that certain words helped me show students how to see in new ways.

                                                                                                                                                       

At 11 I wanted to be an astronaut. By the 9th grade I was thinking of architecture. I never planned to be a teacher or study linguistics but words got in the way.

Back in the 7th grade I realized I needed to increase my vocabulary so I began keeping a word journal. I’d had teachers that spoke so eloquently that I dreamed of using our language in such a fine way. I’m not sure of my first language, English or Spanish, both were spoken equally where I grew up. But in the 8th grade I took junior high school Spanish. I began to feel that there was something about the way language influenced the way we see the world. Spanish was soft and forgiving. English precise. 

“The insidious way words mould thoughts.”

--Howard Rheingold.

That’s when I bought my first spiral bound steno pad dedicated to new vocabulary words. I carried it in my notebook to every class starting in junior high.  A habit by high school, I continued into college entering new words or words used in beautiful ways.

In Comparative Philosophy, Dr. Parameswaren, introduced me to the lyrical sounds of his home country, my first exotic culture. I was enchanted.  Eager to learn more I added Pakistan and India to my Lifetime List of places to explore and experiences to actualize.

Words open a window

“on the way other cultures encourage people to think and feel and thus point out new ways for us to think and feel.”

--Howard Rheingold.

Dr. Zimnavoda introduced me to Russian in my junior year. But I wanted to learn more than the language. I wanted to know everything. I listened to every word, every nuance in her speech as well.

By now my brain was filled with the sounds of English, Hindi, Punjabi, and Russian aswirl in my brain. The lyrical quality of my grandparents Spanish now had many companions. These languages were windows into fascinating cultures. 

Patterns? I found each language had untranslatable words that hinted at cultural richness and captured my imagination.  One of my high school classmates had a wonderful but different way of pronouncing certain words. I loved listening to her. She grew up in Connecticut.  

Now, I collect untranslatable words like shabui, wabi sabi, but I also bring home lyrical, meaningful phrases from my travels, that replay in my mind, the heart of the people I’ve met.

Sounds like:

Omenika kadate oreshi...it is an honor to meet you

Ya idu na pochtu... paislatt pismo!

Ua mao ke ehya ika ona, y kapono, o hawaii.

ho ‘oponopono everyone involved in a dispute vows to meet and stay together until it’s worked out.

and...

hek ta o e ah                                  We will be

onkaiu stam pi                              known forever

he no he i nya un                          by the tracks

so ya te keh koyah                        we leave behind.

 

Amake a ka woh                             LAKOTA PROVERB

anao wohn pa tan  kink te            Tell me, I will listen

ma kee pa zoh 

a woh pa ya keyh keh kink te     Show me, I will understand

iya mah amiya wuoh                    Take me in, I will learn.

uimas spete yoh.

 

It is often said that the Inuit have dozens of words to refer to snow and ice. Anthropologist John Steckley, in his book White Lies about the Inuit (2007), notes that many often cite 52 as the number of different terms in Inuktitut.

qanik snow falling

aputi snow on the ground

pukak crystalline snow on the ground

aniu snow used to make water

siku ice in general

nilak freshwater ice, for drinking

qinu slushy ice by the sea

In short, no matter the type of term it uses to refer to a particular type of snow or ice, Inuktitut has a far superior ability to distinguish between them than most languages. A last example: a lexicon of sea ice terminology in Nunavik (Appendix A of the collective work Siku: Knowing Our Ice, 2010) includes no fewer than 93 different words. These include general appellations such as siku, but also terms as specialized as qautsaulittuq, ice that breaks after its strength has been tested with a harpoon; kiviniq, a depression in shore ice caused by the weight of the water that passed over and accumulated on its surface during the tide; and iniruvik, ice that cracked because of tide changes and that the cold weather refroze.