The Poverty of Speech

While in the process of learning the Greek language, I was surprised that in the small village where I lived, many times when I asked for the correct word to describe something new, I was told an old word which I already knew. This is not because the Greek language isn’t as rich as other languages, but because in a village where people only need language to converse in their small circle, the same words are recycled to take on multiple meanings. There are complicated precise terms in any language, but most people have no need of them as they are too difficult to remember, and people think that their neighbours wouldn’t understand them. People have a tendency to speak in simple terms.
I once made the comment while in Italy, that Italian seemed like an easy language, but was reprimanded by a German speaker, who correctly pointed out that although the language may appear simple at first bloom, the more one learns, the more one realizes that Italian is as complicated as any other language.

Not only does a language have its idioms and dialects which are enough to stump any learner, but it also a plethora of words that are not heard on the street every day. Think of the English one uses in daily communication as compared to the English in scientific or technical writing. Someone who has studied a language in school would probably have an easier time deciphering technical terms than they would have understanding a grunted, idiomatic, fractured conversation on the street. One can always tell if a non-English speaker has learned the language from lessons or from the street, because his English is always more precise, even if no one on the street understands him.
Languages always evolve, but often this is for worse instead of better. I see nothing wrong with invented words if they describe something better. I see nothing wrong with the habit which has developed in the U.S. in recent years of using nouns as verbs, for example “How does this impact our budget?” Words change their meanings according to usage. How else does “bad” become good? Technology also adds words and these are necessary to describe entities which are new.

English has lessened its descriptive power stems from the tendency to limited vocabulary. A prime candidate for this in English is the word “get”. We use it so much that it must be accompanied by a multitude of helper words because by itself it means nothing. Try describing what “get” means to a foreigner. Get out, get busy, get by, get over, get through, get down, get back – the list is endless. All of these “get” phrases have better single words to describe the same thing but we don’t use them. Do we prefer the poorer “get” because “get” is more common, tougher, more street, or is it that in American society to show any sign of intelligence is considered an elitist weakness. This tendency to simplify things for whatever reason causes a language to lose words. Who nowadays uses “arise” for get up? We simply don’t have a word anymore for getting out of bed – the original word has disappeared.

Most people who speak only English tend to believe that English is some kind of mother language which is the best at describing everything. English is in fact a great thief of words from other languages which is one of the reasons it can be so rich. When one learns another language however, one begins to understand that English is poor in describing many things. An example of this is the word “love”. Other languages have several words for love which describe various states. English speakers blather on about how much they love their car / dog / McDonald’s hamburger, using the identical word “love” for their children or their spouse. The love for children and hamburgers are clearly not the same thing, so why then do we use the same word? Love has become catch all word which in the end means nothing.

The word “know” in English is another example of our laziness. Most other languages have one word for “know” in the sense of understand (do you know how to ski) and another word for “know” in the sense of be acquainted with. Not many people use the word “acquainted” anymore and would be thought old fashioned for doing so, but the word “know” by itself is imprecise.

So many of our words now depend on context for meaning. That is, you can’t understand what they mean unless they are used in a phrase which explains them. This leads to many words which either mean nothing by themselves or are essentially non-words like “get”. If a language fills itself up with non-words which depend on usage for meaning, the language loses its power.

Just as some people who a habit of over using expletives in conversation, the power of a word is diminished when it is used a filler, and lends nothing to the meaning of a particular subject. If we use the “F” word as our only adjective the shock value disappears.

Years ago when I emerged from the cinema after seeing “Quest for Fire” which was scripted with inflected grunts for words, I realized that our everyday conversations had not changed much in 10,000 years as I listened to comments about the film which consisted of “Yeah, mmh, huh, uuh, kinda, y’know, like, wow!