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Deconstructing Babel
Julie Wan
I.
Growing up in a Chinese family in North America was like living in a war zone. Before my sister and I started elementary school in Canada, my parents were already preparing themselves to battle the Anglicism that would inevitably creep into our Chinese. They had their strategy all planned out. They knew they couldn’t keep the enemy out, so they worked instead to prevent a complete takeover. They decided they would only speak Cantonese with us at home.
Their frontline defense held out only a few short years. The invasion began as soon as I started kindergarten. I picked up English quickly and started speaking it with my older cousins and teaching it to my younger sister. My parents, along with my other aunts and uncles, fought back by enforcing their ‘no English’ rule in the house.
But the opposition was strong. My sister and I began watching English programs on television and reading English books. We started making Canadian friends.
My parents decided that it was time to launch a full-fledged attack. When I entered the first grade, they sent me to Chinese class after school three times a week. Apparently, they had allies: all the other Chinese parents in the community. At some point in time, these immigrants had all persuaded Toronto’s elementary schools to hold extracurricular language classes for Chinese children.
It was the perfect form of retaliation. The teachers in Chinese class taught us how to sing Chinese songs and play Chinese chess. They taught us to recite poems by Li Bai and Zhang Ji. They fed us lotus seed and mooncake. And every year, they drilled into us stories about the Lunar New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival.
If that weren’t enough, our Chinese church also started weekly language classes that my parents made me attend. The teachers there even came up with a clever form of punishment. They placed a glass jar at the front of the room on the teacher’s desk. They made us bring pennies to class, and we had to deposit a penny in the jar every time we let an English word slip from our mouths. Pretty soon, we were bringing bags full of pennies to class. We joked that by the end of the year the teacher could probably collect enough money to buy us all ice cream.
In all of the classes, though, the teachers’ most powerful weapon was the writing. They forced us to learn Chinese characters by copying each one out in square boxes, repeating stroke after stroke, top to bottom, filling notebook after notebook. They told us that there was no way to learn it except by repetition. By repeating, we could internalize the movement into our muscles and engrain the characters into our souls. I was too young to know what they were doing. They were teaching us more than writing: They were teaching us to think like Chinese people.
All of this ended when I turned fourteen. The year I began high school, we left Canada and moved to Arizona. There were no Chinese programs on television, no China Town, no Chinese school. The Chinese at school were Chinese Americans, many of whom didn’t speak or write the language.
I wondered if the battle was over or if my parents would simply come up with a new strategy. Neither turned out to be true. With fewer allies, my parents were retiring from battle. I was now older and had a firmer grasp of both languages, so they turned the responsibility over to me. Now I would have to maintain my own native language, I would have to guard my own soul.
When I look back, I realize that my parents had fought all this time to keep my Chinese skills alive so that one day I would be able to make a choice for myself. I had been wrong all along. That I’d learned more English didn’t meant that my parents had lost. In fact, my parents had always won because the real enemy was never the English language. It was the loss of our Chinese.
II.
For me, Chinese has always been the language of the home. It is the language of the food I eat: dim sum, chow mein, chop suey, ginseng, kumquat, oolong, leechee. It is the language in which my parents scold me. It is the language in which I argue with my sister. It is the language of dinner conversations spoken over steaming bowls of rice.
Ultimately, Chinese is the language of intimacy. I’ve become attuned to the sounds of the nine tonal contours of Cantonese. At times, they can act like tones of a scale to form rich combinations. I’ve become familiar with the rise and fall of the inflections too. At the ends of sentences, fluent Cantonese speakers often attach extra syllables, which actually have little meaning of their own, but add texture to the language and make the phrases flow. My favorites are ah and la, which I can add to almost anything: Do you want to go ah? Why not ah? Come on la. Just come with me la.
English, then, has always been the language of the public world, of school, of the media, of people on the street. It is the language of intellect: "During photosynthesis in green plants, light energy is captured and used to convert water, carbon dioxide, and minerals into oxygen and energy-rich organic compounds."
It is the language of abstract ideas: “The theory that knowledge is recollection rests on the belief that the soul is not only eternal but also preexistent. The conception of the tripartite soul holds that the soul consists of reason, appetite, and spirit.”
Over the years, I come to think of Chinese and English not as separate languages, but more as codes that I adopt depending on their function and place of use. They are like different forms of dress for different occasions. I speak Chinese and English almost as any speaker in any one language alters her speech to fit a particular occasion—slang with peers, polite language with acquaintances, and formal diction in writing.
III.
There is a biblical account of the origin of languages, and people often use it as a morality tale about the pride of humankind. But it is also a story about language—about how one language was lost and how many were gained, about how language can be empowering and inhibiting at the same time:
“Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other… ‘Come let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’ But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The Lord said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’ So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.”
Genesis 11:1-9
Let’s imagine for a moment that the whole world did speak one language. The story of Babel takes place right after the flood, and only Noah and his family members are left to repopulate the earth. Perhaps their descendents shared one common speech. Perhaps in building the tower, men were isolated for so long that the speech of different people groups began to change. Perhaps a catastrophic mistake then occurred, and a small dispute led to even greater misunderstanding. At this point, the altered speech of the people prevented them from ever agreeing again. Perhaps this was how the entire project collapsed.
Told in this way, the story centers around comprehension and cooperation arrived at through the use of one language. When differences became apparent, there was a loss not only of understanding, but also of unity. The people dispersed, leaving the tower behind to crumble.
In exploring the meaning of the Tower of Babel, we unearth also the meaning of language—of its ability not just to inhibit, but also to divide and to disperse. Perhaps we could create a better story if the whole world came together again with one common goal in mind—to tear down the tower in recognition of the differences that distinguish us.
IV.
Throughout my childhood, I always felt that my parents were worse at English than any other Chinese parents in North America. They made little progress over the years, but eventually I realized it was because the other parents practiced English with their children, and my parents practiced Chinese instead with us. As a result, my fluency in English empowered me, while their lack of fluency inhibited them.
We tried to compensate in other ways. I became a kind of cultural liaison for them. They made me do all the ordering at restaurants. They made me get out at gas stations and ask for directions. My parents wanted me to learn not only the language, but also how to behave and interact with people in the English-speaking world. They sent me out and expected me to learn the social codes and the unspoken conventions of our society.
Unaccompanied and unguided, I floundered.
I wanted to help them, but I was afraid myself. I dreaded talking to bank tellers and store clerks and even telemarketers.
The problem was that my parents wanted me to teach them things that I wanted to learn from them. Eventually, I found one small means of escape. Whenever we went out for dinner, I told my sister we had to insist on eating at a Chinese restaurant. I had discovered that at familiar places like these, my parents and I finally assumed our proper roles. They became the ones in charge, ordering with confidence and ease. They knew the etiquette. They knew the conventions. They could engage in conversation with the waiter, they could express complaints tactfully, they could order meals to be cooked exactly as they wanted. I savored those moments because, no matter how brief, they were the times when I could finally resume the role of a child.
V.
Shakespeare once wrote, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Linguists agree, claiming that language is arbitrary. Many times, the word we use to name an object has little or no relationship with the object itself. A door is a door whether we call it door in English, porte in French, men in Chinese or tür in German. In fact, a door would still be a door if we called it a table.
This arbitrary nature of language suggests that behind language itself there must be something—whether tangible or intangible—to which our words refer. At some point in the way we process language, we encode and decode concepts into words and words into concepts. Based on this idea, Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist and linguist at Harvard, suggests that people may not actually think in any particular language at all. Rather, they think in a language of thought, a mental language that Pinker calls mentalese.
Pinker notes that in the last few decades, scientists have discovered that people actually think in images. A study conducted in the 60’s showed that in Mensa (a society of people with unusually high IQs), 97 percent of the members reported to thinking in vivid imagery. Writers are often inspired by images. C. S. Lewis claims that his book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, began with an image of a fawn holding an umbrella and several parcels in the middle of the woods in winter.
Pinker also lists a number of well-known artists and scientists who, when inspired, think not in words but in visual images. Among these is writer Joan Didion, who says that her ideas don’t begin with a character or a plot but with a mental picture. In the area of art, the modern sculptor James Surls envisions working with sculptures in his mind while lying on a couch listening to music. Scientists like Nikola Tesla and his electrical motor and generator, Friedrich Kekulé and his benzene ring, James Watson and Francis Crick and their DNA double helix—all of them claim that these ideas came to them in images.
Finally, Pinker invokes the great Albert Einstein, who envisioned himself riding on a beam of light and looking back at a clock, or dropping a coin from a falling elevator.
Considering all this then, language merely serves as a vehicle to thought and imagery. It is but a formality, a system adopted to permit human interaction and to facilitate verbal exchanges necessary for survival in society. It is simply a medium of expression we use to communicate the thoughts and the ideas in our minds. It is only a tool, yet no one can deny what a powerful tool it is.
VI.
Suppose that language, like sight, were a faculty of the human body. This is not entirely improbable, considering the generally accepted theory in modern linguistics that language is an instinct, an innate ability with which all human beings are born. Scientists have actually discovered various language disorders that link the ability to use language to biological and neurological factors.
In an essay entitled “Seeing,” Annie Dillard describes people blind from birth who are suddenly able to see again. After a cataract operation, these patients experienced all kinds of difficulty adjusting to their new sight. They had no concept of space, distance, or depth perception. For some, the transition proved so taxing that they became depressed, preferring to shut their eyes in refusal to use their newly gained ability. They would rather revert to their old ways of interacting with the world through touch and sound. On the other hand, there were some who accepted the change and delighted in the sight of what we take for granted as simple things—things such as a tree or a human hand.
If language were a faculty of the human body, suppose that we were born with a language gene. If this gene were impaired from birth, those affected would have no capacity for grammar—not even in sign language. These people would also have no ability to match words to actual objects or ideas, so that retention of vocabulary is impossible. This impairment would only affect the ability to use language, though. It would not affect a person’s ability to think.
Imagine that, like the blind man who develops increased sensitivity in his other senses, these language-impaired people discover how to rely on gestures, actions, facial expressions, and even visual depictions to help them interact with others. These people learn not through verbal or written instruction, but through experience, through personal interaction with the world around them. In spite of the obvious linguistic handicap, these people gain instead a heightened sensitivity to concepts presented visually—both actual concepts observable in the world and theoretical concepts depicted through images (such as Surls’s artistic sculptures or Watson and Crick’s DNA double helix).
Suppose also that one day, surgeons discover how to restore this language gene. Similar to the cataract patients who had to learn space, size, and depth perception, these people with a new capacity for language now face the daunting task of learning vocabulary and grammar. Unlike the adult who learns a foreign language, these patients have no prior experience with any kind of language at all. Suddenly, they must learn to think not in an abstract way, but in a linear way. Not only do they need to master concepts such as word order and temporality, they also need to understand nuances in language like tone and connotation. I imagine that such a task could prove so overwhelming that, like the cataract patients who lapsed into depression and returned to their old way of life, these new language learners might also choose to revert back to a state where communication, though perhaps less effective, was at least manageable.
I imagine too that, as some of the cataract patients welcomed their new vision and experienced joy in seeing simple things around them, some language learners might also come to appreciate the precision and the efficiency of words. They might discover that mastering subtleties in language can allow them not only to express thoughts and ideas, but also to convey mood, tone, and feelings. They might realize that the loss of the more abstract only gives way to the gaining of a tool. Perhaps someday they might discover the value of expression not merely through a single language, but through multiple languages. And then perhaps they would be able to show us, language learners from birth, how much we overlook and how little we appreciate the wonder of what we call language.
VII.
When I eventually learned a third language, it was nothing like the invasion of English during my childhood. The language was French, and I had been taking classes since my elementary school days in Canada. But it wasn’t until I actually had the opportunity to go to France that the language finally began to seep in.
During my exchange year in France, I was often amazed at the diversity of the foreign films that played in the theaters. I had traveled to France to learn a foreign language and now found five or six under one roof. Opting for the familiar in this foreign land, I bought a ticket for a Chinese film by Wong Kar Wai, a director from Hong Kong.
The film was called In the Mood for Love, and it was about two neighbors—a man and a woman living in 1960’s Hong Kong—who both discover that their spouses are having an affair with each other. The story centers around the unrequited love between this man and woman who are attracted to one another, but are too hurt by their spouses’ actions to repeat their same mistake.
For all its intertwined relationships, the plot was quite simple—star-crossed lovers, mourning an impossible love. In the spirit of its simplicity, the film often abandoned speech for other more powerful forms of expression—for color, for sound, and even for silence.
The scenes of the film were portrayed in deep tones—the man’s black suits; the woman’s dark red and green cheongsam dresses with the high collar, long skirt, and delicate side buttons; the shadows of the alleys, the side streets, and the narrow hallways; and the dim lamps whose light hit the walls and the curtains, and refracted into shades of deep yellow, orange, and red.
The music was just as evocative, featuring a recurring theme of short, crisp pizzicato notes played on the strings and set against the lilting, melancholy melody of the violin. During certain songs, Nat King Cole’s voice sang out in Spanish, accompanied by a slow percussive background that suggested the swaying movement of a Latin dancer’s hips.
Even the sparse dialogue was powerful in its conciseness, reflecting the subdued emotions of the characters and leaving unspoken thoughts to resound in their silence.
When the actors did speak, there was only one character in the movie I couldn’t understand. She spoke a completely different Chinese dialect, and whenever she talked I would have to follow along by reading the French subtitles. It was the first time that I had ever mixed Chinese and French, and the back and forth process was interspersed with occasional comments I made to my friend in English. Yet I had no trouble going from the Chinese and the French in the film to the English I spoke to my friend. Before long, I even found that I had stopped trying to connect the French on the screen with the Chinese I heard from the characters in the movie. I was no longer distinguishing between all the different words. The whole experience became a fusion of languages—the bright, terse monosyllables of Cantonese, the softer, more fluid sounds of English, and, had the subtitles been spoken, even the light, musical quality of French. And then all these languages faded into the deep hues of the scenes and the low tones of the strings, melding with color and music.
I watched and I listened until I no longer saw or heard any languages at all but simply absorbed and understood.
