I sometimes sit and watch people talking, whether in person or on TV, and I wonder about it. I mean, here are these people, who are basically big blobs of meat and guts and muscles and bones and organs. And they can move around and make decisions and you know, just generally DO stuff. And then they open their mouths and these sounds come out, and then other people understand what they mean by those sounds. I mean, it fascinates me that, for example, that I can make certain sounds to you and you make sounds back to me and we each know what the other was thinking and wanting to convey. It amazes me that my boss can come to my desk and make certain sounds, and that gets me to take certain actions. I can go to a store, and make certain sounds to an employee, and even though I have never talked with this person before, she will direct me to a certain object in the store. On TV, a cowboy can get on a stagecoach, and start making sounds in the direction of the beautiful widow he finds there, and she can, in turn, make sounds in his direction, and even though they have never met each other, they understand each other. And those of us in the audience understand them both. I mean, the invention of language and word to communicate is a fascinating thing.
I mean, I think about that movie Caveman, and how they went around talking about "ool" and all that, and that however much that movie was fiction, surely at some point, communication was similar to that. And yet, over the few short centuries that we have been here on this earth, we have learned how to communicate things like, "indubitably," "loquacity," "ostentation," and "Will the record reflect that the witness has identified the defendant?" It just astounds me that we have learned to communicate with our fellow man so well, and are so attuned to each other, that when we do meet up with someone whom we can't understand, we don't know how to handle it. If you meet someone who doesn't speak the same language, you smile and nod, but if you really need to convey something, you get frustrated and resort to drawing pictures or an impromptu charade game. Which it's discouraging when you go through something like that, but even that makes me think, "How marvelous it is that it works so well when it DOES work!" (Which is also what I think about traffic laws whenever I see a car wreck. I'm always amazed, given the way we all drive around in lanes right next to each other, that MORE accidents don't happen. But THAT is another blog ...)
I sit around thinking about stuff like this way too often. :)
I mean, I think about that movie Caveman, and how they went around talking about "ool" and all that, and that however much that movie was fiction, surely at some point, communication was similar to that. And yet, over the few short centuries that we have been here on this earth, we have learned how to communicate things like, "indubitably," "loquacity," "ostentation," and "Will the record reflect that the witness has identified the defendant?" It just astounds me that we have learned to communicate with our fellow man so well, and are so attuned to each other, that when we do meet up with someone whom we can't understand, we don't know how to handle it. If you meet someone who doesn't speak the same language, you smile and nod, but if you really need to convey something, you get frustrated and resort to drawing pictures or an impromptu charade game. Which it's discouraging when you go through something like that, but even that makes me think, "How marvelous it is that it works so well when it DOES work!" (Which is also what I think about traffic laws whenever I see a car wreck. I'm always amazed, given the way we all drive around in lanes right next to each other, that MORE accidents don't happen. But THAT is another blog ...)
I sit around thinking about stuff like this way too often. :)
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