ב"ה
I was listening to a Bil Maher YouTube video about 8 words that have changed meanings (for the worse). I just found this and I've already listened to it twice. It reminded me of the book 1984 (a novel with a cautionary tale, not a "how-to" manual) by George Orwell. I remembered in that book (which I read probably 30 years ago and only read once, so I have forgotten a lot of the details) they tried to reduce the number of words in the English language by using "not" and "double" (as in double not good instead of terrible). They called the language, if I recall correctly, NewSpeak.
Over the past several years (like the 21st century and, perhaps a bit before) I've been complaining (though my concerns are falling on deaf ears) that the "younger generation" is doing this by reducing descriptions of feelings, objects, people, animals, etc. to emojis. This is not something I'm crazy about.
I have always loved words -- English words, Hebrew words, Spanish words, French words. Lately, I'm addicted to Duolingo (which I found after it was a "question" to an "answer" on Jeopardy! -- anyone who has been following me for a while knows I'm addicted to Jeopardy! also -- I was a contestant in 2009 and have watched since I was about 9 or 10 years old) and I'm officially learning 33 languages (yes, at the same time, more or less) but I don't learn each of them every day. Lately, I've been concentrating on Norwegian and Ukrainian. Learning so many languages (even in a shallow manner, though some I'm learning more deeply) helps me to notice certain cadences, certain rhythms, certain melodies of conversation. And it helps me to notice certain words are related between languages -- for example, Kitab I first ran in to in Hindi (still struggling with), then I ran into it in Turkish (also still struggling with) and most recently I ran into it in Arabic (still struggling with the letters). I means "book" and it's related, a friend of mine pointed out, to the Hebrew word "LiKhtov" to write.
But if all these languages didn't have a word for "book" because books were burned as in Fahrenheit 451, this relationship of words within the different tongues would not show up. And these days books aren't just paper and type. There are Kindle books and ebooks, both of which exist only in the ether (unless you print them up). If a book exists only as an electronic file, does it truly exist?
Star Trek fans out there (I call myself a Trekkie, but others use what I consider the more pretentious "Trekker") might remember the original series episode where Captain Kirk goes on trial for causing someone's death (an old friend who wasn't really dead) and ends up with an older gentleman as a lawyer -- the lawyer has books all over this office and Jim (Captain Kirk) asks him why he doesn't just have them on his computer. He says that he likes the feel of "real" books. I have a different reason -- I do most of my reading on Shabbat (the Sabbath) on which day we are not permitted to use our computers. So "real" books it has to be.
But language, any language, written or spoken, has a richness to it that no emoji can capture. Can you imagine Joyce Kilmer's "Trees", Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Evangeline", Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", or Lewis Carol's "Jabberwacky" in emojis? I can't even imagine an Ogden Nash couplet (Like "Candy is Dandy/But liquor is quicker") as a collection of emojis. To me this is a step towards isolating people from each other.
Words are necessary for communicating our thoughts and feelings, our opinions and mores, our beliefs and passions. How do you do that with emojis only? No, I think the richness of language and the written and spoken word is more than emojis can handle. A picture may be worth a thousand words but sometimes the words say more.
I also think it is important to keep the written, grammatical, speech of languages (granted, with some languages I have trouble with grammar) as part of our spoken and written heritage so we can connect with other people. Freedom of speech means we are free to express our opinions about anything -- but it also means we have the freedom (and the knowledge) to pluck just the right word for the situation.
Help keep the words (all languages) alive for the next generations.
