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Fiction

The Sound Words Have

By Þórarinn Eldjárn
Translated from Icelandic by Lytton Smith
Þórarinn Eldjárn tells how a common language destroys a harmonious Babel.

Once there was a town where no two people spoke the same language. No one used the same words for anything. And yet everyone understood everyone else and they all lived together in peace and harmony. Until recently, the locals were cheerful, cordial, and— though it’s hard to believe—talkative. The town was in a nameless region deep in central Europe. The place had no name because it was so remote that it was usually represented on maps as a black hole. That is, if it was represented at all.

Even after the outside world caught up with this peculiar state of affairs, not even the ablest linguists trusted themselves to explain matters. The townspeople were even less able to comment on the situation. For their part, it was so natural, so self-evident, that each person would speak her own individual language that no one gave it a second—or first—thought.

The explanation usually offered for this phenomenon was partly geographical and partly political. The town in question had existed for a long time and was surrounded by numerous renowned countries. As time went by, the merry-go-round of history paid a visit to all these countries, sometimes for longer, sometimes for shorter periods, and sometimes more than once. There had been a striking number of conflicts—more than in any other part of the world—between the existing and emergent nations and states, those various major sets and subsets, multi-sets, part-sets, and exclusive sets, those innumerable political entities, some grander and some pettier, which had arisen and subsided during the centuries: dukedoms, superpowers, empires, millennial reigns, republics, free states, utopias, every kind of state coalition, sacred and secular, from the olden days until today.

A lone historian who specialized in the composition of historical atlases once attempted the hopeless task of drawing a map that traced the evolution of the region’s internal borders. After many years’ work he was stuck with an insoluble tangle of maps that closely resembled the Burda pattern sheets for sewing winterwear. Indeed, his wife accidentally picked up the maps and managed to sew a pantsuit, a sweater, and two party dresses without any difficulty before the mistake came to light.

The townspeople had many centuries of experience in the nuances of the most common forms of government. They’d known dictatorships, totalitarianism, arbitrary coups, republics, and anarchy, to name but a few. Each upheaval was followed by a sputtering indecision, as happens with oppression and liberation, protests and rebellions, and the locals had early on grown tired of the constant need to change language according to who determined the hows and the whys each time. They came to realize that it was more dependable if each person had his own language which no one could take away. It was, in other words, a psychological defense mechanism: each person, faced with an unstable world, would hold on for dear life to his own essence; he would instinctively seek to cultivate his own personal language, a language even more familiar to him than his mother tongue: the language, that is, in which he thought. How could anyone ban that or kill it off?

That, at least, is the received wisdom. Maybe it was something else, maybe there was no reason. The locals didn’t know and, like I say, didn’t know there was something to know. Children learned their language painlessly, just like everyone everywhere else does: children pick up the language of those around them. It would slowly dawn on a young child that she was a distinct individual, and she would come to understand that her mother spoke one language and her father another. Her older sisters were each speaking their own language. Grandfather was talking one language, Grandmother another. Babysitters came and went, saying shush or bye in a new tongue. Out of this babble each child developed his or her own idiosyncratic language, innately understanding that it needed to be distinct from all others. The bonds of kinship were based on this.

No one understood words, therefore, in a “literal” or “by the book” fashion; instead, meaning passed between people through a complicated interplay of glances, facial expressions, gesticulations, and nuanced tones of voice; each cluster of phonemes had a given meaning only for the person talking. These goings-on so naturally informed the behavior of the locals that they were able to convey everything that mattered just as smoothly as anyone else. At the same time, it meant they needed to live by exploring deep within themselves and within others. At first glance, such an arrangement might seem to keep people apart, to increase their selfishness, but the opposite proved to be the case: the mutual “incomprehension” resulted in greater understanding and accord.

There were no dictionaries and definitely no books or literature of the kind that gets recorded and catalogued. The townspeople were, naturally, illiterate, since a person couldn’t write for anyone but herself. Nevertheless, they didn’t lack for stories, poems, and plays. People wouldn’t have been able to get by without those. The creative arts were held in high esteem, but publication had to be oral, physical, and practical. As with verbal performances in any language, behavior, deportment, and different habits of expression were full of meaning. For even though words had no particular semantic value (except for the poet herself), the sound of the words was highly important to everyone. People’s ears were particularly attuned to certain individuals, including all the best poets, who talked individually beautiful languages—i.e., their self-language had especially beautiful-sounding units, and they recited in more enchanting and enjoyable ways than others.

And so the townspeople happily wended their way along until well into the last century. They were industrious and frugal and quite self-sufficient, subsisting primarily by agriculture, which was cultivated on the outskirts of town. For most of the century, they’d heard that the superpower’s actions in that region weren’t exactly coterminous with the interests of freedom and democracy, but they were left in peace: they looked only to themselves and didn’t cause trouble. In keeping with this, there wasn’t a particularly developed national consciousness among the locals. The superpower was thus able to breathe easy and didn’t ever feel like it needed to stamp out their language, or the townspeople themselves.

The few inspectors who were sent to the place, the few travelers who stumbled across it, noticed that it seemed as though these handsome, healthy people were all illiterate. That definitely wasn’t consistent with the ideology of the superpower, which attached great importance (at least rhetorically) to the education of its citizens. But it kept quiet because it wasn’t able to find any specialists in the alleged language of the townspeople. Before long, visitors, not understanding a single word they had heard anywhere in town, were firmly of the belief that just one language was being used. This conclusion was understandable, given that they’d seen firsthand the clear understanding and harmony which prevailed among the locals, and witnessed their lively “book” culture.

Various travel books from past centuries attest to this. In them, the authors lament time and again how they weren’t able to get any grasp at all of the local language (there!), which was clearly very unpredictable and very complicated and very hard to pick up, not least because of a lack of written sources. At the same time, they all note how they have been marvelously successful getting folk to understand them by simply speaking their own language. “For some reason, it appeared that the locals understood all my wishes surprisingly well; I was speaking clearly and slowly, using explanatory gesticulations alongside my mother tongue, which I knew to be the purest and best in the whole of Breiðafjörður,” writes Reverend Ketill Þorkelsson, who travelled in Arabia, and who wrote a travel narrative about the place in the seventeenth century (first published much later, in Copenhagen, in 1907-8).  

The people lived beautiful lives. At night, the locals would sit in the coffee shop and chat, each in his own language. A boy and a girl looked into each other’s eyes. He said, “I love you,” in his own language, which might, for example, be “lanas na vifríó.” She understood right away and gave a matching answer in her own language, perhaps “sangran sprjú aðver”—and the sound and their expressions meant nothing was misunderstood.

But it came to pass that, one day early in the last decade of last century, a linguist came to town and sat down in a little bar. Great changes had recently occurred in the continent’s political landscape, not for the first time. The superpower had suddenly broken up and was just about gone for good. New groups had sprung up and created a new world. Old borders were erased and others older still resurfaced afresh, in part or completely. The town, which had long been isolated from the outside world, suddenly (as in former times) was now isolated in a totally different way. What’s more, alongside the political upheavals, there had been a major information technology revolution all across the world. The linguist was there on the frontline, and one evening when he was hunting about the Internet for a desirable doctoral project, he’d stumbled on an article about this mysterious and unwieldy language. His interest was piqued, and he saw a real opportunity when he understood that the region had recently become accessible again, for the first time in many decades. A real possibility, a Eureka moment.

A few days later he arrived at the place and began his research. When he started gathering samples of people’s speech he came to realize, little by little and with growing astonishment, the way of things here in this melting pot. After overcoming his initial lack of confidence, he changed his mission: it was now no longer a discovery expedition, but instead he took it upon himself to be the savior of the place. He wanted to help these people cope with modern life. He soon got some really fat grants from many places around the world to help him take down phrases from every one of the locals, and then he set up a computer program which quickly and efficiently delivered accurate translations from person to person. In the wake of this written language, or, more accurately, word-processing language, all the locals learned to read and got laptops.

Wasn’t that a good thing? No, far from it. No one trusted the sound of words any longer, just the markings. Things opened up in new ways. Words which had fallen away were once again brought to mind and turned out in hindsight to have been misunderstood. “Lanas na vifríó” didn’t always translate to “I love you” but rather “I like you fairly well perhaps sometimes” or something similar. And the reply “sangran sprjú aðver” turned out to be totally absurd when the meaning of each part was scrutinized. Families were separated and enduring ties were severed. An old disagreement could, in retrospect, turn out not to have been justified in the first place, and so rise from the embers all over again.

The linguist became the mayor, and what’s more he was in charge of caring for all the knowledge. He was also, at the same time, the director of the Word Bank, which intervened in any controversial issues. There’s no longer any uncertainty about languages, he said. But it was obvious that the atmosphere in the town was totally different, much worse than before. Now, all the joy has disappeared, there are no twinkles in the eyes of the townspeople nor delicate creases in the top corners of their mouths. The coffee shop has closed down. Everyone keeps to himself, poker-faced, skeptical about anything anyone else says. Actually, there is no longer a town. Only some houses, occupied by a sparse assortment of solipsistic folk who insist that they—and only they—know the meaning of words. Most of them have finished their language study and are ready to leave.

English Icelandic (Original)

Once there was a town where no two people spoke the same language. No one used the same words for anything. And yet everyone understood everyone else and they all lived together in peace and harmony. Until recently, the locals were cheerful, cordial, and— though it’s hard to believe—talkative. The town was in a nameless region deep in central Europe. The place had no name because it was so remote that it was usually represented on maps as a black hole. That is, if it was represented at all.

Even after the outside world caught up with this peculiar state of affairs, not even the ablest linguists trusted themselves to explain matters. The townspeople were even less able to comment on the situation. For their part, it was so natural, so self-evident, that each person would speak her own individual language that no one gave it a second—or first—thought.

The explanation usually offered for this phenomenon was partly geographical and partly political. The town in question had existed for a long time and was surrounded by numerous renowned countries. As time went by, the merry-go-round of history paid a visit to all these countries, sometimes for longer, sometimes for shorter periods, and sometimes more than once. There had been a striking number of conflicts—more than in any other part of the world—between the existing and emergent nations and states, those various major sets and subsets, multi-sets, part-sets, and exclusive sets, those innumerable political entities, some grander and some pettier, which had arisen and subsided during the centuries: dukedoms, superpowers, empires, millennial reigns, republics, free states, utopias, every kind of state coalition, sacred and secular, from the olden days until today.

A lone historian who specialized in the composition of historical atlases once attempted the hopeless task of drawing a map that traced the evolution of the region’s internal borders. After many years’ work he was stuck with an insoluble tangle of maps that closely resembled the Burda pattern sheets for sewing winterwear. Indeed, his wife accidentally picked up the maps and managed to sew a pantsuit, a sweater, and two party dresses without any difficulty before the mistake came to light.

The townspeople had many centuries of experience in the nuances of the most common forms of government. They’d known dictatorships, totalitarianism, arbitrary coups, republics, and anarchy, to name but a few. Each upheaval was followed by a sputtering indecision, as happens with oppression and liberation, protests and rebellions, and the locals had early on grown tired of the constant need to change language according to who determined the hows and the whys each time. They came to realize that it was more dependable if each person had his own language which no one could take away. It was, in other words, a psychological defense mechanism: each person, faced with an unstable world, would hold on for dear life to his own essence; he would instinctively seek to cultivate his own personal language, a language even more familiar to him than his mother tongue: the language, that is, in which he thought. How could anyone ban that or kill it off?

That, at least, is the received wisdom. Maybe it was something else, maybe there was no reason. The locals didn’t know and, like I say, didn’t know there was something to know. Children learned their language painlessly, just like everyone everywhere else does: children pick up the language of those around them. It would slowly dawn on a young child that she was a distinct individual, and she would come to understand that her mother spoke one language and her father another. Her older sisters were each speaking their own language. Grandfather was talking one language, Grandmother another. Babysitters came and went, saying shush or bye in a new tongue. Out of this babble each child developed his or her own idiosyncratic language, innately understanding that it needed to be distinct from all others. The bonds of kinship were based on this.

No one understood words, therefore, in a “literal” or “by the book” fashion; instead, meaning passed between people through a complicated interplay of glances, facial expressions, gesticulations, and nuanced tones of voice; each cluster of phonemes had a given meaning only for the person talking. These goings-on so naturally informed the behavior of the locals that they were able to convey everything that mattered just as smoothly as anyone else. At the same time, it meant they needed to live by exploring deep within themselves and within others. At first glance, such an arrangement might seem to keep people apart, to increase their selfishness, but the opposite proved to be the case: the mutual “incomprehension” resulted in greater understanding and accord.

There were no dictionaries and definitely no books or literature of the kind that gets recorded and catalogued. The townspeople were, naturally, illiterate, since a person couldn’t write for anyone but herself. Nevertheless, they didn’t lack for stories, poems, and plays. People wouldn’t have been able to get by without those. The creative arts were held in high esteem, but publication had to be oral, physical, and practical. As with verbal performances in any language, behavior, deportment, and different habits of expression were full of meaning. For even though words had no particular semantic value (except for the poet herself), the sound of the words was highly important to everyone. People’s ears were particularly attuned to certain individuals, including all the best poets, who talked individually beautiful languages—i.e., their self-language had especially beautiful-sounding units, and they recited in more enchanting and enjoyable ways than others.

And so the townspeople happily wended their way along until well into the last century. They were industrious and frugal and quite self-sufficient, subsisting primarily by agriculture, which was cultivated on the outskirts of town. For most of the century, they’d heard that the superpower’s actions in that region weren’t exactly coterminous with the interests of freedom and democracy, but they were left in peace: they looked only to themselves and didn’t cause trouble. In keeping with this, there wasn’t a particularly developed national consciousness among the locals. The superpower was thus able to breathe easy and didn’t ever feel like it needed to stamp out their language, or the townspeople themselves.

The few inspectors who were sent to the place, the few travelers who stumbled across it, noticed that it seemed as though these handsome, healthy people were all illiterate. That definitely wasn’t consistent with the ideology of the superpower, which attached great importance (at least rhetorically) to the education of its citizens. But it kept quiet because it wasn’t able to find any specialists in the alleged language of the townspeople. Before long, visitors, not understanding a single word they had heard anywhere in town, were firmly of the belief that just one language was being used. This conclusion was understandable, given that they’d seen firsthand the clear understanding and harmony which prevailed among the locals, and witnessed their lively “book” culture.

Various travel books from past centuries attest to this. In them, the authors lament time and again how they weren’t able to get any grasp at all of the local language (there!), which was clearly very unpredictable and very complicated and very hard to pick up, not least because of a lack of written sources. At the same time, they all note how they have been marvelously successful getting folk to understand them by simply speaking their own language. “For some reason, it appeared that the locals understood all my wishes surprisingly well; I was speaking clearly and slowly, using explanatory gesticulations alongside my mother tongue, which I knew to be the purest and best in the whole of Breiðafjörður,” writes Reverend Ketill Þorkelsson, who travelled in Arabia, and who wrote a travel narrative about the place in the seventeenth century (first published much later, in Copenhagen, in 1907-8).  

The people lived beautiful lives. At night, the locals would sit in the coffee shop and chat, each in his own language. A boy and a girl looked into each other’s eyes. He said, “I love you,” in his own language, which might, for example, be “lanas na vifríó.” She understood right away and gave a matching answer in her own language, perhaps “sangran sprjú aðver”—and the sound and their expressions meant nothing was misunderstood.

But it came to pass that, one day early in the last decade of last century, a linguist came to town and sat down in a little bar. Great changes had recently occurred in the continent’s political landscape, not for the first time. The superpower had suddenly broken up and was just about gone for good. New groups had sprung up and created a new world. Old borders were erased and others older still resurfaced afresh, in part or completely. The town, which had long been isolated from the outside world, suddenly (as in former times) was now isolated in a totally different way. What’s more, alongside the political upheavals, there had been a major information technology revolution all across the world. The linguist was there on the frontline, and one evening when he was hunting about the Internet for a desirable doctoral project, he’d stumbled on an article about this mysterious and unwieldy language. His interest was piqued, and he saw a real opportunity when he understood that the region had recently become accessible again, for the first time in many decades. A real possibility, a Eureka moment.

A few days later he arrived at the place and began his research. When he started gathering samples of people’s speech he came to realize, little by little and with growing astonishment, the way of things here in this melting pot. After overcoming his initial lack of confidence, he changed his mission: it was now no longer a discovery expedition, but instead he took it upon himself to be the savior of the place. He wanted to help these people cope with modern life. He soon got some really fat grants from many places around the world to help him take down phrases from every one of the locals, and then he set up a computer program which quickly and efficiently delivered accurate translations from person to person. In the wake of this written language, or, more accurately, word-processing language, all the locals learned to read and got laptops.

Wasn’t that a good thing? No, far from it. No one trusted the sound of words any longer, just the markings. Things opened up in new ways. Words which had fallen away were once again brought to mind and turned out in hindsight to have been misunderstood. “Lanas na vifríó” didn’t always translate to “I love you” but rather “I like you fairly well perhaps sometimes” or something similar. And the reply “sangran sprjú aðver” turned out to be totally absurd when the meaning of each part was scrutinized. Families were separated and enduring ties were severed. An old disagreement could, in retrospect, turn out not to have been justified in the first place, and so rise from the embers all over again.

The linguist became the mayor, and what’s more he was in charge of caring for all the knowledge. He was also, at the same time, the director of the Word Bank, which intervened in any controversial issues. There’s no longer any uncertainty about languages, he said. But it was obvious that the atmosphere in the town was totally different, much worse than before. Now, all the joy has disappeared, there are no twinkles in the eyes of the townspeople nor delicate creases in the top corners of their mouths. The coffee shop has closed down. Everyone keeps to himself, poker-faced, skeptical about anything anyone else says. Actually, there is no longer a town. Only some houses, occupied by a sparse assortment of solipsistic folk who insist that they—and only they—know the meaning of words. Most of them have finished their language study and are ready to leave.

Orðanna hljóðan

Einu sinni var bær þar sem engir tveir töluðu sama mál. Enginn notaði sama orð um eitt eða neitt. Þrátt fyrir það skildu allir alla og lifðu saman í sátt og samlyndi. Til þess var tekið hvað íbúarnir voru glaðlyndir, hjartanlegir  og  — þótt ótrúlegt megi virðast — ræðnir. Bærinn var í ónefndu héraði í Miðevrópu miðri. Það var ónefnt af því það var löngum svo afskekkt að landsvæðinu var best lýst sem svartholi á landakortinu. Oftast var því þó alls ekki lýst.

Á endanum fór þó svo að umheimurinn áttaði sig á þessu sérkennilega fyrirbæri, en jafnvel hinir færustu málvísindamenn treystu sér ekki til að skýra það til hlítar.

Og  allra síst gátu bæjarbúar sjálfir lagt þar neitt af mörkum. Fyrir þeim var svo eðlilegt og sjálfsagt að hver og einn maður talaði sérstakt mál að þeir leiddu ekki einu sinni hugann að því. Viðtekið er þó enn sem komið er að skýringin hafi verið sumpart landfræðileg og sumpart pólitísk. Bærinn sem hér segir frá hafði eins lengi og vitað var staðið á mörkum fjölmargra landa. Í tímans rás hafði hringekja sögunnar látið hann staldra við í öllum þessum löndum um lengri eða skemmri tíma, sumum oftar en einu sinni. Hann hafði í ríkari mæli en öll önnur svæði jarðar verið bitbein heillar halarófu aðliggjandi og aðsteðjandi þjóða og ríkja, sniðmengi og hlutmengi, bakmengi, faldmengi og fyllimengi ótal stærri eða smærri pólitískra heilda sem hafist höfðu og hnigið gegnum aldirnar: Hertogadæma, stórvelda, keisaradæma, þúsundáraríkja, lýðvelda, fríríkja, sæluríkja og hvers kyns ríkjabandalaga, heilagra og vanhelgra  að fornu og nýju. 

  Sagnfræðingur einn sem sérhæfði sig í gerð söguatlasa kvað eitt sinn hafa reynt sig við það vonlausa verk að draga upp kort sem sýna skyldi þróun landamæra á svæðinu. Eftir margra ára starf sat hann uppi með óleysanlega flækju á landabréfi sem minnti helst á sniðaörk úr svellþykku Burda-saumablaði, enda misgreip konan hans sig á kortinu og tókst án vandkvæða að sauma upp úr því buxnadragt, úlpu og tvo samkvæmiskjóla áður en mistökin urðu ljós.

Bæjarmenn höfðu því margra alda reynslu af öllum blæbrigðum þekktra stjórnarhátta. Þeir höfðu kynnst einræði, alræði, gerræði, lýðræði og óræði, svo fátt eitt sé nefnt. Í öllu því umróti sem slíkum hringlanda fylgir, svo sem kúgun og kúvendingum, uppstokkun og uppreisnum, hafa íbúarnir snemma tekið að  þreytast á því að þurfa sífellt að skipta um tungumál eftir því undir hverja þeir heyrðu hvernig og hvers vegna hverju sinni. Á endanum hefur þeim orðið ljóst að tryggast væri að hver og ein persóna ætti sitt eigið mál sem enginn gæti frá henni tekið. Þetta má að sínu leyti kalla sálfræðilega varnarhætti: Sérhver maður tekur í ótryggum heimi að halda dauðahaldi í kjarnann í sjálfum og leitast ósjálfrátt við að rækta það mál sem stendur honum nær en móðurmálið: Sjálfsmálið, málið sem hann hugsar á. Hver gæti líka bannað það eða vegið að því?

 

Þetta kann að hafa verið skýringin. Ef til vill var hún allt önnur, ef til vill engin. Íbúarnir vissu það ekki og, eins og ég segi, vissu ekki einu sinni að eitthvað væri þar að vita. Máltaka barna fór sársaukalaust fram á sama hátt og alstaðar annarsstaðar: Svo læra börnin málið að fyrir þeim er haft. Sérhvert ungbarn sem smátt og smátt vaknaði til vitundar um sjálft sig sem einstakling skynjaði í fyllingu tímans að móðir þess talaði eitt mál og faðirinn annað. Eldri systkini töluðu hvert sitt mál. Afi talaði eitt mál, amma annað. Barnfóstrur komu og fóru, hver og ein með suss eða bí á nýrri tungu. Úr hjali hvers barns þróaðist því sérstakt persónulegt tungumál sem barnið af eðlisávísun skynjaði að þurfti fyrst og fremst að vera öðruvísi en allra hinna. Í því lá skyldleikinn.

 

Þannig hafði þetta alltaf verið þegar hér var komið sögu. Orðin sjálf voru bæjarbúum því ekki tæki til tjáskipta af því tagi sem við þekkjum þau úr öðrum ævintýrum.   Mælt mál þeirra var ekki kerfi þar sem samkomulag ríkir í aðalatriðum um merkingu hvers orðs heldur var það miklu fremur speglun á vitund mælenda og aðeins einn fjölmargra jafngildra þátta sem beitt var til að koma öðrum í skilning um kenndir og óskir, tilfinningar og tilætlanir. 

 

Enginn skilningur orðanna var því „bókstaflegur“ heldur var merkingunni komið áleiðis til næsta manns með flóknu samspili augnaráðs, svipbrigða og handapats og blæbrigða í rómi þegar borin var fram hver klasi fónema sem einungis hafði algilda merkingu fyrir þeim sem talaði. En þessi háttur mótaði auðvitað alla hegðan íbúanna þannig að þeir gátu tjáð allt sem máli skiptir jafngreiðlega og aðrir, en þurftu hins vegar að lifa sig mun dýpra inn í jafnt sjálfa sig sem aðra ef svo átti að geta orðið. Fyrirkomulag sem í fljótu bragði virðist til þess fallið að stía fólki sundur og efla sérgæði reyndist þannig virka þvert á móti: Gagnkvæmt „skilningsleysið“ varð til þess að efla skilning og eindrægni.

 

Engar orðabækur voru því til og reyndar alls engar bækur eða bókmenntir sem skráðar yrðu. Eðlilega, bæjarbúar voru að sjálfsögðu allir ólæsir, enda hefði hver maður ekki getað skrifað fyrir neinn annan en sjálfan sig. En samt var enginn hörgull á sögum, ljóðum og leikverkum. Hvernig hefði fólkið líka átt að komast af án þess.  Allur skáldskapur var í hávegum hafður, en birting verka hlaut því að vera munnleg, líkamleg og verkleg. Líkt og í annarri orðræðu voru látæði, fas og tjáningarháttur þrungin merkingu. En þó orðin sjálf hefðu ekki sértæka merkingu nema fyrir skáldið sjálft, skipti orðanna hljóðan engu að síður miklu. Fólk hafði afar næmt eyra fyrir því að vissir einstaklingar, þar á meðal öll bestu skáldin, töluðu einstaklega fagurt mál, þeas höfðu í máli sínu sérlega hljómfagrar samstæður og fluttu þær með fegurri og  skemmtilegri hætti en aðrir.

 

Þannig undu bæjarbúar glaðir við sitt  langt fram eftir síðustu öld. Þeir voru iðjusamir og nægjusamir og sjálfum sér nógir, lifðu fyrst og fremst á landbúnaði sem stundaður var í úthverfum bæjarins. Lengst af á þeirri öld höfðu þeir heyrt undir áhrifasvæði stórveldis sem ekki var beinlínis orðað við frelsi og lýðræði, en voru látnir í friði af því þeir sáu alveg um sig sjálfir og voru ekki til vandræða. Sömuleiðis var það svo að ekki örlaði  á neins konar þjóðernishyggju hjá þessu fólki. Stórveldið gat því andað rólega og nennti ekki einu sinni að troða sinni eigin tungu upp á, hvað þá upp í bæjarbúa. Þeir fáu eftirlitsmenn sem sendir voru á staðinn eða ferðamenn sem villtust þangað veittu því reyndar athygli að þetta myndarlega og þriflega fólk virtist allt saman ólæst. Það var að vísu ekki í samræmi við hugmyndafræði stórveldisins sem í orði kveðnu lét sér mjög annt um menntun þegnanna. En þetta var látið kyrrt liggja vegna þess að ekki var hægt að hafa upp á nokkrum sérfræðingi í meintu tungumáli þeirra. Aðkomumenn fyrr og síðar, sem skildu auðvitað ekki eitt orð sem talað var í gjörvöllum bænum stóðu nefnilega í þeirri trú að um eitt tungumál væri að ræða. Það var svo sem eðlileg ályktun þegar þeir urðu vitni að þeim skilningi og eindrægni sem ríkti meðal íbúanna eða urðu vitni að líflegri „bók“menntahefð þeirra.

    Í ýmsum ferðabókum fyrri alda má sjá vikið að þessu. Höfundarnir harma þar einatt að þeir skuli ekki ná neinum tökum á máli (svo!) heimamanna sem bersýnilega sé mjög erfitt og flókið og illt að henda reiður á, meðal annars vegna skorts á skriflegum heimildum. Allir geta þess hins vegar að þeim hafi gengið furðu vel að fá fólk til að skilja sig með því einfaldlega að mæla á eigin tungu. „Af einhverjum orsökum virtust þó bæjarmenn skilja sérdeilis vel allar mínar óskir er ég þær með hægð og skýrum varaburði, jafnframt temmilega gestíkúlerandi fram setti á þeirri minni móðurtungu er ég vissi hreinasta og besta um Breiðafjarðareyjar“ segir til dæmis séra Ketill Þorkelsson Arabíufari í Farandrellu sinni frá sautjándu öld (Khöfn 1907-8).

          Mannlífið var fagurt. Á kvöldin sátu íbúarnir á kaffihúsum og skröfuðu saman, hver á sinni tungu. Piltur og stúlka horfðust í augu. Hann sagði „ég elska þig“ á sínu máli sem gat til dæmis verið „lanas na vifríó“. Hún skildi það umsvifalaust og svaraði því sama á móti á sínu máli, ef til vill „sangran sprjú aðver“ og hljómurinn og fasið var þannig að ekkert varð misskilið.

En svo var það dag einn snemma á síðasta áratug síðustu aldar að málvísindamaður kom til bæjarins og settist þar að svo lítið bar á. Miklar breytingar höfðu þá nýlega orðið í pólitísku landslagi álfunnar, ekki í fyrsta sinn. Stórveldið hafði allt í einu liðast sundur og var bara horfið. Nýjar samstæður spruttu upp og skópu nýjar aðstæður. Gömul landamæri þurrkuðust út og önnur enn eldri tóku sig upp að nýju að hluta eða í heild. Bærinn sem lengi hafði verið afskekktur á útnára var nú skyndilega eins og stundum fyrr á öldum orðinn afskekktur í alfaraleið. Jafnframt hinum pólitísku hræringum hafði mikil upplýsingatæknibylting gengið yfir heiminn. Málvísindamaðurinn var þar í fremstu víglínu og kvöld eitt þegar hann var  á höttunum eftir fýsilegu doktorsverkefni á netinu hafði hann fyrir tilviljun rekist á frásögn af þessu dularfulla og illhöndlanlega tungumáli. Áhugi hans var þegar vakinn og hann sá sér leik á borði þegar hann áttaði sig á því að svæðið var nýlega orðið aðgengilegt í fyrsta sinn í marga áratugi. Bending og BINGÓ í senn.

      Fáeinum dögum síðar var hann kominn á staðinn og gat hafið rannsókn sína. Þegar hann tók að safna sýnishornum af mæli fólks áttaði hann sig smátt og smátt á sér til mikillar furðu hvernig allt var hér í pottinn búið. Eftir að hann hafði unnið bug á fyrstu vantrúnni breyttist leiðangur hans og var nú ekki lengur rannsóknarleiðangur, heldur tók hann að líta á sig sem bjargvætt staðarins. Hann vildi hjálpa þessu fólki til að takast á við nútímann. Hann komst brátt í feita styrki víða um heim og gat fundið leið til að orðtaka hvern einasta bæjarbúa og að því loknu sett upp tölvuforrit sem fljótt og vel skilaði nákvæmum þýðingum frá manni til manns. Í kjölfarið varð til ritmál, eða öllu heldur ritvinnslumál, allir íbúarnir lærðu að lesa og fengu fartölvur.

       Varð þetta svo ekki allt saman til góðs? Nei, síður en svo. Enginn treysti nú lengur á orðanna hljóðan, heldur aðeins á merkinguna. Öllu var flett upp jafnharðan. Orð sem fallið höfðu voru rifjuð upp og reyndust á sínum tíma hafa verið misskilin. „Lanas na vifríó“ þýddi ekki alveg „ég elska þig“ heldur „mér líkar þokkalega við þig kannski stundum“ eða eitthvað ámóta. Og svarið „sangran sprjú aðver“ reyndist algjörlega út í hött þegar farið var að grandskoða merkingu hvers atkvæðis. Fjölskyldur eru að sundrast og tryggðabönd sífellt að rofna. Gamall ágreiningur reynist ekki hafa verið jafnaður og rís hratt úr öskustó

     Málvísindamaðurinn varð bæjarstjóri, enda í lykilaðstöðu vegna þekkingar sinna.  Jafnframt er hann bankastjóri Orðabankans sem sker úr um öll ágreiningsmál. Ekkert fer hér lengur milli mála, segir hann. En það er ljóst að bæjarbragur er orðinn allur annar og miklu verri en áður var. Öll gleði er horfin, hvergi blik í auga né fínleg vipra í munnviki. Kaffihús lokuð. Hver hokrar að sínu með pókerfés og hefur vara á sér gagnvart öllu sem aðrir segja. Eiginlega er þarna enginn bær lengur. Þetta eru bara hús þar sem býr eitthvert slangur af fólki sem á svo sem ekkert sameiginlegt annað en orðhengilsháttinn. Flestir eru komnir á heimstungunámskeið og vilja flytja.

 © Þórarinn Eldjárn

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