Language and Wisdom

"The sum of human wisdom is not contained in any one language, and no single language is capable of expressing all forms and degrees of human comprehension." -Ezra Pound

I've often felt that it can be somewhat of a handicap to be a native English speaker. Don't get me wrong, I'm quite glad that English is my first language. In my years of teaching English, I've come to realise just how difficult, idiosyncratic, inconsistent, and just plain tough this language really is.

If you are fluent only in English, you have no practical need to learn another language. You can travel through the Forbidden City in Beijing, in the southern islands of Thailand, waddle through train stations in Seoul...you'll always find someone who understands you, and someone you understand. After all, 2/3 of the worlds' speakers of English are not native English speakers.

This quote reminds me of an old friend that I've recently gotten in touch with after many years. Amid. He currently lives/works in the Philippines, but he is originally from Beiruit. He speaks four languages fluently, knows shockingly a lot about Japanese miso, and loves languages and linguistics as I do. He's is an eclectic fellow-- a poet, a scholar, a bit of a lunatic, philosopher, and a wanderer of the world.

We met in the late summer of '95. Amid was Marie-Noelle's roommate in her two bedroom apartment in the 12th arrondisement of Paris. I arrived in Paris nearly two weeks before she was to return from the Beijing women's conference. During that time and thereafter, Amid and I spent a lot of time, drinking, smoking, talking politics, philosophy, and about words and languages. We spoke mostly in French, a lot in English.

I knew it before, but I discovered how my perceptions were quite limited. Over many glasses of vodka, many herbs, sitting in a window over the narrow rue de Capri, I learned a lot about wisdom that I hadn't ever thought of, through words and concepts of languages I hadn't ever explored.

Reminds me of the concept of human wisdom. Imagine a circle, shade in a large piece of a pie, which indicates what we know. Then another piece of the pie, indicating what we don't know, and then shade in the rest of the circle, which indicates things we don't even know we don't know!

I think of Indonesia. Given all the languages in that country, one could say "hello, how are you?" in a different language every day for one year. Given that the sum of human wisdom is not contained in the languages I know--then for sure there is wisdom beyond my mere conception of wisdom. I find that pretty overwhelming, and comforting--in an odd sort of way.