This is one of numerous articles I wrote for the Sunday News
(Tanzania) column "Letter from Butiama" between 2005 and 2011. Publication
date: 11th February 2007.
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There is a Biblical passage about the tower of Babel (Genesis11: 1-9) which
reports that humans once had a single language, and that we agreed to build a
tower to reach heaven. The Almighty God was monitoring the scheme, and stepped
in to intervene after deciding we had gone too far.
God created languages, making it impossible for those at the construction
site to understand and cooperate with each other. Unable to continue, humans
dispersed around the earth to indulge in other mischief.
In the scientific study of languages, experts group those languages with
similar characteristics in groups. Genetic or typological characteristics are
used for the classifications. Genetic classification, in lines similar to the
story of Babel, looks for evidence of linkages to a common language, while
typological classifications look for similarities in structure.
The study of language assumes that the groups of languages and the families
they belong to are derived from a “parent” or “proto-“ language, the mother of
all languages. Bantu is one such group from which most of the languages spoken
in the eastern, central, and southern African region originate, while the
Germanic subfamily is known to have spawned several European languages including
English, German, Swedish, Dutch, and Norwegian.
Science has not and will not be able to determine whether all languages
originated from one particular language because the available written records
are not consistent across all languages and, even when they are available, cover
only a fraction of the estimated thousands of years in which human speech has
existed.
However, it is instructive to note that, in some languages, there seems to be
some trace of the Biblical account on the tower of Babel.
I believe that Swahili and Italian speakers can make a strong religious claim
to being one of the first two language offshoots from Babel, and a scientific
claim for being two of the world’s earlier proto-languages.
Take the example of the Italian word giu’ whose pronunciation closely
resembles that of the Swahili word juu. Giu’ means “down”,
juu is “up.” Imagine the confusion created each time the Swahili speaking
bricklayer asked the Italian stores clerk for additional bricks to be sent up.
Although these two words have opposite meanings, if you look at them as
representing one of two extremes they are strongly connected on a scale of
height, and would give some credence to the Biblical account of the Divine
intervention to curtail the effectiveness of communication, at least between
Italian and Swahili speakers.
To the northern Chinese ma can have three meanings depending on the
intonation you use when pronouncing those two letters. On a flat tone it means
“mother”, on a falling tone “to curse.” In Italian the same word means “but” and
several other meanings associated with that word.
There are several examples of words that has one decent meaning in one
language and a different and obscene unprintable meaning in another. Again, a
few Italian words that can be used in normal conversation share the reputation
of having obscene Swahili meanings.
While some religions preach that we shared a common language in the past, and
scientific study points to a shared common origin of languages in language
groups, there is a great likelihood that the advances in human knowledge
existing today would have changed the story in the Bible.
I have had the chance to observe Chinese technicians working on a Tanzanian
construction site. They could not speak a word of neither English nor Swahili.
In comparison, the only Chinese word that their coordinator knew was the word
for “beer”, which was of little help even if they were constructing a brewery.
In little time a communications system was developed and used. To order more
nails, they showed a nail to the coordinator, and wrote down the size and
quantity using the number system familiar to any literate Tanzanian. It worked
well for most situations. Thanks to easier communication nowadays, when
communication completely broke down, they would place a call to an interpreter
in China to resolve the matter.
Human knowledge today would have probably changed the story of Babel.
Construction would have continued until the tower would have collapsed from its
own height, but while construction lasted, religion and science would have found
common ground.
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