Phenomena of Mutual Agreement – Going Deep in Language

Different cultures – different meanings.

In the previous article («How to Understand Each Other? Talk to An Infant.») we studied, going into details, how people interact as intelligent beings. We “arranged” with you about speech origin as first attempt to share inner ideas and try to communicate. We came to conclusion that up-to-date optimal form of suchlike interaction is language.

But languages are different… Was it so all the time in the past?

If we come back to people from a certain community who recently started using speech, it appears to be that, first, they started communicating by including more and more abstract notions in phenomena they are surrounded with, as well as natural aspiration of human called “to know more” favored naming and using in interaction more abstract and more complicated things than just a “stick”, “food”, or “hand”.

Maybe there were several autonomic communities originally which never met each other or maybe one community started growing and expanding… it doesn’t matter. But what interesting is that there was always the endless process of growing by number and expanding by splitting into smaller fragments. In the course of spreading out and settling new territories owing to certain events and conditions, this expanding-and-splitting-up-parts mode of life was loosing contacts and common values with the former original mother-community. It’s simply natural that they were being lost one from another, because their members were observing different things and phenomena – new animals and plants, new climate conditions and new generations which couldn’t be transferred in full to the whole community (Don’t forget, please, that there were no phones, cars, television). Only rare and very important news found echo in the original mother-place or were shared by other parts settled in their new places with absolutely new conditions.

That’s why it’s not unusual that new words were born. Any new event or phenomena – be it just an animal or plant, or new methods of lifestyle – required their own titles. Then people had to use them collectively for surviving by joint efforts. And now imagine what changes could take place in speech of even two given divided parts-settlements of formerly united community when there are hardly possible channels for news distribution or no channels at all for even one-on-one interaction between these extremely located settlement members?

Exactly. Their members seem have lost what was common for them. The common values, they once had shared, disappeared, and vanished into thin air. Unwittingly and imperceptibly as well as inevitably. These values were getting lost in the past. But for surviving, settlements had to think about their present and future. Time passed and these two parts-settlements became new independent communities. Notably, both of them started living in their own reality. To facilitate their existing, they started slowly to change their habits, traditions and modes of communication to conform their inner realities to the one, requiring other standards and representing other conditions.

And their pronunciation did change. It changed in the way which was more comfortable according to environment conditions they lived in. And, as mentioned, these people used more and more new words. In so doing they were becoming new community with their own common values, traditions and culture. And once the day came when two members, once belonging to the one original community, but then broken up to completely opposite directions, met each other in their original birthplace. And the problem was that they hardly understood each other. It turned out that they used different words, they pronounced them differently, they didn’t know natural environment of each other, i.e. new habits, traditions and mode of life.

Now imagine that these two new communities among the whole diversity of similar ones were also involved in the process of expanding and, maturing in their members number, slowly divided on new little fragments which went farther and farther one from another. This is the natural logic of expansion. And the day came when two grandchildren of the two men, once had shared common mother-community, met each other. For them, it would have become much more difficult to understand each other, compared to their fathers. This process is endless. Therefore, such a day comes when great grandsons of these two men – be it me and you – meet each other and try to chat, but they cannot understand each other at all: it appears they speak completely different languages…

Let’s summarize. What keeps one language indivisible and lets people understand each other? Surely, communication.

The more cultures differ – the more prospective misunderstanding in word meanings.

And on the contrary, the more common values and things, the better people understand each other.

Or the more they interact and communicate, the more similar are their individual realities.

It turns out that there are many potential opportunities to understand each other, to come to a “mutual arrangement”, but practically there are always new hidden stumbling tricks. Common language we have. But still there are many local and specific cultural moments. Cultural variety is all mankind’s great value. But to avoid misunderstanding, there must be more word definitions and meanings which are common most globally. In such case it seems that particular necessary words must be enough flexible to include in themselves more profound meaning and image systems. In our modern world words must be symbolic.

So, finally, don’t forget to exchange several words with your family and friends, to minimize prospective misunderstanding; and try to find out that you mean the same things when you pronounce the same words concerning your colleagues and employees, to avoid sadly other results of your joint activity.