It's Christmas morning and, as usual, I have my morning pot of tea at my side.
My thought this morning is of one or two misunderstandings between FWers recently, particularly between individuals of different nationalities -- but, of course, writing in English. Even though we are all using English on this List we all have deeper cultural biases which give unanticipated twists to the meanings of the words we use. Humour is particularly difficult to get across to people of different cultures. (Even writing humorously to readers of one's own culture is probably the most difficult art of all.) A recent survey by one sociological department over here tried to rate jokes among about 20 different nationalities. The results were amazing -- jokes that were side-splittingly funny in one country were totally incomprehensible in another. Full comprehension between people of different nationalities probably only occurs at the extremes of expression. Scientists, with their mathematical symbols and formulae have no problem. Nor do musicians. In-between, even among individuals speaking a common language, there are many pitfalls, even dangers, when imaging that there's real understanding. An incident which occurred to me some years ago gave me a shock. The choir I belonged to in Bath were hosting a choir from an ex-communist country. For several days we had a glorious time. We sang concerts together, we partied, we sang informally -- we thought they were wonderful, they thought we were. My partner and I were hosting one of their sopranos, a highly intelligent and cultured girl. On the last evening we were watching TV and a traditional gypsy family with horse and caravan appeared on the screen. Suddenly our guest spat out: "We hate them! They should be killed!" The world turned over for me. I knew that there was no way I could communicate a different set of values in a kindly and persuasive way to our guest, despite the common language. A diplomatic silence was the only possible response. After that incident I was sensitised to news about gypsies who lived in the central European countries. Like the Kurds in Turkey, the Untouchables in India and other minority groups all over the world, the gypsies in some central European countries are terribly persecuted, hounded from one place to another, denied education, often imprisoned, sometimes killed. Something like 600-700 million people in the world speak English as their first or second language, and a billion more children are learning it in school. It is predicted that, at the present rate of expansion, half the world will be more or less proficient in it within two more generations. But there'll still be immense differences in the cultural meanings that will be given to the same words. There'll still be misunderstandings and incomprehension between us for a long time to come. But it may not be the only common world language. Well over one billion people speak Mandarin. Although all their young elite are also learning English as a second language I am not so sure that the Chinese will accept it as a world language. The Chinese already have a deep culture -- arguably the longest continuous one in the world -- which could never be adequately translated into English. If China becomes a large economic power and overtakes America in the next two or three generations, then it is quite possible that the whole world will be learning Mandarin then. This possibility should not be lightly dismissed. Great powers come and go -- read Paul Kennedy's "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" if you are unconvinced of the possibility. Well, there we are. It's Christmas Day. It's mainly 'celebrated' today as a commercial binge, and it's very much the product of Charles Dickens and the Victorians in the England of a century ago. As I write this, there's a spendid Morning Service being broadcast on the radio from St Mary Radcliffe Cathedral at Bristol (one of the most beautiful of our Perpendicular Gothic churches). I am not a Christian, I cringe when I listen to the typical sermon, and I don't think that Christianity has a good track record in history, but the singing is wonderful and expresses a sense of community. It is community that is so sadly lacking in modern developed society and this is why, wearing a business hat, I am happy to sell a great deal of choral music to churches in 60 countries all over the world. I have a view that church memberships (and those of Islamic mosques and Buddhist temples, etc) are about the only form of genuine community that is left in modern society. I like to think -- perhaps I am being naive -- that these minority groups will lead to the development of a truly universal expression of religion and wonder, and new communities that can survive and perhaps thrive in a world of excessive individualism as at present. Now it's time for my dogwalk. Happy Christmas! Keith __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
