Gimlé

I was born into a large peasant family: father, four wives and about twenty-eight children. I also belonged, as we all did in those days, to a wider extended family and to the community as a whole.

We spoke Gikuyu as we worked in the fields. We spoke Gikuyu in and outside the home. Ican vividely recall those evenings of storytelling around the fireside. It was mostly the grown-ups telling the children but everybody was interested and involved. We children would re-tell the stories the following day to other children who worked in the fields picking up pyrethrum flowers, tea-leaves or coffee beans of our European and African landlords.
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o—Decolonising the Mind

I’m bilingual. I speak and read English and Icelandic equally well. Both qualify as my “native tonge” (I think in both languages, often switching back and forth without noticing it). Add to that my basic reading comprehension of French and Danish and I’d say that I’ve got a bit of an angle on the “how language affects your thought” thing.

There is one difference between Icelandic and English when it comes to my reading skills. My English vocabulary is larger than my Icelandic one. The reason for this is simple: English has more words in it.

The reason being that the English (and English-speaking cultures) have the tendency to invent new words (“blogging”, anybody?) whenever they encounter a new thing, context or situation.

The Icelandic on the other hand tend to use the grammatic flexibility of the language to imply new meanings in old words and as recycle old unused words rather than inventing new ones, the classic example being the reuse of the word “sími” (meaning a thin string or thread) as the Icelandic word for telephone.

Now “sími” means telephone.

The few English who care enough to form an opinion on this tend to think that Icelandic is a bit impoverished because of this cultural frugality with words.

The Icelandic on the other hand often think that the English are lazy and have no respect for their language, and put no effort into maintaining its elegance and beautiful flexibility.

Well, the English are lazy when it comes to their own language. They treat it like a ten dollar hooker with no self-respect and a high tolerance for having the shit beaten out of her.

It was after the declaration of a state of emergency over Kenya in 1952 that all the schools run by patriotic nationalists were taken over by the colonial regime and were placed under District Education Boards chared by Englishmen. English became the language of my formal education. In Kenya, English became the language of my formal education. In Kenya, English became more than a language: it was the language, and all the others had to bow before it in deference.

Thus one of the most humiliating experiences was to be caught speaking Gikuyu in the vicinity of the school. The culbrit was given corporal punishment – three to five strokes of the cane on bare buttocks – or was made to carry a small metal plate around the neck with inscriptions such as I AM STUPID or I AM A DONKEY.
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o—Decolonising the Mind

Anybody who knows the history of the Icelandic language and still thinks that language forms culture as opposed to the other way round must have skipped about a dozen chapters in Icelandic history. It has always been a tool, a weapon in our fight against the Danish for independence, treated with care and love but always pragmatically.

We, for example, used legislation to drop the “Z” out of the language and alphabet a few years ago simply because we thought that it didn’t add any value to the language (it was pronounced exactly like the Icelandic “S”).

Culture forms language. Language is a symptom, not a cause.

There has been an interesting discussion on linguistic relativism on several weblogs recently.

The discussion fails to recognise that language is a cultural product.

A Weapon.

The real aim of colonialism was to control the people’s wealth: what they produced, how they produced it, and how it was distributed; to control, in other words, the entire realm of the language of real life. Colonialism imposed its control of the social production of wealth through military conwuest and subsequent political dictatorship.

But its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised, the control, through culture, of how people percieved themselves and their relationship to the world. Economic and political control can never be complete without mental control. To control a people’s culture is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship to others.
Ngugi Wa Thiong’o—Decolonising the Mind

Linguistic relativism is the equivalent of staring down the barrel of a gun while ignore the person whose finger is on the trigger.

Language, linguistic dominance, are the cannons of cultural warfare. Without a language, a culture is defenseless.

The linguistic relativists might be right in all of their observations, but they are simply staring at the bullet and mistaking it for the lock, stock, barrel and sniper all rolled into one convenient lump of lead.

Language is wielded, formed—your arms and armour.

It kills. Just ask the Welsh, Kenyans, Native Americans or South-American Natives.

Linguistic relativism is a nice idea to those who belong to a dominant, still imperialistic culture (and this applies to the English, Japanese, Koreans and Germans, all cultures that are strong and on the offensive in the war of globalisation).

But there is nothing relative about a bullet in the head.

Or fighting for the survival of your nation and culture.

The odds are stacked against us, in your favour.

Baldur Bjarnason.
Clifton, Bristol.

I, for one, do understand the urge to not publish or reveal certain content to the public.

I didn’t, for example, put on this weblog, my long and hateful rant against a sleazy, badly-written, ultra-conservative, anti-industrialisation, racist, pastoral piece of fantasy trilogy piss that I will not named here but has plagued our bookshelfs for a long while (the movie versions have so far been better simply because it does not include as much of that Winnie-the-Pooh-esque prose and awful poetry but contains the same horrid ideology).

It’s not escapism, its propaganda for ultra-conservative English rural aristocrats who hate progress and want to keep the working class down in the mines.

And the bastard pillaged Norse mythology without any respect for the ideology (this is what riles me the most, I can’t refer to a single name in Norse mythology without having a swarm of people looking for a certain dwarf click their way over here from google).

Only a few friends of mine via e-mail had the privilege of thinking that I was a crazy arsehole and disagree with me on that particular topic.

So with that in light I certainly understand Dorothea’s tendency to post potentially controversial stuff on a friends only Livejournal.

I just wish she hadn’t told the rest of us about it ;-)

Baldur Bjarnason.
Clifton, Bristol.