Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World Read Free Page B

out by its use of a particular language: it is an evolving communion in its own right, whose particular view of the world is informed by a common language tradition. A language brings with it a mass of perceptions, clichés, judgements and inspirations. In some sense, then, when one language replaces another, a people’s view of the world must also be changing.
    So as we survey the outward history of the large and influential language communities, in their expansions and retrenchments across the face of the earth, we shall also try to show some aspects of the inward sense of the communities who spoke the languages.
    This is something that is very difficult to express, most difficult of all perhaps in the language itself. As Wittgenstein remarked, the limits of my language are the limits of my world; and these limits, he felt, could only be indicated indirectly, never stated explicitly. This book attempts in various indirect ways—and with copious use of translation—to show something of the temper of mind that was conditioned by a language, even as it gained or lost speakers.
    It is a dangerous undertaking, but it is crucial if the succession of languages which have dominated human cultures is to have more meaning than the mere list of names and dates in a chronology. It is part of the contention of this book that there is an exchange of something far more subtle than an allegiance when one generation comes to speak a language other than its parents’.
    We can get a first inkling of what that might be by comparing more for style than substance those speeches of Motecuhzoma and Cortés. Their languages, Nahuatl and Spanish, are quite distinct from one another, in ways that recall the traits of individual people. Most obviously, just as each person has a recognisable voice, each language has its own sound system or phonology. Consider the phrase ‘your city of Mexico’, in Nahuatl
in mātzin in motepētzin, Mešihko
, in Spanish
Su ciudad de México.
The phrase in Nahuatl uses a sound, tz (as in English
bits
), which is not used in Spanish, just as
ciudad
begins with a sound, θ (as in English
thin
), which is absent from Nahuatl. And even where Spanish was attempting to imitate Nahuatl directly, as in the name of
México
(pronounced MEH-shi-ko), it failed to capture the glottal stop, written with an h in
Mēšihko
, which probably sounded more like a word that would be spelt in modern English as
Meshítko.
    But the rules of combination, to create longer words and sentences, are also radically different between the two languages. So the respect implicit in the Spanish use of
Su
for ‘your’ at the beginning is expressed in Nahuatl by adding
tzin
at the end of each of the words. In this same phrase, the Nahuatl word for ‘city’ is quite clearly a combination of
a-tl
, ‘water’, and
tepe-tl
, ‘mountain’, corresponding to nothing in Spanish, where the word
ciudad
has more connotations of civic status than geographical eminence. In general, Nahuatl words are mostly long sequences of short parts, often containing as much meaning as a whole sentence in Spanish:
ōtikmihiyōwiltih
is made up of
ō-ti-k-m-ihiyōwi-ltih
(past-you-it-yourself-suffer-cause), ‘you have consented to suffer it’, where the reflexive and causative bits (in fourth and final place) actually serve to show special respect, and to raise the formality of the utterance.
    But phonology, vocabulary and grammar are just the beginning of what makes languages differ. Just as each person has a distinctive manner of speaking, quite apart from a recognisable voice, there is a characteristic style of expression which goes with each language. This difference may be minimised when languages are in close proximity, and very often translated one into another, as tends to be the case, say, among the languages of western Europe. But it is always there implicitly, and stands out very clearly in the encounter of Nahuatl with Spanish.
    The most evident aspect of