The Life of Words

Tales of Mystic Poets : VII

 

 

 

 

They used to say that a man's word is his bond. Then they would shake hands on it. That would I think, bring a special perspective to the spoken word. Perhaps it would even qualify the expression ' life of words.'

 

Or maybe it may refer to the utility of words and expressions in our use and the meanings they engender. For how long? Imagine grandma sitting close to the fire place and saying, ' your grandpa told me he loved me.' Then she pauses for a while and then complains, ' but he stopped doing anything about it.'

 

' Do what grandma?' the grandchild asks.

 

" Well .... well .... he stopped buying me presents.'

 

' Oh, is that what you call it now?' comes a heavy groan from the near-carcass on the easy chair. Grandpa, as usual creates a great pretense about being asleep or dead.

 

I was taking notes on the origin of languages and it occured to me that each language supports a powerful group impulse of a society. The Tamil language for instance ( Tolkapiyam 5thC BCE ) appears to suggest that its founding impulse is the social concern ' A man should be able to understand his destiny and live by it.' Thereafter the sounds and phonetics of the words in the language came to mean exactly that .... where to live by that language is to embed in the life's impulses a search for an understanding of self.

 

But Tamil is also linked to the Semitic and then English. It would be necessary then that a man taking notes on these things pursue a study of the other two as well. Hmmm ... anybody knows where I can get a good semitic dictionary?