They say love is a universal language. They say it’s felt not spoken. Bollywood singlehandedly has proved that dancing around with wildly flailing arms and legs among the trees, and running towards each other in slow motion is one true language of love. It is akin to the birds’ display of antics in order to attract mates. Given the lyrics of the songs more often than not make little to no sense at all, like the language of love it needn’t be spoken; it must be felt. And feel we do – almost universally by the actors and the viewers alike. I will be remiss if I fail to reveal the subtle beauty in the comical extravaganza that is a Bollywood singing and dancing. It upholds the fact that words that individually mean the world, when put side by side to form a sentence without some thought, might mean as much as a toddler’s babble which might just be enough for a bird to attract a mate. But, when it comes to a sustained relationship, a human relationship, making sense of the sounds produced by our extraordinarily evolved vocal chords is imperative. In contrary to what the chick-flicks or Brainy-Quotes would like you to believe, feeling it doesn’t cut it. Not even a little bit.

Languages have a fascinating history. It went from being random sounds made by cavemen to today’s version of wildly diverse, structurally well-defined mish-mash of sounds in a matter of a few thousand years. The glorious versions we speak, read or write today bear the mark of the cultural, anthropological and evolutionary paths we have been through in those years. The evolution has reached a state where we are able to converse and do so with the nuances of human intentions in hundreds of different ways. And that evolution had no end in sight till we decided that the widespread disdain for vowels in social media chatter is acceptable. Ignoring that crime, languages today hold the power of keeping us from destroying each other over misunderstandings and at the same time enable us to be misunderstood. Just how much of today’s world survives on acknowledging and understanding that nuance and how much of it we take for granted is astounding.

When I started working, I had to move to Chennai, a city in southern India. Most of my colleagues spoke Tamil, linguistically which was as much further away from the languages I knew as it was possible. Unfortunately, during lunches, I had to sit through hundreds of jokes which not only did I not understand but also, lost their soul when a dear friend painstakingly translated them in English for me. I appreciated the effort, but it was clear to both of us that it was an effort to no end. Those interactions encapsulated the importance of the niceties, the subtleties that are embedded in the languages we use to converse. I say converse because that is more important than speaking or communicating. While the latter demands disambiguation the former thrives on the ambiguous wordplay accentuated by subtle tonal variations.

That brings me to my harsh answer to the question we raised last week. Is language an impediment to a relationship? Simply put, yes it is. But like everything we talk about, it is more nuanced than a simple yes. One of the tenants of human relationship is understanding each other with all the intricacies of the ways of speaking. It is not the language that matters. One can learn a language, master the grammar and the vocabulary, but one will almost always be unaware of the subtitles of speaking in that language. A little friendly banter, a sharp, sarcastic criticism, a joke with a play on words, characteristic use of squinting antecedents – all the idiosyncratic usage of natural language and the mutual appreciation of that is what differentiates the cold office emails from a regular conversation with a friend. And without that appreciation a relationship much like the conversations themselves becomes soulless.

Read the other part of this Duolog(ue).

Is Language an Impediment to Relationship?