Quo Vadis

..as
my Latin teacher for the last two excruciating years of Latin – and so I found
it expedient, if not absolutely necessary to become a conniving plagiarist rather
than bear the brunt of Harry’s ire or, God help me, actually do some serious
study.
It was in my last year of Latin when I discovered that there was an English
translation of Caesar’s Invasion of Britain available at Whitcombe
& Tombs that the penny dropped. I found I had a knack for changing just
enough of the text to make it look original and I didn’t even had to resort
to referring to the Latin text! Harry stayed off my back for the entire year
and even my dramatic failure in the exams, annotated in red ink with a despairing
‘What happened?’ was a small price to pay.
Of course, when you cheat, the person you’re really cheating is yourself,
and if there are any secondary or tertiary students reading this, what the hell
do you think you’re doing?
In any case, this wasn’t just going to be a tract about my slothful school
days, but it was going to be about language and languages. The subject or subjects
came up recently when we attended a birthday luncheon with the Drs Sellers as
it was indeed Margaret Sellers’ birthday. Despite the usual audio competition
with other diners for chatting space we did manage to conduct a fairly comprehensive
ramble of the usual subjects appropriate to our age i.e. superannuation,
fracking, government bureaucracy, corporate power, Tony Rabid and Smilin’
Joe Hockeysticks among them. I considered introducing constipation to the agenda
but decided in favour of less gruesome topics given that we were eating fine
French fare at the time.
I think we were on the subject of bureaucracy and were discussing how it seems
to be that people in the public service are deliberately moved out of their
areas of expertise. I’d mentioned that when Ariel moved from EMI to CBS
they had a policy of hiring only sales reps who knew nothing at all about music.
Dr Wazz said that’s known as ‘provider capture’, which useful
term I promptly forgot and had to text him just now to find out. (Sigh!)
I think ultimately it’s going to lead to the bleak kinds of worlds portrayed
in Orwell’s 1984 and the underrated Gilliam movie Brazil –
i.e. bean counters rule. (Incidentally, I was shocked to read of Bob
Hoskins’ death recently. Bob played a significant role in Brazil.
I wasn’t so shocked that he had died – more that I hadn’t
heard of it on TV or radio. Such is B-grade fame I guess).
Ukraine got a mention and it might’ve been at this point I ventured that
if there was only the one universal language the planet would be much the better
for it.
There wasn’t much opposition put up to this not exactly new idea. It’s
hard to know if this was because by now the noise level was so intense that
nobody actually heard what I said or we were all simply too tired by this point
to take up the cudgel for any notional cause Anyway, the waiter’s routine
of caramelising the sugar on the crème brulée at the table with
a blowtorch temporarily took our minds off all the world’s problems.
I had one more stab at resuscitating the discussion, mentioning John Lennon’s
Imagine and pointing out that his disingenuous ideal of globalisation
is being subverted simultaneously by nationalism and regionalism which would
probably be the fate of a concerted move towards one language anyway.
Strangely enough, I don’t remember there being a verse in Imagine
about one common language. Had there been, it might’ve gone something
like this..

Imagine there’s one language..
Understood by all
No need to fear rejection
No need for fear at all
I hope one day you’ll join us
Singing the same song

Maybe an old dream, but you’ve got to imagine (!) it’s attainable.
You might’ve gathered I’m all for it – as long of course
as it’s English..

*I’ve had an immediate response from the birthday girl, Dr Marg Sellers, quite
rightly asserting I neglected to mention her contribution to the languge discussion.

…Was it that you
weren’t listening or what – “it might’ve been at this point
I ventured that if there was only the one universal language the planet would
be much the better for it. There wasn’t much opposition put up to this
not exactly new idea.” My point – obviously not well-expressed
– was while a common language might be a nice idea how would that work across
cultures – when language is the vehicle for communicating the many and
varied concepts that belong to any one culture – concepts often not
part of another culture…??? Sometimes we can cobble together lengthy
explanations; other times the concept is so foreign to our cultural understanding
that we remain speechless – literally…
Examples? Elude me (holes in head problem)…but never hard to find them
in some of my very culturally diverse classes…students from non-Western
cultures have no problem in giving examples to the rest of us…
Must have been the blowtorch interruption – and the subsequent discussion
of how creme caramel was first burnt – always with a blowtorch…???