Entitlements

Giving things their due title and place seems important in the German language. For example, native speakers have a strict set of rules to determine the order of words in a sentence.  Thus verbs not used in imperatives always come second - preceded or followed by their subjects according to what comes first - except in subordinate clauses where they come last, and their subjects come first after the conjunction.  Misplacing them or any other word is a solecism that goes beyond the merely grammatical and borders on the social, an affront to logic and Germany.

No wonder, then, that the Germans set great store by honorific titles.  If you have them, you do not choose one, but use them all.  Thus exotic beasts such as Frau Doktor Doktor Schmitt are not just possible but obligatory in Teutonic circles.

No wonder, either, that by contrast in the understated world of hints and irony inhabited by the British, titles are regarded as rather pompous and self-promoting.  Most German managers have a doctorate in something, and bear it proudly like a blazon; in the United Kingdom only academics ever bother brandishing them, and even then there is always a suggestion of a desperate - and forlorn - bid for respect.

Ironically the one title that is universally acknowledged in Britain is the medical doctor.  Ironic because it remains a courtesy title, used without justification, unlike the official but almost universally ignored doctorate of the PhD.  And there is another such curiosity within the medical profession.  Once someone becomes a Fellow of the College of Surgeons, he or she is entitled - as a privilege - to be addressed henceforth not as Dr, but Mr, or any of its feminine equivalents. 

Nor is this the only example of the Briton's love of a subtle rhythm in the ebb and flow of honorifics.  At one level they can be used to indicate degrees of recognition.  Referring in a conversation with a third party to 'Smith' on its own would suggest - if no value judgements were involved - that the name is more or less unknown to the speaker and possibly the audience too.  'Mrs Smith', on the other hand, implies a recognition by at least one of the parties.  Beyond this lies 'Smith' - pronounced very slightly differently - who is somebody famous, or at least a woman known to all concerned, and needing no further introduction.

When recognition is not an issue, there is another set of many-layered niceties in the play among 'Smith', 'Mr Smith' and the first name - John, say - which are indicative of the speaker's opinion of that person. So, for example, in the mouth of a Briton, nothing could be more scathing than the heavily emphasised 'Mr' of 'Mr Smith'.  In comparison, 'Smith', is almost studiedly neutral. 'Mr Smith' - spoken without acerbity - represents a more respectful salutation, while 'John' implies familiarity, a friend or colleague.  Then comes 'Smith', as in 'I saw Smith today' – a jocular and affectionate way of describing a good friend, or a close colleague.  Beyond these lie impossibly subtle gradations and alternations of all three, used by only the most intimate of family, friends and lovers.  But we are not, of course, entitled to discuss them here.
 
(26.12.91)

Index

Capital ideas

We talk about learning our ABC, but a glance at most alphabets for children soon shows us that they have to learn not ABC but AaBbCc.  In other words two, not one, alphabets - the upper and lower case versions - are involved.  The two have developed over the centuries through the combination of different typographical styles - the original capital letters alongside the more cursive lower case ones. Once the system arose and was understood, however, it was soon put to other uses.

For example, writing a word in capitals is generally taken to mean that it is EMPHASISED.  The greater size of upper case letters obviously helps here, but by now it has gone beyond mere weight and entered the realm of convention.  These printed equivalents of the shout can be found everywhere, especially in advertisements whose purpose is to catch your attention just as a bawling street vendor might. 

Against this background it is interesting to compare the differences between the main European languages that use the Latin character set.  Like everyone else, the French employ capitals at the beginning of sentences - an obvious place to use this marker as well as for proper names and titles.  The latter is a perfectly logical system, picking out only unique people, places or objects with a special signifier.  Otherwise they favour no other words by making them stand out in texts.

The Italians and Spanish extend the French system slightly.  Because they have a polite and indirect form for addressing others - using the third person singular instead of the second person - they often mark it as the honorific it is.  Thus 'you' in Italian is 'Lei' - literally she, a condensed version of some such courtier's phrase as 'His or Her Grace' since 'grace' is a feminine word.  The oblique cases - 'to you' etc - may be similarly marked with a capital, as can the plural versions, Loro or, increasingly, Voi.  Spanish follows a similar system, except that the word for 'you' is 'Usted' and the old abbreviation 'Vd,' is used.

The Germans also have a polite second person pronoun which they mark with a capital: 'Sie'.  It too represents the contraction of some older phrase such as 'your graces' and so it is plural.  But the German system is vastly differently from that of the Romance languages.  Where they apply capitals only to proper nouns, the Teutonic approach is to use a capital letter for every noun.  The result is a text bristling with semi-aggressive upper case characters, like someone who begins each word loudly but thinks better of it.  In fact, disconcerting as this system is to the foreigner, it too is highly logical; it seems to flow from the German's rigorously philosophical approach to things.  Apparently they see each noun as part of the Platonic essence of that object.  A table 'Tafel' has within it tableness, and so is worthy of a distinguishing capital letter. Thus every text, every conversation, becomes a metaphysical dissertation.

But when it comes to English, what do we find?  None of the German's rigour, none of the courtesy of the Latinate tongues.  Instead, the one word, the one idea accorded the supreme honour of the capital alongside proper names is that tiny word 'I'.  No wonder there was an empire.

(1.3.92)

Index

The significance of theories

Practically every theory which aimed at a complete, all-embracing explanation was framed by a speaker of the German language.  Apart from the endless succession of deep and unreadable philosophers - Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and so on - there is a parallel constellation of equally eminent thinkers, each of whom chose to mine some more specialised vein of existence.  In Freud's case it was the psyche, music in Schenker's, nuclear physics in Schrödinger's, and gravity in Einstein's. Even the artists were obsessed with rigour and completeness - Goethe with his anti-Newtonian theory of light and perception, Wagner with his Gesamtkunstwerk.

This mania for order is manifest in their common language.  As well as the inflected nouns, which in themselves are hardly exceptional, there are a host of rules regarding inversion of subjects and verbs, and the placing and formation of participles.  The delight in labyrinthine sentences replete with qualifying subclauses, together with the monstrous compound words, all speak volumes about the Germanic cast of mind.

Today it is different.  The German thinkers are silent, perhaps abashed by two world wars, vaguely aware that their love of order may have lain near the root of both.  Few others essay global theories about existence.  Artists have enough problems in this post-modernist age without getting bogged down in aesthetics.  Only architects produce theories and counter-theories - probably because they get to realise so few of their designs.

This leaves the scientists.  They are certainly busy as never before.  But the impetus has changed.  Once they were engaged in a winnable battle against mysterious Mother Nature.  Then, vindication was reward enough.  No longer.  Scientists frame theories so that they can publish papers, go to conferences, win tenure.  Above all to make money.  It is hardly a coincidence that most science research is now carried out in America.

If the scientists, the standard bearers of the modern age, have proved themselves so venal, and unequal to the great task of concocting comprehensive theories, little wonder that the rest of mankind has given up completely.  Instead of fundamental explanations, all we can hope for now is significance.

And so it is that everywhere you go, the significance-mongers are at it.  Sometimes they grace themselves with grand Gallic names like semioticians or structuralists; some are analysts, some commentators, others are just pundits.  Whatever the name, their task is identical: to hunt out the rich truffle of successively more unlikely and implausible meanings in even the most footling and risible of society's detritus.

Thus we have the television critics, turning shameless soap to Shakespeare; the style-watchers who gloss every crease in the Gucci; and most insidious of all, the cynical, clever journalists.  Wittily subverting the world, they more subtly assert it.  They prefer to juggle with words rather than judge with them.  In time, theories bring forth revolutions; plucking out one of a million significances alters not a jot.

(8.2.87)

Index

If were were a has-been

The Süddeutsche Zeitung is Bavaria’s heavyweight daily.  Its design is dour and its tone serious.  As befits such an institution, it is scrupulous in its writing; in particular, it flags constantly the fact that its news is based on others’ reports, claims and comments.  To convey this it is able to avoid the British newspapers’ clumsy and intrusive markers “it is reported” and “it is claimed” by employing the mood of indirect speech, resulting in a perpetual subjunctive: “the Government be under great pressure.”  The effect is curious: it is as if the Süddeutsche Zeitung were unable to vouch for the ultimate reality of the world it reports, and so presents even the most trivial statement in inverted commas.  As a result, the whole newspaper takes on a kind of shimmering insubstantiality.

Of all the modern European languages German is among the most atavistic in its adherence to the old laws of mood, and therefore comes across as somewhat pedantic and pompous to other laxer language groups.  But in ancient tongues like Classical Greek, the use of moods like the subjunctive and optative – used for expressing wishes – was abundant; these were not fancy embellishments wheeled out to impress, but reflected a keen appreciation of the nuances of reality.

Indeed, in their subtle distinctions between different states of the world there remains something of the pristine ontology the first words must have expressed.  Just as initially it must have seemed impossible to state an untruth with words – since words were a transcription of things, the true names of objects – so the necessity of distinguishing between different modes of existence – the certain indicative, the dubious subjunctive, the desired optative – would have seemed an inescapable consequence of language’s function of precisely describing the world.

Inevitably with time that exactitude has been lost.  First the living interplay of moods became just rules, and then like all rules they were broken and gradually eroded.  English is one of the most worn of languages: centuries of commingling with other races – the Celts, the Vikings, the Normans – has worn away most of the knotty details of declensions and conjugations.  Along with them has gone nearly all of Anglo-Saxon’s Germanic heritage of mood variations.

Today the subjunctive is seriously endangered.  With the globalisation of English, the last snagging spurs are being broken off in the interests of ease of learning and use.  To bemoan this loss is not mere sentimentality; without the subjunctive we would lose small but real subtleties.  Take, for example, the phrases “if I were in your shoes” and “if I was in your shoes”.  The former considers an impossible situation, since I have no intention of wearing your shoes which do not in any case fit.  The latter considers those occasions in the past when I borrowed your shoes and had experiences in them that I now recall.  The instances could be multiplied endlessly.  If the subjunctive word “were” and all its relatives were to disappear, we would be certainly impoverished.  We would literally be unable to say certain things, to make certain distinctions.  What we cannot say, we cannot think.  Help keep “were” alive: let it not be a has-been.

(20.12.89)

Index

Translations

As a child we learn language innocently.  We are surrounded by it in its entirety, and we begin by plucking out of the air magic words like “mama” which brings us what we want; powerful words like “no”, which change the course of our world; and subtle, mysterious words like “why?” which are the first steps towards deeper mastery.

As adults we are afforded no such luxury.  Learning a language is usually a chore.  Ideally we would like its effects without the need for the effort; instead we must begin at the beginning, start with the simple words and simple structures.  There is nothing unreasonable in this, but it does mean that the language is hopelessly biased for us, canted towards those first few mumbled phrases.

Unlike the child, we cannot learn neutral words like “no” and “why” alone.  The have to be accompanied by their cohorts, the nouns and verbs which make concrete a language.  Inevitably the first such names and actions that we we learn carry us to a particular corner of the linguistic landscape.  We understand the language through them, and we live longest with them, until those first phrases become like our family, something you just have to accept and live with, an inheritance of nature and nurture.

So, for example, among my many half-completed attempts to learn French, there was a course whose first few vocabularies seemed fixated on the military.  Grammatical points were illustrated by characteristics of soldiers, or the deeds of emperors.  Whether this was part of some Napoleonic legacy, I cannot say; but it has certainly tinged my view of the language.  Even today, French has something of the army and empire about it, which makes me feel that it and its speakers still long for the fin-de-siècle civilisation that died in the mud of Flanders.

My view of German has been similarly shaped by tutorial books.  One of them, quite properly, concentrated on the declensions of nouns, and required me to learn lists of various classes of them.  Because of the nature of the German language, many of these are very basic, earthy words: words like field, beak, salmon, stove, brother, maid, bride and sword – words which almost spell out a fairy tale by themselves.  This impression of Germans re-enacting timeless myths from pre-history was reinforced not only be reading another grammar set entirely in the spiky Gothic typeface, but also by an early immersion in Grimm.  Today the German scene seems to me to be populated entirely with figures out of Wagner, himself an inhabitant of a world full of dark forests, elves and curses.

Happily my first attempt at learning Greek has been rather more beneficial.  I used an old Linguaphone course, little changed since the early 1960s.  In it the characters all appeared to be perfectly groomed jet-setters, eternally buying clothes, eating out, and sightseeing. Subsequent books have tried to correct this misapprehension with dreary Athenian tales of work and politics; but I have kept faith with that deathless land of beautiful people preoccupied with the important things in life – like whether to have red mullet or gurnard, whatever that is.  It is one world that I have no desire to translate back into modern, brutal reality.

(24.12.91)

Index

Talking to myself

After my Part III exams at Cambridge, I decided to teach myself German.  I did this in my room at the top of the Queen’s tower, opposite the chapel and clock tower.  From its windows you had one of the best views in Cambridge, looking out over the plush sward of Trinity’s Great Court, with the Great Hall on the left and the porters’ lodge in the top right-hand corner.  During the month that I had to learn the language, I would often sit in the alcove, watching the world go by, and talking to myself.

In fact I spent most of that period talking to myself in one way or another.  Much of the time it was in German, since I need the sound of a word to learn it.  Interspersed with my constant repetition of words and phrases, mostly out loud, I would commune with myself on nothing at all.  Since my friends had already gone down, I rarely spoke to anyone else.  I can honestly say that during that month I had some of the best conversations ever, and found my mind pullulating with ideas and thoughts.

Similarly, I have found other times of my life when I have been alone fruitful in this way.  Whether this was when I had just moved down to London, and was unemployed and so had nothing better to do, or when I was on holiday wandering the Greek islands, at such times I have found anything and everything was liable to send my thoughts racing after some mental butterfly, only to relinquish it at the sight of another, yet more brightly coloured or elusive.

I remember those times with fond affection, partly because like most memories, they are bathed in a warm glow of nostalgia which smooths out the rough edges of inconvenience, and partly because like youth, they represent a lost time to me.  Today, in the hustle and bustle of my very full yuppie life, I am rarely on my own and never idle.  It is therefore a long time since I have had a really good heart to heart with myself.

Though my present lifestyle has ample compensations, I do miss this talking.  I miss the immediate understanding I can offer, the absence of any need to fill in details or sketch their background. Instead, I can proceed with concocting thoughts at their most fresh and daring.  With myself, the feedback is so instant that the inspiration is rarely lost.  Bouncing an idea back and forth between my split yet unitary self is like an image in two parallel mirrors, shadowing itself to infinity.

I feel less fecund as a result. My thoughts and inspirations are few and far between, I must husband them.  Inevitably my work eats up many.  However, at least those that are left, poor as they may be, become all the richer for being rare and more occasional.  Perhaps that is why I produce these essays when I can, why they represent no drudgery, but an almost self-indulgent luxury.  Often they are sparked off by one of these little illuminations.  After chewing on it for a few minutes, savouring its particular insight, enjoying the afterglow of minor creativity, I will often try to fix it by committing it to a written form.  In the course of filling the page, new thoughts may, sometimes, emerge.  If these thoughts start to match up to the initial inspiration, I begin to feel again the old joys of the interior monologue.  And so do I.

(22.6.86)

Index