The value of the english language
The English language is a mosaic composed of many other dialects and rules. For this reason it is one of the hardest languages to learn. There are the laws of Old English which make mouse into mice, and goose into geese. However, that was then abandoned bringing Modern English which pluralizes a word through the use of the letter ‘S’: house into houses, and cat into cats. Then there is our numeric system which is completely copied over from Arabic, naturally leading to our mathematics deriving from the same source. Many products also originate from the Arabic language: cotton, coffee, sugar, magazines. Then there is also the Germanic roots in English, connecting it to other dialects such as Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian and of course German.
I’m sure at this point you are wondering as to what I’m getting at concerning the brief history of English. Now I could go on about colonization and how it has constructed our ‘mosaic.’ However, that’s not the root of this at all. I propose that our modern day socialistic problems would not have occurred if we had absorbed Greek into our Germanic language. In Greek there are 7 words in relation to love. They had created gods each representing a different aspect of the broad emotion. This is to say, love is highly complicated because we never took the time to break it apart and learn it’s every nook and cranny. We are not patient and careful as the word itself demands us to be. Rather we have placed all this weight upon a single word, referring to our friends and family in the same way we do with our spouse.
Our minds are so riddled we’ve created ‘liking-gaps;’ a social phenomenon in which “we underestimate how much others like us and believe it.” This of course has birthed many problems including social anxiety, avoidant-attachment, and becoming overly self-critical. Therapists have described an “increase in social isolation and lack of deep friendships among men.” This was supported by data showing “a decline in close male friendships and an increase in men reporting they have no close friends.” We’ve now had to pair the word recession beside friendship because we have become distracted by ‘old’ and ‘new’ English.
In Greek mythology there lives stories of love and war and the tension and exchange between the two. That is to say there would be no Eros (passion) without Himeros (unrequited love), no yearning without obstacles, no love without rejection or fear. As previously stated Eros represented passion and as such that is it’s translation. Followed by Storge which is familial and Philia something you would say to a close friend. Pragma is used in the context of marriage or something akin, because it requires long term commitment and understanding. Philautia is self-love while Ludus is flirtation. And finally there is Agape, a form of selflessness, to be described as Agape you must have a love for all including strangers. Agape is truly a love for everything you do, your religion, and hobbies, nature, and the people around you. To me the word seems similar to Buddhist enlightenment, it may be very simple for some yet excruciatingly difficult for others. We can not change the English language but we can change our behavior and let that be the ‘New English.’ That is the lesson to take away from all of this. A mosaic will always be fragmented, it is us— the beholders, that makes it beautiful.
