Val Dumond

Author

Publisher

Editor

Consultant

What is the intrigue of Japanese manga?

Keeping Up With Life and Language:
A Balancing Act
by Val Dumond
©2005

If we're living life right, we should be able to look backward and forward with equal ease - all the while living actively in the present. Now there's a balancing act! For any age!

Still, looking ahead when you're in your teens or twenties seems futile. Remember? Just as looking back when you're in your seventies seems pointless.

This subject intrigued me so much I wrote it into my only published novel (Mush On and Smile), where I gave a 70-year-old the opportunity to talk with her 20-year-old self. Writing those scenes was difficult, but rewarding. Whether you're 20 or 70, try this projection sometime.

The notion of time - and life - came rushing to me recently when I visited my home territory to attend a linguistics conference with the theme, "The Future is Now" (almost an oxymoron). There I was, a mature grownup with wisdom, age and hindsight on my side, transporting back into a time when I was a teenager with a head full of dreams. The big dream, or should I say the BIG!!! dream, was a united world where people weren't divided by borders and habits and language, but united in hopes, appreciation of cultural heritage and - yes, language.

You must know that my youth coincided with the end of a war that wasted an entire world, changed borderlines and decimated people and their dreams. It also coincided with the formation of a United Nations organization that was created to unite people around the world. Now there's a dream! People from wherever, talking and working out problems with each other!

Fast forward 50 years, to a conference of 1400 people from every corner of the world, all speaking English AND at least one other language, sometimes two, three or more. As linguistics conferences tend to go, the information centered around languages and their idiosyncrasies:

• How do people of different cultures apologize to each other?
• How does gender affect the Polish (Russian, Japanese, Tibetan, Spanish) language?
• Should the language of diminished indigenous tribes disappear with them?
• How can we learn language by observing children (who seemingly learn languages easier than grownups)?
• What is the intrigue of Japanese manga?

We in America are blessed to be a kind of clearinghouse of language. While we may believe that English is becoming a "universal" language, we cannot afford to accept that arrogance. We can, however, observe that our American English is formed with words and phrases from every other language of the world, every one!

We can also understand that because of the language mixture, the rules can (and do) vary. (French is spoken in France. Spanish is spoken in Spain. Greek is spoken in Greece. But what do we speak in the U.S.?)

Pay attention now: English is the language of England! Early Americans (those revolutionaries who terrorized the British?) tried to separate from England by changing much of the language, especially the spelling. What has resulted is a very strange collection of jargon, colloquialism, stereotype, and word origination that marks "American English."

So, really guys, wha's happenin' (going on, doing) in your crib (pad, bunker, flat, digs), amigo (chum, mate, bro, sister, buddy)?

Back to the main Articles page

Now there's a dream! People from wherever, talking and working out problems with each other!