The Sound of Language (and Literature)

While that sound of music that Julie Andrews-Von Trapp (that is her name, isn’t it?) sings of is a favorite sound of mine, capable of expressing many things that words cannot, I have been thinking much more recently upon the sound and the sense of language, and those very expressions in concrete words.

There is an obvious sound to a language – those characteristics that allow Danny Kaye in The Court Jester (a fabulous, extremely silly old film.  If you haven’t seen it, then you should.  But, carrying on - ) those sounds which allow Danny Kaye to so glibly mimic French, German, Italian, and maybe some others by spewing a series of nonsense syllables that make the expected noises of each language.  Certain combinations of sound stand out to the ear – “ein” sounds German, “oglio” Italian, and the like.

But there is a broader sound of language, something in the rhythm of the speech, which can so denote a language and its native speakers from others.  Even on the odd occasion when I manage to pronounce more than half of my French words correctly in any given sentence, it is this rhythm, which, as a non-native speaker, I blithely disregard, inserting pauses where there are too many syllables for my English tongue, or where there is a comma in my English thought process, regardless of whether there should be one in the French phrase.  (And almost all native speakers think with the proper punctuation, which is why it remains a mystery to me that so few of them can write it.)  

It is also this latter pronunciation that makes me prefer Dutch to French, in terms of how it strikes the ear.  You see, the north of Belgium, Flanders, speaks Flemish, a variety of Dutch.  The relationship between the two is said to resemble English and “American”; that is, they use mostly the same words, with a few irregularities in spelling, and they each think the others have a funny accent, though rarely enough so to impede comprehension.  In the south, Wallonia or Wallonie, they speak French.  Naturally, funny accent syndrome occurs again when compared to French-from-France.  I am confessedly over here largely to learn French, which I am continuing because after a body has devoted two years to a language, she might as well go on with what she started.  And in this case, she started because she was driven mad in the eighth grade by a little French child called Adele in Jane Eyre, who would go on in French for paragraphs, without feeling the need to provide a translation.  Literarily motivated, then, I chose French because it occurred often enough in written work that I felt I was at a disadvantage without it.  Written, it is an elegant enough language, with all of its vowels and symmetrical double letters.  And of course, it’s the language of beauty and art and culture and romance, right?

Well, shoot me if you must, oh powers-that-be, but I don’t think spoken French is all that wondrously lovely.  In its way, it is a very nice language, and it has a very pretty manner of expressing things, comparable to older, more poetic English in its grammatical order and turn of phrase.  The thought pattern of French is rather nice.  It is the actual aural sound to which I find myself somewhat indifferent.  I find it difficult to describe, but there isn’t enough definition in the sound for me, and somehow the long vowels, the openness and continual elisions, all blend together into something too amorphous for my taste.  But, half-listening to the radio station that my host sister happened to leave on the other day, I suddenly stopped as the DJ’s voice rolled out between the clubby dance songs (which are almost all in English).  Deliberating over whether I needed one more hairpin to hold my braid around my head or not, I realized that I thought I was hearing British English.  I stopped, and was startled when I couldn’t make out the words.  I shook my head, as if to clear my ears as a dog might, then stepped toward the radio.  No – definitely not English.  Really definitely not French.  Must be Dutch!  But the tone and placement of the voice, the rolling rhythm of the language felt so familiar…

I have heard it said that Dutch is closest to the Germanic side of English, closer than modern German.  I have never thought German a particularly pretty language, thought there is something to be admired in its solidity, so different from French’s slipperiness.  But it wasn’t until I stood in front of that radio, hair half-pinned, listening, that I confirmed: 

A.)   What I have suspected for some weeks now – i.e., that I prefer the sound of Dutch to that of French, and

B.)    Something that I have strongly suspected for years, being:  I really do think that English is the most beautiful language in the world.

Read Keats’ sonnet, “When I have fears that I might cease to be.”  The words tumble over each other, flowing like water, ripples of delicate vowels one minute, solidness of definite consonants for these vowels to break over, and an underlying depth and warmth, a solidity and roundness of tone coloring the water like the river bed.  The water comes from the Latin linguistic heritage, like French, but it is not complete without those fuller undertones of German.  English, particularly to my mind British English, is expertly well-balanced and perfectly moderated, variegated but never harsh, in a way that is so very…English.  (Is there a link between language and national character?  Well, that’s a controversial subject for another post at another time by another person.  I merely find my own reason for liking English amusingly stereotypical of an Anglophone Anglophile, but none the less sincere for all this.)

No, the Francophones may keep their domination of wines and cheeses, and even their linguistic domination of things like ballet (though, ironically enough, the world ballet is actually from Italian).  But I shall not allow them, whether Belgian, French, or otherwise, the loveliest spoken language in the world, nor the supreme language of culture or romance.  After all, they insist upon saying “I love you” as “Je t’aime,” in exactly the same manner as they would say that they “aime-d” raspberries or Yorkshire terriers.  Now, while I can say in English that I “love” raspberries or Yorkies, it’s not the true meaning of the word.  Properly, in my native tongue, I can and likely should distinguish between the fact that I “like” raspberries (though not Yorkies!), and that I will presumably one day “love” a husband (preferably my own).  La langue d’amour can, ironically enough, only allow a woman to express that she feels the exact same verbal sentiment for raspberries, Yorkies, and her husband.  (Whether or not this may be true is a matter to be settled by the particular woman.)  I merely contend that there ought to be a way to express if this is not the case.

I mean no insult to French or to those who speak it, of course.  But, je préfère écouter Flamande.  (Possibly, there ought to be an à in there somewhere…bother.)  And I prefer to listen to Dutch because it sounds like English.  And English was the language of Shakespeare and Austen, of Dickens and Chaucer, of Astrophil and Stella and of In Memoriam, and of most of my ancestors who didn’t speak Gaelic.  And I shall learn French with interest and energy, and with some not insignificant liking, but I will never love it as I do the music of my beautiful mother tongue.

Long live the English Language!

(We’re the international one these days, anyway…)