I am now on my sixth week of learning Mandarin at the Confucius Institute at the Ateneo, and apart from the usual struggles of learning an entirely different and unnatural system of pronunciation, memorizing basic vocabulary, and actually finding the time to study, it has been a very fruitful and enriching experience.

The decision to enroll at the Confucius Institute came quite suddenly, when, after visiting a friend at the Department of European Studies at the new Leong Hall of the University, I chanced upon a poster advertising basic Mandarin classes. After having been exposed to a number of European languages in the past, I thought that it was time to try out a new Asian language. Finding my Saturday afternoons free, therefore, I decided to take the opportunity by availing of my faculty discount, while, at the same time, bullying my friend to join me in the class as well.

I would later on learn that two other friends from the law school had also enrolled in the same basic Chinese course, but at the Ateneo’s Makati campus. Since then, all four of us have been occasionally engaged in random conversations of Nĭ hăo ma, Wŏ yào hē kĕlè and Nĭ xĭhuān wŏ nán péngyou.

They say, of course, that apart from the obvious difficulty of learning Chinese characters (a matter to be taught in subsequent Chinese classes but not in this basic course), conversational Mandarin is much easier to master than conversational English. And from what I have observed thus far, the language does seem to dispense with the use of definite or indefinite articles. Neither does it have any tenses or conjugation in the strict sense.

But while there may be areas where the language lacks complexity, there are also aspects that challenge non-native speakers like me: particularly, in the fact that Chinese is a hopelessly tonal language. This means that the meaning of a word is differentiated by the tones accompanying the pronunciation of that particular word, as opposed to the pronunciation of the words themselves. In Chinese, for example, the word for mother and the word for horse is “ma,” and the distinction between the two is the way the word “ma” is intoned. It would not be unlikely, therefore, for an English-speaker like me, not at all sensitive to the nuances of tone and pronunciation, to mistakenly describe my mother as a horse!

At this point, however, I am quite content with dropping polite Chinese phrases when talking to my Chinese-speaking co-workers who are, no doubt, amused to no end at my attempt to speak Mandarin while butchering the language in the process.

* * *

Perhaps my fascination with language began in my Philosophy of Language classes with the late Fr. Thomas Greene, S.J. in my undergraduate days at the Ateneo. At that time, I was already fluent in English and Filipino, and had taken two semesters of Spanish with Señora Heidi Aquino. But it was not until Fr. Green’s class that I truly appreciated the nature of language qua language as more than a mere tool for communication, but as a characteristically unique human activity— a reflection of his innate nature to make meaning.

It is believed that as human beings, we have an innate ability to learn language. It is built into the very fiber of our being. In fact, there is a theory advanced by linguistic theorist Noam Chomsky called the Theory of Universal Grammar which posits the existence of a certain built-in language competence in man— a universal or core grammar capacity existing as a deep mental structure— that gives rise to all the different grammars of the different languages of the world. Indeed, nowhere can this natural affinity for language be most clearly demonstrated than in children who have been observed to possess the unique ability to “absorb” language, particularly at a very young age.

Formally defined, of course, language is an organized system of conventional signs that allows us to communicate something about the world in a meaningful way. It is conventional, first of all, because it is based upon a social convention. Language, after all, is a social phenomenon. If we did not have other people to communicate with, it is unlikely that language would have developed at all. Thus, persons using the same language have come to an “agreement” that a particular combination of sounds will refer to a particular and designated meaning which, in turn, corresponds to a “thing” in the world.

When an English speaker says the word “dog,” for example, listeners who understand the English language will understand the word to mean the four-legged animal that barks. The designation, however, is purely arbitrary, so that persons speaking French can say chien, while Germans can say hund, while Spaniards can say perro, with all such words referring to the same four-legged animal that barks.

More than being conventional, however, language is also said to be metaphorical; it points to something beyond or outside itself— it communicates a “fact” about the world. It is in this realm that language takes on a decidedly metaphysical character. As Martin Heidegger famously said in his Letter on Humanism, “Language is the house of Being.” Through language, reality is revealed. Thus, if classical metaphysics posits that all being, if it is being, is co-natural, i.e., that it is capable of being known by the human mind, such knowing is always filtered and mediated through the medium of language. People’s sense of reality, therefore, is embedded and embodied in the language in which they speak and are immersed. Filipinos, for example, have many words for rice such as kanin, palay and bigas and the Inuit are said to have fifty different words referring to ice and snow. Germans, meanwhile, even have a word to describe the empty space between two objects— zwischenraum. Indeed, to borrow a classic phrase from Wittgenstein, each culture and each people has its own unique language game, spectacles through which they experience the world.

With this recognition of the centrality of language in thought and philosophy— the so-called, linguistic turn— some thinkers have taken the position to the extreme: they believe that the study of language alone could result in the only objective philosophy. These thinkers rejected the whole notion of metaphysics since this could not be objectively or empirically proven. For them, the true and genuine task of philosophy, therefore, is to clarify the meanings of basic concepts and assertions (especially those of science), through an analysis of language, and not to attempt to answer unanswerable questions such as those regarding the nature of ultimate reality or of the Absolute.

Wittgenstein, in his later philosophy and exemplified in his Philosophical Investigations, tried to temper and reign in these tendencies by espousing what was later on to be called Ordinary Language Philosophy. While not exactly veering away from the empiricism which characterized his earlier thought, Wittgenstein said that the proper approach to the study of language is to understand how it is used in everyday life. Through such an understanding, Wittgenstein believed that we will be able to “dissolve” the appearances of philosophical problems which are, in any event, rooted in a misunderstanding of what words actually mean, which, in turn, leadis the philosopher to take words in abstraction and out of context. The point of Wittgenstein, I suspect, is to understand language as it is, and not to place them artificially within a philosophical petri-dish, removed from reality.

This method of analyzing language as it is used has led philosophers to recognize that language is littered with dead metaphors. While language is itself metaphorical in that it relates to a fact in reality, once that connection has been established, language has a tendency of fossilizing these connections into rigid concepts as they are used and passed on from one speaker to the next. As explained by Guy Deutscher in the book, The Unfolding of Language, language is actually formed from an edifice of dead metaphors:

“…tracing a stream of metaphors that runs right through language and flows from the concrete to the abstract. In this constant surge, the simplest and sturdiest of words are swept along, one after another, and carried toward abstract meanings. As these words drift downstream, they are bleached of their original vitality and turn into pale lifeless terms for abstract concepts— the substance from which the structure of language is formed. And when at last the river sinks into the sea, these spent metaphors are deposited, layer after layer, and so the structure of language grows, as a reef of dead metaphors.”

We need only look at the English language to find an abundance of such dead metaphors. The word sarcophagus, for example, comes from the ancient Greek words σαρξ (sarx) which means flesh, and φαγειν (phagein) which is the Greek verb, to eat. When the Greeks attempted to describe a stone coffin, therefore, they described it as λιθος σαρκοφάγος (lithos sacophagos), or flesh-eating stone. Another example is the word nostalgia, which is defined as the psychological condition of longing for the past. In describing this feeling, a medical student coined the phrase in 1688 by using the ancient Greek words νόστος (nostos) or “homecoming” and άλγος (algos) which means “pain” or “longing.” Nostalgia, therefore, and quite literally, is the longing or pain for home.

Because of the tendency of language to fossilize into dead metaphors, philosophers have constantly emphasized the need to return to the original experience of being, to that point when the initial encounter or “surprise” of existence gives rise to new meanings and words. The whole point, therefore, is to always return to being, to that primordial experience when existence is said to have revealed itself to consciousness, thereby giving rise to the true essence of language. This was the point of Fredrick Nietzsche in his essay, Truth and Falsity in an Extra-moral Sense, where he says that our use of language, either in telling the truth, or in telling lies, should not be judged by their moral content, but by the creativity of their utterance. Through this creativity, we are actually reviving these dead metaphors and revitalizing our use of language. As C.S. Lewis noted in Bluspels and Flalansferes, “when the metaphor becomes fossilized, our ‘thinking’ is not thinking at all, but mere sound or mere incipient movements in the larynx.”

This is one of the reasons, I suspect, why philosophers like Fr. Roque Ferriols, S.J., himself a fluent speaker of no less than 8 languages including Latin and ancient Greek, chose to philosophize in Filipino. Because language mediates being, it is important to use that particular language which best and most naturally mediates being to us Filipinos. For Fr. Ferriols, this language is Filipino (or, in his words, Northern Sampalokese). Immersed in this language, therefore, we, who also speak this language, are able to make first contact with the world, and our experience of being becomes more pristine and alive. Thus, for Fr. Ferriols, the term “being” cannot simply be translated into his Filipino term, “meron,” since the Filipino experience of meron is quite different from the Western experience of being. Maraming pagkakapareho, he would say. Ngunit marami ring pagkakaiba.

Filipino, however, being a language like any other, is also susceptible to the fossilization of metaphor. In these situations, Fr. Ferriols’ commitment to being is clear: we must always be vigilant and turn towards that initial taste and experience for existence, never to be complacent and trapped in static concepts— Danasin mo. Tumingin ka. Lundagin mo, beybe!

Understood in this way, and beyond its obvious practical benefits, the learning of foreign languages, and even of those no longer used today such as Latin, takes on an existential dimension— for just as one’s native tongue captures his people’s primordial meeting of consciousness with being, so does the native tongue of foreign and ancient peoples capture their own primordial meeting. Learning these languages, therefore, opens the learner to a whole milieu of experience not otherwise available to him through his native tongue, and one which ultimately enriches his understanding and appreciation for the complexity of being itself.