Tag Archives: lingua communis

Into Culture: Lingua Communis III

At the start of this month I began reading ‘Babel: an arcane history’ by R.F. Kuang. This book is a fictional history set in Oxford in the early 19th century. It follows the story of a young Chinese orphan, later known as Robin Swift, who is adopted by a linguistic professor who works for Babel: ‘Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation’. It is also a work of fantasy as the centre of Babel’s work is ‘silver-working’. In the reality of the book, silver holds magical properties when used by translators and the British Empire is powered by it.

Silver is used by etching pairs of words that are translations of each other; one English, the other another language. The magic is derived from what gets lost in translation. The first example given is the pairing of karabos, in Greek, and caravel; both mean ‘ship’ but karabos also means crab or beetle. When the silver bar with these two words etched on them are put on boats the fishermen catch more fish due to the magic association of crabs/sea creature… you really need to read the book to fully grasp how this ‘works’.

Babel is a great story full of intrigue and excitement but what has struck me is its exploration of language across cultural divides and the role translation has played in empire. This is something that I am continually reflecting on in my role, particularly when trying to create spaces for many nations and tongues to come together in worship. I did this at our recent international Christmas event where we shared Christmas traditions from around the world. I wanted to make the event as accessible as possible to those who did not speak English and so began work on translating the service booklets to help guide those of different languages through our time together. Although we had limited, non-English speakers, those who came appreciated the effort we had put in to producing as many variety of translations as possible.

The process of creating these translations brought up fascinating conversations with those who were helping me along the way. This was particularly the case when I was trying to get a metric translation of ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ and ‘Hark the Herald Angel Sings’. I wanted to have a moment when everyone was singing to the same tune but in their own language. I had experienced this when worshipping with my Urdu speaking friends at their Christmas service. They had Urdu words being sung to the traditional tunes for these two songs. I then found versions in various other languages, e.g. French (for D.R.C.), Arabic, Farsi, etc. This raised an important question: in choosing the words, was it more important to get the meaning close or the meter right?

This question reminded me of the reflections I have had about writing theology within the structure of metric poetry. There is the same tension when selecting words and phrases to express a theological/spiritual truth when there are restrictions on syllables and rhymes. Babel explores this tension and pitches the alternative arguments really well.

But this is not necessarily the thing that I want to explore this month.

Here is a quote from the leading professor, Professor Playfair, in the fictional institute of Babel as he introduces the first year students to their work and studies.

“It is often argued that the greatest tragedy of the Old Testament was not man’s exile from the Garden of Eden, but the fall of the Tower of Babel. For Adam and Eve, though cast from grace, could still speak and comprehend the language of angels. But when men in their hubris decided to build a path to heaven, God confounded their understanding. He divided and confused them and scattered them about the face of the earth.

What was lost at Babel was not merely human unity, but the original language – something primordial and innate, perfectly understandable and lacking nothing in form or content. Biblical scholars call it the Adamic language. Some think it is Hebrew. Some think it is a real and ancient language that has been lost to time. Some think it is a new, artificial language that we ought to invent. Some think French fulfils this role, some think English, once it’s finished robbing and morphing, might.”
R.F. Kuang, ‘Babel: An Arcane History’ (London:Harper Collins, 2022) p.107

Later in the story Robin, the main protagonist, is with his guardian, Professor Lovell, discussing this idea. Professor Lovell believes this notion is ‘poppycock’ but not before he recalls the account in Herodotus’ ‘The Histories’ (Part 1, Book 2, paragraph 2) where the historian tells a story of the Egyptian Pharaoh Psammetichus I. In order to assess the innateness of speech in humans, Psammetichus I performed an experiment on two infants who were placed in a remote place by a shepherd who was not allowed to speak in their presence. After two years, the children began to speak and they repeated the word becos, which turned out to be the Phrygian word for bread. This proved, in Psammetichus’ mind, that Phyrgian was the innate language of humanity.

This story, according to the fictional character of Professor Lovell, is totally fabricated and similar experiments done elsewhere would provide different results. I agree with this view but it is interesting to ponder the nature of language and what is the truth in the Genesis story of the Tower of Babel. Is there an Adamic language? What are the implications of the limits of translation in diplomacy and ultimate unity across linguistic divides? Robin Swift extrapolates from Professor Playfair’s concept of an Adamic language.

Well – since in the Bible, God split mankind apart. And I wonder if – if the purpose of translation, then, is to bring mankind back together. If we translate to – I don’t know, bring about that paradise again, on earth, between nations.

To which Professor Playfair enigmatically responds.

Well, of course. Such is the project of empire – and why, therefore, we translate at the pleasure of the Crown.

I have been pondering the concept of a lingua communis since April last year. This is not some lexical holy grail as is pondered by Professor Playfair in Babel but rather the search for an intercultural process of understanding. At the heart of my reflections is a desire to find a meaningful, tangible and, hopefully, effective approach to unity across difference. Language will play a significant role, even if it only is at the start of any process. There is, however, profound limitations on linguistics and translations, as I am exploring further in my reading of Babel.

The biblical solution to the tragedy of the Tower of Babel is not some man-made process of linguistic homogeny but rather a spiritual antidote which in many ways bypasses the lexical limitations. It is telling, in the narrative of Kuang’s Babel, that Professor Playfair’s assumed response to the punishment by God for humanity’s hubris is more hubris; thinking that we can translate our way out of the ‘curse of God’ (Kuang, ‘Babel’, p.108).

At Pentecost, God gives the solution to the confusion of Babel. The Holy Spirit enables all to understand other languages. What this looked and felt may feel lost to history but I believe that the same Holy Spirit is alive and active today. The process for unity of heart and mind must start, not in my attempts to translate my way out of the ‘curse of God’, but to humble myself in his presence and to seek understanding that transcends linguistic differences.

Our experience at the International Christmas event at Bradford Cathedral was that there was something uniting about singing together even though we did so in different languages. There is something profound about music being a form of universal language. As I regularly sit in choral evensong, listening to the anthem and encouraging the congregation to engage in it, it is often the music rather than the words that I point them to.

There remains an area of future research for me. It is the area of cultural unity. I have always been profoundly aware of the impact of a lack of shared socio-cultural narratives. Read any of my posts over the years I have been writing and you will find them shot through with this ‘Hauerwasian’ problem. As I prepare my talk on racial justice for the upcoming Anglican Network of intercultural Churches Conference, I return to this intellectual landscape again and again.

I encourage you to read Babel… I just need to find time to finish it!

Into Culture: Into Pakistan V

I have given up on trying to sort my internal body clock and I lie in my bed attempting instead to consolidate my reflections. Putting aside the theological/missiological questions that have emerged during my conversations with Pakistani Christians, I return to my personal navigation in a foreign culture.

I am finding the lack of language a serious barrier. I walk around silently, loitering in the corners, creepily waiting to be approached. When someone does engage me in conversation, speaking beautiful English, I feel the need to respond in kind; in embarrassingly limited Urdu. I thus present as aloof. When I do speak English with them their understanding is not as full as I first believe and they look at me with such awkwardness and, worst of all, some form of humiliating deference. I just want to say “sorry” all the time.

I find social interactions challenging in my own culture with my own language and it takes me a huge effort to overcome that. I often overcompensate and feel as though I make people feel uncomfortable. I have no gauge as to the tone of conversations and have had so many painful experiences of misreading situations that, as I think of them now, my stomach scrunches up as though it were trying to hide itself further inside of me.

I have decided to make something of the day and attend some local classes for trainee clergy. I arrive, in my mind, just in time for Morning Prayer. No one is here. Pakistani’s, like other nationalities, do not have the same interest in time keeping as us Northern Europeans do. I sit on the opposite side of where I sat last time because, unknown to me, that time I sat on the women’s side. No one said anything, no one pointed this out to me. Why would they? Why wouldn’t they? Thinking back, I assume they were all laughing at my cultural naivety. Today I will do better.

The students who are leading prayers whisper together and look in my direction. I try to ignore them. When one stands up, he speaks in English to introduce the service. I shrink inside. Stupid English man can’t cope… I think about the practice I have adopted back home of saying “welcome” in any different languages that I know of spoken by guests. Is this what they feel? I am trying to make them feel welcomed and cross the barrier but here, on the receiving end, I feel an imposition.

Hello, paranoia, my old friend. I appreciate that you are trying to protect me and that you were invited to take your place inside my head after I realised that people don’t always mean what they say and that anyone, even trusted friends, can be hypocrites. They can pretend to be kind but they will soon disown you or abandon you when someone easier, more charismatic, less problematic comes along. I have tried to listen to you but, today you seem to have a lot to say.

I am now sat in an English language class. It is strangely comforting to hear my own language. Although I am perfectly happy to be in a place and just listen to people talk to each other in Urdu with me not following a single word, it is nice to relax a little and be part of the community for a bit. I am embarrassed afresh as the exercises they are doing are at quite an advance level and I doubt many of us Brits would be able to do them. They begin to read ‘The Fir Tree’ by Hand Christian Anderson. Even those who seem to be struggling with English read it well, the teacher correcting mispronunciation. No one, however, notes my presence. When I make eye contact, people avert their eyes. I remember Mowgli in ‘The Jungle Book’ and remember that I am not one of them.

I haven’t had breakfast yet but they’re all going straight into Urdu class. Obviously, I need this class more than English but I am also unsure as to what is expected of me, so I go for food. The Urdu teacher asks where I am going.

“Naashtaa (breakfast). I am sorry.”

“Will you come back after breakfast?”

I don’t know. I imagine walking into the class halfway through and feel the eyes already burning into my soul.

“What are you doing here, Ned? You’re not learning anything, and you don’t understand a single word they are saying. At any moment they will ask you questions in Urdu and you’ll stutter and look pathetic.”

I say “yes” but have no intention of doing so. I hate my cowardice and leave.

Breakfast is sausage. The other guest has an egg on his plate. The hospitality team have clearly learnt.

As I eat I think about this blog and feel the self-enforced pressure to write something for today. I note my paranoid voice still wittering on in my head and then the voice that always drowns him out.

“I am a bad person.”

I call him, Neddyplod.

He is the voice of my younger self who was always so lost and confused as a child. The vulnerable boy who, no matter how much he tried, never quite fitted in. He has remained buried for many years, decades even, but, recently, since I discovered him on a walk, he has found some courage to be vocal. I am simultaneously grateful for his ‘bravery’ and yet burdened by his wounds. He carries so many accidental cuts and bruises from others who would be horrified to know what they did to him. He knew, even from the earliest days that they did not intend to hurt him but he had no language to express or ask for different treatment.

Here, in this new place, I am becoming Neddyplod again.

Writing this makes me cry. This is too raw. I need to write this, but does anyone need to read it?

“Attention seeking again, Ned, Neddyplod, whoever you are. You are going to post this though, aren’t you? Why? Because you want the affirmation. You want the prestige of being ‘brave’. You want to justify that ache inside you that craves what you missed out on as a child: acceptance.”

I am now thinking about plot structure. I am reading John Yorke’s excellent book, ‘Into the Woods’ which explores the nature of stories and how and why they work. All good stories have a ‘midpoint’.

…the midpoint is the moment something profoundly significant occurs…A new ‘truth’ dawns on our hero for the first time; the protagonist has captured the treasure or found the ‘elixir’ to heal their flaw. But there’s an important caveat… At this stage in the story they don’t quite know how to handle it correctly.
John Yorke, ‘Into the Woods: how stories work and why we tell them’(London: Penguin Books, 2014)p.37 and 58

I am at the midpoint of my trip and, although real life never fits story structure, might there be some treasure today?

Mowgli. A ‘man-cub’ brought up in the wolf pack as their own. He tries to pretend that he is not a human but a part of the pack but the book tracks his acceptance that he is different from the other animals and belongs elsewhere. The only trouble is that when he returns to humankind they do not accept him either. He is caught between. The story concludes with him making peace with his solitary existence as not neither one or the other but both.

In this place where I am different I am being made more aware of how different I am at home. Here, where there are clearer demarcations of difference (language, custom, clothes), I am tempted to long for home but, then, there’s the rub. There, where those differences are not present, I am still not the same. Where do I flee to?

I am tempted to say ‘my people’ are not here but nor are they there but, maybe, ‘my people’ are, somehow both.

I am comforted by Mowgli’s dislocation; his successes of adaptation; even his final torment at the in between place. This might be my elixir. I just don’t quite know how to handle it yet.

Into Culture: Lingua Communis I

Last month I reflected on my previous exploration of No-Man’s Land as an image for intercultural ministry and mission. My tentative conclusion was that there was a need to acknowledge and identify both privilege and responsibility within the various spaces we traverse. As a Christian I am minded to suggest that I must acknowledge that I am, simultaneously, both welcomed in and called to welcome others in any space I inhabit. The balance is key.

In previous drafts of that published post I utilised a quote that I return to again and again. It is by Vincent Donovan in the preface of his book, ‘Christianity Rediscovered’. The quote is a succinct summary of the whole book which, in my mind, beautifully depicts a vision of intercultural mission.

…the unpredictable process of evangelization, [is] a process leading to that new place where none of us has ever been before. When the gospel reaches a people where they are, their response to that gospel is the church in a new place, and the song they will sing is that new, unsung song, that unwritten melody that haunts all of us. What we have to be involved in is not the revival of the church or the reform of the church. It has to be nothing less than what Paul and the Fathers of the Council of Jerusalem were involved in for their time – the refounding of the Catholic church for our age.
Vincent Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered (London: SCM Press, 2009) p.xix

A Slovakian family contacted the cathedral this month enquiring about baptism for their children. I was responsible that week for responding to these requests and rang the number. The conversation was confused and frustrating as his English was poor and my Hungarian is non-existent. We managed to make the necessary arrangements for them to come to a Sunday service, which is part of our preparation process, and they duly arrived and we met face to face. This conversation was easier with the additional non-verbal forms of communication and I arranged a visit to their home to chat about faith and to understand their reasons for seeking baptism for their children.

I arrived at their home and was warmly welcomed in. I had brought my standard baptism preparation material but quickly realised that this was not appropriate or useful and decided to improvise the conversation. Midway through our fumbling attempts at understanding with a significant language barrier, the mother (who spoke no English and was relying on her husband for a translation) left the room and moments later another couple came in. I was introduced to them and was told that they too wanted their children baptised. This couple also spoke little to no English. The four Slovaks (from the Roma culture) sat intently listening to me articulate my desire to welcome them and their children into our community and what it means to be part of the family of God. I attempted to describe, in simple English, what an intercultural Church should be like, one of mutual listening and learning and, ultimately, of mutuality. The person with the most English translated to the others and their eyes lit up and then I saw two of them weeping. I was told, “This is beautiful. This is what we want.” The others touched their hearts and nodded. I had done enough but I wanted to do more.

What would it mean to genuinely live this intercultural life out in practice with such a language barrier, not to mention the other, even more significant, cultural barriers? How would I encourage fuller engagement into a shared life and what did I imagine that would look like? The answer to that second question must start with both parties making an effort to learn, at least in order to cross the language barrier if not yet the cultural barrier.

“Do not try to call them back to where they were, and do not try to call them to where you are, as beautiful as that place might seem to you. You must have the courage to go with them to a place that neither you nor they have ever been before.”
A young person reflecting on the line of thought presented in Donovan, Christianity Rediscovered, p. xix

At the same time as I was processing these significant intercultural questions I was asked to organise two civic events at the cathedral: a prayer vigil for Sudan and a memorial service for those affected by knife crime. Both events had an additional request that they would be ‘interfaith’ and inclusive. I am still very new in my interfaith journey and am asking a lot of questions as to my understanding and practice. I have not yet seen, in my admittedly little experience, a good example of interfaith prayers; particularly within a particular faith tradition’s building. To pray together requires, in my mind, a shared language, not necessarily of the tongue but of the heart; otherwise our prayers would be in the same space, at the same time but would not be united and, in that way, deeply ‘together’. Hugh of St Victor, a 12th century theologian, suggests,

It is of no avail that the same walls encompass us if difference of will separate us.
Hugh of St. Victor, Dom. Aloysius Smith (tr.), Explanation of the Rule of St Augustine (London: Sands and Company, 1955) p.3

Is there a way of reaching this togetherness in an intercultural or even, more radically, in an interfaith context? Is this even to be desired? It is what I am beginning to desire.

The reality that I am becoming more conscious of is that language is cultural; sharing the same linguistic language does not mean you share the same cultural language. This has a profound impact on Bradford’s journey towards City of Culture in 2025. It cannot be a celebration of a singular culture for that does not exist, but nor can it be a celebration of a multiple of cultures for who can decide what is worthy of celebrating? The result therefore seems to be an attempt at just presenting difference side by side with no means of passing judgement, even of appreciation and good. I heard at an intercultural conference this week that we can all agree that we would want to celebrate, embrace and learn from the good from every culture. This is a nice sentiment but who decides what is ‘good’ in a culture? The judgement of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is surely culturally pre-determined. Multicultural spaces keep others at a distance and true sharing and peace is unattainable. Intercultural spaces encourages deeper interaction, with the risks that involves, but still it does not genuinely navigate a way of creating a ‘lingua communis’, a shared language. ‘Interculturalism’ is still predicated on the existence and maintenance of different and distinct cultures with competing and exclusive value systems. What is our aim when we engage in intercultural work? Is it to accept, as with multiculturism, the acceptance and promotion of difference as a desired aim? Or is it to pursue, even if it is an eternal striving, for the ever elusive and yet transcendent goal of unity; whatever that means?

In the Acts of the Apostles, the writer describes the Christian community as being ‘of one heart and mind/soul’ (Acts 4:32). The Holy Spirit had given to them the gift of being able to cross the language barrier, either by giving them a new, angelic tongue or by giving them the ability to speak in other, human tongues. Had the Holy Spirit now given to them the ability to cross the cultural barriers too? What does it mean that they were of one heart and mind/soul?

This question was central in my Masters dissertation exploring the Augustinian Orders that held this aim as their primary goal. A whole theological school developed in Paris during the 12th century called the Victorine School (based in the Abbey of St Victor). Hugh, who we heard from earlier, advanced a process of ‘reintegration’ of ourselves: a personal journey towards inner harmony of self which involved and impacted the outward harmony in a community of others. In my new role I have realised that this theological project of the 12th century could be a framework for 21st century intercultural dialogue. It begins with a change of will, an opening of the imagination and the articulation of possibility.

My hope, therefore, for the legacy of Bradford’s City of Culture is that we begin this long journey towards a new, genuinely shared culture; a place where none of us have been before. This will require some key principles and deciding on what those very principles requires radical dialogue and a sharing of will. Like my clumsy attempts at communicating with my new Slovak friends this will require a shared linguistic framework to start with but that must lead to the joint construction of brand new cultural edifice that we could share in ownership and, therefore, responsibility for. In this way I am encouraged to dust off my MA dissertation on the Augustinian approach to communal unity and try to implement it in the reality of my new complex context of Bradford.