‘In your own words. Do you have your own words? Personally, I’m using the ones everybody else has been using. Next time they tell you to say something in your own words, say “Nigflot blorny quando floon.”‘ -George Carlin.

In the beginning was the word – although now we can’t say in which language it was first spoken. The sum of the human experience has been transmitted over generations through the creativity of words and language; and with the death of each new language the world has lost very many ways of explaining and appreciating its beauty. Tonight, I’m pondering the unexplainable beauty of lost and extinct words in the many languages of the world. Nothing is new here, mostly, I’ve read it up on the Matador Network – a list of 20 words from around the world untranslatable into the English language. I have also subsequently added a few to them from Yoruba:

There’s “pele” in Yoruba which doesn’t quite fit the English translation of “I’m sorry”, and “E ku ise” which is used to commend someone while they’re working. “Well done” that we’ve always used to represent it in English only refers to when the work is already completed. “E ku ise” doesn’t. It’s used when the work being praised is still being done. And there’s “E ku ile” which you say to someone when you arrive in a house after a while whether as a guest or as a returning member of the household, and it doesn’t quite fit into “Hello, I’m home!”. The English “I’m sorry” admits the speaker’s guilt in the act that is calling for the apology, right? There’s also the “sorry” of “Sorry about that.” But “pele” in its deepest meaning, is an acknowledgement of the other person’s presence as well as a notice of shared empathy, nothing to do with body harm or apology. Simply: “I see you. Here’s acknowledging you, kindly.”

I have worked as a non-literary translator for more than six years now. One of the most annoying part of my job is meeting instructions that ask me to provide word-to-word translations of words from English because of constraints of space. Instructions that ignore the fact that because something can be expressed with one word in English doesn’t mean that it can also be expressed in a single word in other world languages. Some English words don’t even have direct translation equivalents in Yoruba. (E.g. information, exception, disclaimer, style).  The meaning would depend on the context in which it is being used. So when the translator is met with a list of words and asked to provide their translations – without any context – problem ensues. Some, if they would translate at all, would need more than two or three English words to explain (e.g. refresh, comment etc). So there, I ramble back and forth with the project supervisor until he/she finally allows me to do what I think is right. Most times it’s out of their hands and I’m asked to do as instructed. Translate with one word and send it back. I do so reluctantly (most times with a cover email that what I’ve written wouldn’t make any sense in the final output) and go back to my life, and give my best wishes to the final reader of such rubbished translation. Now think about it – considering how hard it is even for a human translator – what chance do machine translators stand in the near future?

Over a year ago at a Conference on the Nigerian Pidgin English which took place at the Conference Centre of the University of Ibadan, I participated in the start of a project (sponsored by the Institute of French Research in Africa) to document Nigerian Pidign English. A language academy was set up to write grammars for the pidgin, and push to make it into an official language of instruction and government business in Nigeria along with English. Pidgin English itself is no longer just a pidgin, the participants argued. It has evolved into a language of its own with a distinct grammar, several dialects, and a capacity to grow and self-sustain, and that it deserves a new name. The Guardian UK wrote about the project last week. While linguists figure out the dimensions of literacy that will result from such standardization, they also get to battle naysayers who believe that pidgin should be kept in the informal section of the realm – not deserving of anything but condescension. We on this side of the Atlantic battle with the limits already posed by the lexicon of our English language (or its American variant) as it currently stands.

Back to another reality, I was reading another article that calls for a return of some archaic English words that have been dropped due to unuse. Good idea? Right. Anything that expands our capability to express ourselves in as compact a form as possible is a brilliant idea. Not only will they make it easier to transmit cultures (by some luck), they will also expand our creative experiences. The linguistic history of the world is not just as brutal as the real world, it’s equally as dynamic and as subject to intervention and eventuality: cause and effect. On a bright evening in Edwardsville a few months ago, we came up with a new word: sexular to refer to someone whose disdain for (state religious) authority makes them sexually appealing, a derivation of sexual and secular. Now it’s one of the top words on Urban Dictionary. “We” here refers to Chris (fellow linguist and collaborator) and I. Already gaining usage on our campus, you would most likely find the word being used to describe those that have rebelled against their state or religious authority’s forceful conditioning, as evidenced by their interaction with the opposite sex, and behaviour in social situations. (You should check it out – the first (and second) definitions – on the Urban Dictionary, give us some thumbs up there, and use it in your writings too.)

And finally, there is http://www.savethewords.org/ where thousands of words in English have been put up for “adoption” by the Oxford Dictionaries. Go there and adopt one for constant usage. Let the languages live, and let us lugent linguists find succor in the promise of their continued existence. Yes, lugent is a new word too.

(Thanks to Nne whose buzz post on language and subsequent follow up discussion prompted this post, and to Temie, for edits.)

Update: Alaska’s Governor Sarah Palin’s error word of earlier this year “refudiate” was today declared by the American Oxford Dictionary as the new word of the year.