Though I Speak with the Tongues of Angels
Not everyone is going to understand
I found myself explaining the Tower of Babel to Filha this weekend.
This is strange twice over. First, because when I was her age the story needed no explanation—it had been preached to me for more than a decade. But now I have raised a perfect heathen. Second, because it’s a weird-ass story.
The tale goes thusly:
Long ago, back when the earth still had that new-planet smell, everyone spoke the same language. Scholars argue amongst themselves about the first human language from which all others are derived, calling it a “proto-sapiens language.” But no one knows the shape of those words. None of us were there and those who were have been dust for eons atop eons. But once upon a happier time, all human inhabitants of the fresh and shiny Earth understood each other without need of translation or increased volume or frantic miming. You’d think this was a good thing, but all Bible stories find a way to get fucked. This is a Bible story, by the way, in case you were like, “Why did I never hear about this tower in World History class?” So as the story goes, all the proto-sapiens could hang out and that was a thing they liked to do. Naturally they decided to build a city. And in this city they began to built a tower. The biggest, tallest, most magnificent tower anyone had ever seen. Taller than the trees, taller than the clifftops, so tall it could touch the sky. That was the plan, at least. They had architects and everything. But God sitting up in heaven with his almighty wisdom and fragile ego wasn’t too keen on this whole “tower that ascends to the heavens” thing. The way I heard it, God found this super-tall-tower idea to be deeply sacrilegious. I mean, if people could just climb to the tippy-top of this towering tower and reach his celestial neighborhood, what the hell do they need a god for, you know what I’m saying? Why worship a guy who holds the key when you can just prop a ladder on the wall and circumvent those pearly gates? God took a look at all this free-flowing communication and collaboration and was like, “No, no, no, this won’t do!” And he flicked his omnipotent wrist and Presto Chango! people started speaking in tongues. Different tongues. Sumerian, Aramaic, Sanskrit, Mandarin, Tamil, I don’t know what languages God invented in that moment but it caused complete chaos. Wreaked havoc on that community skyscraper project. The bricklayers didn’t understand the doorjamb fitters didn’t understand the project managers didn’t understand the water carriers didn’t understand the interior decorators didn’t understand the carpenters didn’t understand the ramp engineers and everyone thought the other person had gone mad. Eventually the people who spoke the same languages found each other, but I have to imagine that in the terror and turmoil, families splintered apart. Lifelong friends could no longer share an inside joke. Lovers couldn’t tell each other what was wrong. Grandchildren couldn’t fall asleep to a beloved voice reciting a favorite bedtime story. The rhythm was all off. I’m sure the sound of the wailing and confusion and heartbreak and rage echoed off those golden heavenly streets for days and I guess that made God glad or something. I mean, this was his perfect plan. Now the tower would never be finished, wouldn’t come close to scratching a cloud. The people would band together in their little collectives of shared sentiment and set off in a hundred different directions, never to speak to one another again.
And that’s why we still don’t understand each other, why we say hello in a thousand ways: 7, 139 different ways, at last count. Preachers in pulpits believe it’s our fault. The audacity of building a tower to reach the sky! The hubris! How shameful! Repent and be ye saved!
My read of this story is that it’s King James Version God’s fault. At the very least, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. If he does know, if this shit is on purpose, then he’s a sadist. The Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai is 163 stories tall—828 meters/2,716.5 feet. God doesn’t seem bothered by that one nowadays, or at least there are no religions screeching against the sin of skyscrapers.
The truth is probably more scientific. People evolved and learned to speak in a thousand different places all around the globe, and their soft palates were shaped by the sounds they made to each other, and eventually they figured out how to write those sounds down and eons later we download Duolingo.
We were in England this past weekend, that’s why the Tower of Babel came up. Yesterday we were standing in a boarding line at Heathrow. In front of us a little old lady answered her mobile with a “Tou, filho!” meaning “estou”—“I am (here).” Behind us three middle-aged British blokes nattered on about their upcoming golf adventure with the volume turned to American levels: “Oi, I’ve been practicing my swing in my garden, you daft wanker!”
The murmuring avó ignored the trio of bellowing chaps and vice versa and there we were in the middle, understanding both. Or at least some of one and all of the other.
“Why is English so annoying?” Filha asked as we buckled in to our seats in row 14 only to discover the golf mates seated in front of us, loud as horns.
“Because you understand everything they’re saying,” I said. “If you didn’t understand these dudes they might still be obnoxious but more like white noise. They would be easier to ignore.”
And then I segued right into the Tower of Babel because I have a ready catalog of bizarre Bible stories for every eventuality, I guess.
When we first moved here I found Portuguese to be an impenetrable wall of shushing sounds. I despaired of ever understanding it. High school Spanish and college French might have helped me make sense of some vocabulary words, since they all share a Latin heritage. But spoken Portuguese is a far cry from the written word, and my six months of sporadic Memrise, Drops, and Preply learning pre-America-evacuation did little to help me break through the language barrier in real life.
Random aside: Did you know the letters K, Y, and W are recent additions to the Portuguese alphabet? They were included (quite recently) to accommodate estrangeirismos, or loanwords that had infiltrated the língua materna, words like “kilometer” and “whiskey.”
Over time I’ve gained a basic level of very transactional Portuguese. I know what to say to get things done, to place an order, to complete a transaction, to exchange the paltriest of pleasantries. But I’ve felt that foreign-language-induced isolation. When I want to say more, when I want to explain myself, when I want to make a deeper connection.
I don’t have the words, at least not the right ones, so I remain at arm’s length.
Words are my currency—at least here on a page—so to be without is to be bereft. Monolingualism is a lonely state. One that I am working diligently to break free of, now with the expert help of a tutor with whom I meet twice a week.
All this to say that I sympathize with the people of Babylon struck suddenly dumb by the realization that the conversations they had taken for granted all their lives were no longer accessible. Once they were part of a thriving whole, now severed and set adrift. What a relief it must have been to swerve through the melee and find at last a person who spoke your language.
Filha may find English annoying in certain settings, but it is our mother tongue. We return to it with relief, and likely always will.
The goal now is to stretch out those periods of time when we speak something else until we add to our mother tongue a comfortable companion and it is Portuguese we are relieved to return to.
Then perhaps, if we’re lucky and long-lived enough, we add another and another until we have a small collection of companions. A family of tongues.
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Copyright © 2024 LaDonna Witmer
On the rare occasions I can make myself understood in my adopted country, I feel triumphant! But then, the portugues person responds, and I become a mute jellyfish. I grieve the loss of complete, in depth communication. And still, I'm so happy to be living here. Reading your posts is like hitching a ride on your similar experience. This ride was a gem.
I so agree about feeling arms length apart from others due to the language barrier. I began studying learning Portuguese while still in the US, about 2 1/2 years ago. Now that I live here, I read and write pretty well, but understanding and being able to hold my own in conversation beyond the most basic transactional necessities is still a work in progress. I'll echo Jennifer - as an expat living here, I also look forward to your beautiful and thoughtful writing.