On Barbarism (Sean Ali)

On Barbarism

            When the Greeks used the term “barbarian,” it implied something more specific than an uncivilized person. The term barbarian refers to idea that man is made uncivilized through violence towards the language he speaks. “Bar-bar” is the Greek onamonapia for grunting sounds,   sounds in which man does not communicate anything to each other. I would suggest the modern English equivalent would be something like “blah blah,” for this is our sound for ceaseless, meandering chatter. Such chatter is strongly perpetuated by a technologically pervasive world such as our own. For have not the internet and text messages denigrated our language into words that have surgically removed all letters in the traditional spelling of a word that have rendered superfluous? Silent letters are mercilessly decapitated from words. Silent letters are like relics that indicate a time in the history and geography of the language when they would have been spoken. Though they have gone silent in our speech, they had lived on in the written word, until they recently have begun to be shaven off, one by one. Then there are those who would introduce numbers into the language simply because it saves time on writing extra letters: “h8” for “hate.” Perhaps if this play with language were being done with truly conscious experimentation, perhaps if it were done by a person that delved so deep into his language that he could do nothing but experiment, then we would be talking about something altogether different. But as it stands, this alteration of language only shows that the multitude perceives language as a limited store-room where space must be utilized as efficiently as possible. In essence, written English is degenerating into something that looks more like chicken scratches than it does a written language. Technology has increased our ability to chatter, which is nothing other than meaningless sounds, hence, chicken scratches will suffice as the written medium. And, of course, the easily predicted irony: the machines designed to enhance our communication have only put it in route towards annihilation. Barbarism, it seems, is not only the genesis of civilization, but also its end.