The Babel Story

I always enjoy languages, spoken as well as written. When I was studying S.5, I volunteered to decorate the bulletin board at the back of the classroom. When Christmas approached, I was thinking of putting up the message Joy to the world. There were some PIME priests in the parish. I asked them how to write Joy to the world in Italian. I also asked some Canadian nuns how to write it in French. In the end, I collected Joy to the world in many languages. The board was truly universal, catholic. When I was younger, my father subscribed Reader’s Digest for me to read. Once, I read of the story of an old lady in her nineties studying Greek and Hebrew so as to read the Bible in the original languages. I was fascinated by this little story which planted the seed to drive me on today to study these two sacred languages.
New languages open up new visions and horizons, at least for me. Music and Mathematics have provided me with many hours of enjoyment. Their languages are elegant. Teaching in La Salle, I had an opportunity to study a computer programming language, BASIC, which the Education Department earmarked for the introduction of Computer Studies in secondary schools. Not satisfied with the spaghetti-style of BASIC, I hungered for more and better ones only to discover that different languages served different purposes, ADA for embedded systems, APL for array manipulation, assembly languages to interact with hardware, C for system, COBOL for business, FORTH to maneuver telescopes, FORTRAN for scientific calculations, LISP for artificial intelligence, PROLOG for expert systems etc. Cracking software protection was once my hobby and language becomes a decoding game, hunting down the hidden logic. Diversity of languages is fun and practical.
Of course, people lament the decline of Chinese and English standards of Hong Kong students nowadays. Magistrates complain the poor English standard of some lawyers. Businessmen complain that even university graduates cannot write proper English communications. Teachers complain that advertisements corrupt students with sound-alike phrases and that students write spoken Cantonese and even ICQ shorthand’s in their compositions. Marking their writings involves deciphering the latest gags. Probably, these are all worries from purists. Languages go through evolution on their own. Some subcultures will survive. Some don’t.
The biblical story of Babel is again an etymology. While many people take the diversity of languages for granted, the author of this legend thought otherwise. He attempted to explain the diversity of languages in our daily life. He thought that in the beginning there should only be one language. How did different languages arise? Modern linguists will be able to explain in terms of psychological, sociological and political processes. But how else could the storyteller explain a process on such a large scale? He resorted to God.
And the LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them (Genesis 11:6).
Language is a unifying force. People speaking the same language are able to communicate and cooperate. When they do, they are able to achieve almost anything.
However, in trying to explain the reality of diverse languages spoken by different peoples, the author put God in a bad light. God seemed to be jealous of what men could achieve.
Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech (Genesis 11:7).
Failed to understand each other, the project to build the city of Babel was never accomplished. The storyteller had successfully explained the phenomenon at the expense of God.
The storyteller assumed a single language for one people from the start. I doubt very much such was the case. There are many reasons people speak differently. All languages have different dialects. For selfish purposes, people speak in secret languages/jargons which outsiders/laymen have difficulty to understand. New situations demand new labels. In short, languages have a life of their own. They evolve to adapt to the rising of new situations.
Of course, I am not trying to discredit the storyteller. I wonder why he favoured a single language. Probably, he wanted to control people’s thought. (Here I play a conspiracy theorist.) A unified language facilitates the government of a huge people. Alas! This is impossible. There are always dissidents a government cannot silence. These dissidents will invent a new vocabulary and a new language to fight back. Diversity of languages is a necessity.

Dear Lord, I thank You for implanting this love of languages in my temperament. I pray that I make good use of this love to love You and my students more. Amen.