DO WE EVER SPEAK ?

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 April 1935, Page 12

DO WE EVER SPEAK ?

QUEER SOUNDS OF HUMANS. ‘•Why We Behave Like Human Beings” is the title of a popular book on psychology. But how often do we behave like humans? Seldom in the sounds we make in communicating with our fellows or in expressing our emotions. We seldom merely speak—at least if we believe novelists and other writers. There are curious rules governing the sounds we make. For instance, it is hard to see why, though we have always been allowed to blare like a trumpet, we have never been allowed to roll like a drum. This is\a mechanical age; yet, though we may rasp like a file, puff like a steam locomotive, or wheeze like an antiquated pair of bellows, we may not chug-chug like a motor launch (writes Isabel Livingstone in the “Melbourne Argus”). According to novelists you may relieve your feelings occasionally by exploding like a charge of dynamite, and even the dictionary will allow you to chortle, if you can manage it. It is not ceratin whether anybody has managed it. The sound is described as being a mysterious. something between a chuckle and a snort. If we are frivolously inclined we may cackle and cluck with the hens, cheep with their chickens, and crow with their lords, as well as chirp chirrup, carol, chatter, coo, flutter, trill, twitter, squawk, and warble with the rest of the birds. Descending to the world of Pomeranians and Alsatians, it is amazing to find the amount of barking, growling, howling, snapping, snarling, baying, yapping, and even yelping that goes on among us: at any rate, according to the novelists. These are all serious modes of speech. If we desire to be facetious, we may go right round the farmyard, bray or hee-haw with the donkeys, snort like a restive horse, ruminate with the cows, bleat with the sheep, blether with the goats, grunt with the breakfast bacon, hum and buzz with the bees, or bellow like an angry bull. One curious fact is that most of us would rather be accused of hissing like a snake than of speaking like a harmless mouse.

Would you be more dignified? Then you may be musical and chant or in-

tone, croon or pipe, trumpet or peal your news. You may yell or yodel it if no one objects. You are not allowed to saxophone it; the dictionary is firm on this point, and doubtless the neighbours .would be, too. If it be any consolation you may be literary, and prose or parody, prophesy or paraphrase it. Or you may take a leaf from the book of Nature and flash or flare or flame, or thunder or rumble, or ripple or storm with the elements, meander or gurgle like a stream, or gush like a fountain. You may lash like a whip, fence like a duellist, or rattle like a machine. You may even borrow a needle and embroider a tale, or the surgeon’s lancet and probe.

It is a humbling thought that human nature coqld not have been very gracious when our language was in the making.. Apart from the verb to thank, there are no words to express gratitude. We may acknowledge or aclaim w’hat pleases us, but these words are hardly the same. On the other hand, no one need despair w r ho has a favour to ask. When you have asked and requested and demanded and prayed for what you want/when you have besought and cajoled and coaxed and even clamoured for your rights without avail, if you have found it useless to implore and entreat and expostulate, to importune and persuade and agonise and complain, then there are sterner measures still open to you. If you are too timid to bluster or bully or threaten, you may tease or insist or protest, or grumble or fuss or fume. If this does not win the day, then you may sigh and sulk and chide, and sob and urge and weep till you have won. If your opponent is not ready to give in by this time, then it is highly probable that you are.

HOW TO EXPRESS SYMPATHY. If our language knows little of gratitude, it can express sympathy. It allows u,s to comfort and to cheer, to counsel and console and commiserate, to encourage aud soothe and reassure. What a jolly letter J is! He jests and jokes, jeers and jubilates, and jabbers, and that is about all he does do, except that without his help we could not rejoice. On the other hand, S. has a very mixed reputation. Besides being responsible tor soothing and sympathising he helps us to smile,, and to sing and to speak up bravely, but he has a great deal of simpering and sniggering and sneering to his credit, to say" nothing of scoffing and scolding and sniffing in derision. Then, think how we use him to stammer and stutter and splutter, and to squeal and to shriek and to scream, even to screech and to squall, not to talk of swearing. How sternly it

makes one stipulate this or that! All this time we have forgotten two of the animals. If you are of the “male persuasion,’’ no doubt you have emulated the lion and roared at some time or another. If you are a lady you must content yourself with purring like the domesticated Tabby. It is remarkable that nobody has yet had the courage to accuse anybody else of miaouing like the Tabby, except Shakespeare when he accuses infants of muling or mewing. These are only a few of the nearly 400 ways in which we may state or suggest or utter or iterate or reiterate or disclaim or explain or elucidate or insinuate our own or our neighbour’s views. It might fill up a wet afternoon some time or other to try to find the rest of the 400; but, if that does not appeal, it is open to anyone who likes, simply to speak his news or tell it.