A LINGUA FRANCA STEEPED IN AN ORGY OF QUIRKS

A TWO-year review of my columns reveals an understated agenda

– that I would promote literacy, mostly through the agency of reading.

In my first op-ed article (Cape Argus, January 16, 2017), I posited my theory that “…the most basic definition of literacy is the ability to manage sensory input in a way that enables one to navigate one’s environment safely and meaningfully”. One could interpret that as “Knowledge is power”.

Indeed, two years and several columns later, I quote Melvyn Bragg’s claim for the popularity and survival of this (often unpopular) colonial language: “English’s most subtle and ruthless characteristic of all: its capacity to absorb others.”

The language is unashamedly a collection of borrowings, stealing, bastardisation, contortion, distortion, manipulation, understatement, double-talk and every other ungodly strategy to keep it afloat. Even when black writers started “writing back”, the rapacious seamless Leavisite web was there to absorb these classics as “English’ writing”. From Achebe right through to Zadie Smith (White Teeth).

I shall revisit this again in a future column, when I add the latest trick: the Oulipian constraints and techniques. I will allude to a 50 000-word novel written without using the letter “e”. And the self-generating poetry whose mathematical formula is N+7!

For now, may I remind you about the moth whose entire diet is the tears of elephants. The quirky book titles alone should lure our readers, young and old, to forgive this language its vagaries and enjoy the fun that can be had. My latest is The wasp that brainwashed the

caterpillar, by Matt Simon. It covers the tricks that animals use to ensure the survival of the species. And what about The man who mistook his wife for a hat, delightful tales by neurologist Oliver Sacks, and The monk who sold his Ferrari (Robin Sharma). And what about What looks like crazy on an ordinary day, by

Pearl Cleage.

What was the scarlet letter in Nathanial Hawthorne’s classic? And which great novel is supposed to open with the injunction: “You may call me Ishmael”? Readers might find some minor shocks when they google this little snippet.

And then I looked at nursery rhymes, aphorisms, mondegreens, an orgy of peculiarities that make English such a fascinating study. And the poetry! Who will deny the mastery of the dizzying thermal heights navigated by Hopkins’s windhover, as he “…rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing…”, with such “…dapple-dawn-drawn…” beauty.

In closing, I justify my preference for English purely as a subject.

I do not absorb the cultural baggage or sad narrative of duplicity that made it a lingua franca. That would be like saying all classical music should be written for the oboe and in the key of E-flat.

I dabble merely for the unadulterated enjoyment it generates.