Of the many languages...

Reading begets writing.  Three books in a week and I couldn't resist coming back to my blog, and in the process, realizing it is close to a year since my last post.

Mightier than the Sword -- Quick read, the fifth of the Clifton chronicles, with a plotline that has now become more than familiar. 

The Goldfinch -- An award winning novel that kept me completely absorbed.  It is a pretty long read, with exceptional detailing and wonderful language to go with it.

Flood of fire -- The third of Amitav Ghosh's trilogy on the Opium wars.  Fiction woven around historical events lends a kind of authenticity and a biographical feel to the story.  The earlier two parts and the characters come together in a nicely done conclusion that, I felt, seemed to have an abrupt ending pegging history slightly over the fiction.

I have always liked Amitav Ghosh's writing.  Especially the vocabulary in the Ibis trilogy feels fresh and antique at the same time.  His generous use of the vernacular along with English, as prevalent at the time of British colonialism, and the intermixing of the both resulting in the evolution of new words is something that I could easily relate to being an Indian.  And unknowingly, I started looking at the story through a linguistic lens.  And when the story ends with the British entering the shores of China for the first time, I could only see it as the beginning of English language in China.

At some level, colonialism is the reason I have an English blog today.  And when I was reading recently about why the best of innovations came about in the last century or so, I began to wonder if it was related to language as well.  As humans, do we have better means of communications now, than, say, a few hundred years ago?

Travel was limited to neighboring countries and only a few travelers learnt multiple languages and wrote about other cultures and translated works.  Then came the Vasco-da-Gamas and Columbuses who connected the world and slowly a common means of communication emerged.  And with a common medium, one could learn about the advancements of others and collaboration ensued, and the rest, as they say, is not history, but the present.  From pentaquarks to Pluto, the humankind is now sharing knowledge and contributing to the successes of one another.

So did language enable a part of the technological advancements of today, or did technology necessitate a common medium of communication.

Or at a more philosophical level, as one species, do we have common language in our evolutionary genes?  Are we getting there slowly?