The Confusion of Tongues...

I bet some of you wonder why I chose this tile for my blog, what philosophical beliefs lie beyond this metaphorical phrase. Well, in order to (hopefully) understand my reason, i will explain, more or less in detail, why i chose this title:

As a man of letters, my life evolves around the study of languages. Of course, this involves many areas of study, from the well known grammar to the lesser known phraseology, linguistics and so on. No worries, i won't start holding a lecture about grammar here.

The subject i want to get to is the history of languages. I must admit I found a particular liking for this subject, and one of the lessons that I enjoyed was about the creation of languages. Of course, this is not the scientific explanation, but still, in my mind, i prefer it because it has a certain fascination to it (well...for me at least) and always makes me, at least for a second, reflect about the moment when the tower collapsed and we were destined to roam the earth and never again be as one people with one language, but to form cultures and nations. I am talking about the collapse of the Tower of Babel.



"Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.

Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building.

The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.

So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world.

From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth."

Book of Genesis, 1-9

The Confusion of Tongues (pictured above), is in fact a 18-th century engraving made by the French artist Gustave Dore.

I like the title because it's a perfect metaphor for what we as the human race really are ... as we are scattered over the face of the earth, to the four winds and from one end to another, we are still one giant community, one nation. We all left by God the same, with two arms, two legs, one heart, one soul, yet still we are confused by our tongues, who don't speak the same...