What Opens up When you View the World through the Lenses of a Very Old Language

Ancient Balt. From the movie The Battle of Žalgiris

It is commonplace that different languages give you a slightly different view of the world. To illustrate how different languages affect our perception, let us pretend English has no distinction by articles. I mean, a and the do not make any difference anymore. There are countless languages without this distinction. How would the world look without them?

In that case, it would sound as if you are using only a all the time. I went to a park and saw a dog. A dog was nice and friendly. A dog came to me and wanted to play.

If the definite article would never exist in English, speakers of this language would be prone to view the world in terms of similarities rather than specific features of individual subjects. Take a moment and read about the dog once more. This time with awareness how it affects you. Soon you will see that such grammar invites you to think that all dogs are like that.

Now that we see that different languages open a slightly different view for us, let us go to the article’s main topic. What would change for you had you been born into a very ancient language? How would the world open up then? What is there to see that you currently don’t? Or, rather, how did our remote ancestors — I am speaking thousands of years back — view the world? Are such glasses possible?

Migration waves 4000 years ago

Actually yes. We can travel in time by viewing the world through the lens of an ancient language.

I am a native speaker of Lithuanian. It places me in both worlds. It is a modern nation but its language dates back to the first settlers reaching Europe from India. We are talking as much as 4000 years ago here. Lithuanian retained considerable portions of the language of these settlers — to the point that we can understand a number of founding words of people in India. For example: words meaning fire, wave, son, daughter, god night, and many others are recognizable to us.

Interchanging words they can understand in each other’s languages

The same is true of grammatical structures. Some of Lithuanian grammar sound funny to European peers. For example, we add -as to almost every noun in the nominative case. What is internet in English would be internetas in Lithuanian, and so on. But the remarkable thing is that the same is true of Sanskrit, the language from which the majority of European languages sprang up.

This makes the Lithuanian language particularly precious to those who want to explore the earliest history of humanity, the period with scarce writings and not that abundant in archeological artifacts. But if we want to get a feel for how these very remote ancestors viewed the world, what they valued most, the only means is through the lens of the oldest languages.

So what I as a Lithuanian can see that you arguably don’t? I hope you are intrigued.

Here you can listen to how Lithuanian sounds and get a taste of their traditional culture

The first thing that comes to mind is the dichotomy of masculine and feminine energies permeating our existence. I trust you are acquainted with the jin and jang juxtaposition in the Chinese worldview. For Lithuanians, we do not need much convincing that everything under the sun is subject to these two forces. We have masculine and feminine genders in the language and you would always need to attribute all you are saying to the one or the other.

When we hear from English-speaking people that there are more than two genders, that one can choose his or her gender, we cannot accept that by virtue of our language. It is as if insisting there are only black and white colours in the world.

The next thing that comes to mind is thinking in general rather than specific terms. The above example of the dog is good here. We have no articles in Lithuanian therefore it sounds as if we use indefinite ‘a’ all the time. Of course there are ways to emphasize that you have a specific subject in mind. All it takes is to say ‘this’ before what you refer to, and that would be a perfect substitute for the definite article. However, Lithuanian demands a slight extra effort to distinguish between all subjects in the category versus the specific one.

The next specific feature is that Lithuanian would get you more focused on the process rather than the result. English and other Germanic languages are very dynamic in this regard: John went down, jumped up, reached for, etc. Little attention is given to the process of the action. The focus is clearly on the outcome.

Lithuanian would be like a movie in slow motion. Of course it is perfectly valid to speak in the same way, i.e. without regard to the process, but that would make poor Lithuanian. Normally one would use a synonym to specify how John performed these actions: was it in a slow or hurriedly manner, what were the nuances of the action, some words would hint at how he felt at the time. There are 254 synonyms for ‘go’ in Lithuanian. A quick look to this list reveals majority of the synonyms tend to describe the slower end of the movement, such as ‘limp’, ‘drag feet’, etc. These words describing slower movement than normal walking make up roughly 85 percent of the list.

Lithuanian mythology is another area to explore to uncover secrets of a very distant past

The early newcomers to Europe must have been quite sentimental folks. The Lithuanian language, and national character for that matter, reveals a propensity towards sadness. I checked synonyms for ‘sad’ in English. They all have a negative connotation — sorrowful, regretful, miserable, etc. No wonder the English try to put up a cheerful countenance.

Not quite so in Lithuanian. Both language and tradition support that being slightly sad is a normal, even somewhat noble. In my opinion, the very best word to describe the national sentiment is melancholic. Such a person would appear wise and present in the moment. Most of the Lithuanian culture, both traditional and contemporary, is predisposed toward the sadder end. We view it as natural and someone romantic. And there is an large number of words for ‘sad’ and ‘to cry’.

The next thing we learn about our remove ancestors is that they believed people had fate and mission in life. Traditional Lithuanian names point to purposes. For example, one very popular name, Vytautas, translates “knight for the nation”, and so on. This feature will be perfectly recognizable to Slavic readers because their traditional names, such as Volodymir, Myroslav, also convey purpose to seek in life. There is a notable difference though. Slavic names point to the mission towards the world (Volodymyr is ‘to rule the world’, Myroslav is ‘world-famous’); the Lithuanian names confine to missions for their nation.

Next feature. The Lithuanian language reveals that our remote ancestors viewed the world in terms of cycles and transition. This understanding allows us to discover where such a strange phenomenon as oxymoron comes from. Oxymoron — a word that can mean both one and its opposite. I do not know of a single such word in English but there are set oxymoronic phrases: deafening silence, organized chaos, etc. We can find oxymoronic meanings across Germanic languages. E.g. gift in English means ‘present’, and in German it means ‘poison’. The Lithuanian language is specific in that it has oxymorons as one words. The word pražiūrėti, weirdly, can mean ‚‘to discern‘ as well as ‘to fail to notice‘.

This, arguably, must mean our remote ancestors held a very balanced view of life. There is even a conventional Lithuanian wisdom to support this: do not rejoice when you acquire and do not despond over a loss. What seems good now may turn out to be bad later and vice versa.

Now that you came this far into the article, here is one last thing we can find out about our ancestors with the help of an ancient language. Lithuanians have bizarre ways of forming familial names. It is similar to how the English would call their sons — Johnson, Peterson, etc. In this case, a bride receives surname which means „part to Peter“. It would sound something like ‘Johnson’s-wife”. From traditional surnames we recognize if a woman is married and who her husband is. When we take into account how important were names in the past, it reveals that our ancestors believed a woman’s true purpose was to join a man and devote herself wholeheartedly to his wider family.

Celebrating the past in Kernavė, the old capital

Let us recap what opens up before us when we view the world through the lens of an ancient language. Everything is divided between jin‘ and jang; we start to view the world in slo-mo, every process, every movement becomes filled with nuances; we tend to view the environment in terms of generalities, first notice what is common for subjects in the same category; we are immersed in eternal cycles where things emerge and later disappear into oblivion. Names are carefully thought through and help their owners perform a noble mission to benefit the nation. There is no idea of evolution at that time. And it seems certain our ancestors would be truly aghast by how we see gender roles and how detached are we from the things here and now.

Diana Guogienė is managing director of Magistrai, Language Service based in Vilnius, LT. If you want to have your texts groomed for impact, please check out his company website at https://magistrai.lt/en/frontpageen/.