On Not Knowing English

George Mikes

In England I found two difficulties. First: I did not understand people and secondly: they did not understand me. It was easier with written texts. Whenever I read a leading article in The Times, I understood everything perfectly well except that I could never make out whether The Times was for or against something. In those days I put it down to my lack of knowledge of English.

The first step in my progress was when people started understanding me while I still could not understand them. This was the most talkative period of my life. Trying to hide my shortcomings, I kept on talking, keeping the conversation as unilateral as possible.

The next stage was that I began to understand foreigners but not the English or the Americans. The more atrocious a foreign accent one had, the cleverer it sounded to me.

Once sitting in a news cinema, I was particularly irritated by not understanding a single word of the commentator. Not that I did not know the words: I was sure that I knew quite a number of them, but I could not spot any familiar words at all. I sighed to myself: "Good Heavens! Will there be, can there be, a time when I shall understand all this?"

Good old days! Today I sit in the news cinema, listening to an American commentator, thinking of the past days with longing and sighing to myself: "Good Heavens! Was there, could there be, a time when I did not understand all this?"

Yet, I shall never regret that I learned English as a grownup. Of course, there are gaps in my knowledge but I have one consolation. I am much more aware of the beauties of the English language than quite a few Englishmen.

I should like to mention only one characteristic of the English language which exasperated me at first but which I now find delightful. In English, the order of words follows very strict rules from which you cannot depart. If you do, your sentence loses not only its beauty and grace but also its sense. The result is that, in acceptable English, you can be stupid but you cannot be obscure.

In German - to mention one Continental language - you can write ponderous sentences, each two yards long, with a string of verbs at the end. It may sound impressive, profound and pregnant with ideas. Translate it into English and it is unmasked. If it has something to say, it will say it; if it has nothing to say it will resemble that pompous and conceited King of the fable who rode through the capital, thinking that he was wearing magnificent regal robes while he was, in fact, stark naked.

The English, it is said, are not prone to become dogmatic. How could they? Most dogmas and theories when translated into English lose their mythical haze and enigmatic charm and sound plain silly.

Text # 6

On Silence

Aldous Huxley

The twentieth century is, among other things, the Age of Noise. Physical noise, mental noise, and noise of desire - we hold history's record for all of them. And no wonder; for all the resources of our almost miraculous technology have been thrown into the current assault against silence.

That most popular and influential of all recent inventions, the radio is nothing but a conduit through which pre-fabricated din can flow into our homes. And this din goes far deeper, of course, than the eardrums. It penetrates the mind, filling it with a babble of distractions, blasts of corybantic or sentimental music, continually repeated doses of drama that bring no catharsis, but usually create a craving for daily or even hourly emotional enemas. And where, as in most countries, the broadcasting stations support themselves by selling time to advertisers, the noise is carried from the ear, through the realms of fantasy, knowledge and feeling to the ego's core of wish and desire. Spoken or printed, broadcast over the ether or on wood-pulp, all advertising copy has but one purpose - to prevent the will from ever achieving silence.

Desirelessness is the condition of deliverance and illumination. The condition of an expanding and technologically progressive system of mass production is universal craving. Advertising is the organized effort to extend and intensify the workings of that force, which (as all the saints and teachers of all the higher religions have always taught) is the principal cause of suffering and wrong-doing and the greatest obstacle between the human soul and its Divine Ground. (1946)

Text # 7