Breaking Babel: The Story of a Strange Accent
January 10th, 2010
Veronique Van Pelt
(Veronique Van Pelt is a musician with Synethesia and this is part 3 or her continuing series describing the way Synesthesia changes and influences her art and perceptions. Editor’s Note)
You do not have to be synesthetic to enjoy the way people speak, especially in other languages. As I mentioned in a previous article, this is one of the reasons I love Los Angeles. Pick a street corner and listen: the cadences and melodies of a dozen languages play like an international symphony of conversation.
Listening in this way, language becomes music. I read recently that the answer to the great question of Babel – were languages once one – might lie in music; music may have been the basic mode of communication before language. Just as you hear universal motifs in music, the same is true for language: the rhythms of anger and sorrow, the melodies of excitement and joy are clear regardless of vocabulary, nationality, or dialect.
In this way, it follows that, for a synesthetic, some languages are preferable to others, just like music – better looking, better tasting, even better smelling. For instance, I love hearing women speak French, sweet and floaty with savory patches, all in mellow pastels grounded in subtle earth tones. But, just like the pastries France is famous for, after a while it feels too flaky and fattening. Conversely (and perhaps because I am over exposed), American English tastes and looks bland most of the time – flat Budweiser in Walmart colors. There are better and worse elements of all languages (some words in English I could say all day – home, period, clarity, kiss, orchestra, quiet and noise, roses but not rose), but these things are really a matter of preference.
I began thinking of this subject months ago, when I noticed that my accent was getting funkier. The way I speak has always been fairly strange. I was raised in Colorado, where the native accent is a fast dying variation of midwestern Americana, by an Italian-American mother who taught me French, Spanish and a pittance of German, and spent half of my childhood in an Arabic speaking home. People often ask me which country I am from, not believing I am American.
(I should probably clarify what I mean by “accent.” I recently got into a heated debate with a drunken Hossier whom I mistook for a Texan (bad call) on this subject. He insisted that an accent is a deviation from a standard way of speaking in any given dialect. But then, of course, he claimed that his way of speaking, straight from the heart of the American breadbasket, was that standard American English. I disagreed, claiming that Los Angeles and New York have been the standard since the dawn of radio and television broadcasting. He might have a point, but for the sake of clarity, I describe an accent as simply a way of speaking.)
Then I realized: as I become more immersed in the peculiarities of my senses (largely through the encouragement of this publication), I am choosing pronunciation based on aesthetics, not normality. I could speak newscaster-flat English, but it would be like eating overcooked oatmeal with no sugar all day, every day. Ugh.
Instead, I let my synesthestic preferences guide me. I choose syllables based on the best melody and cadence, not any one standard of speech. I speak music, thus filling my life with my favorite sounds, colors and tastes.
Who knows? Maybe if we all start speaking music, we just might break Babel all over again.
