Complex Numbers

Sounds of Silence

I'm introverted and I'm trying to eat more healthy food, so I have groceries delivered. That way, I don't have to deal with people at the grocery store or get tempted by Oreos. One of the regular delivery drivers is deaf.

I've never learned ASL (I don't think the New Jersey State Bird counts as ASL), but I looked up how to sign "thank you," on the theory that one should always be courteous to someone who is handling one's food.

He's not the first Deaf person I've encountered, of course, but the situation did get me thinking about how life would be different without hearing. I'd imagine that, as with blindness, it would be different if one is born without the sense than if one lost it later in life.

A fair bit of the English language is built around onomatopoeia - such a fun word to say and spell. There are words describing animal noises, such as bark, meow, or moo; every child, I think, loves to learn these words and associate them with their respective sounds. You also get words describing the sounds of nature, such as the whisper of wind, gurgling of a stream, roar of the ocean, crunch of leaves or snap of twigs underfoot. Even more artificial sounds have associated onomatopoetic words - the ringing of an alarm, the beeping of a clock, the squeak of a shoe, the gong of a gong, and so on.

But what of those who lack the referent for these sound-words? I don't think it's the same thing as trying to describe color to a person blind since birth; it seems to me that, perhaps, the formation of these sounds themselves, in speech, might help with understanding their source. When I say, for example, "quack," I'm reminded of the sound a duck makes - but what do those who have never heard a duck make of the word "quack?"

It's not like I'm going to ask the delivery driver these things. That would be rude; besides, it's far more likely I'll encounter Deaf people to correspond with online.

I've sometimes wondered if onomatopoeia might have been the ultimate origin of language. I don't think we can know this for sure, but it would make sense that humans started out by mimicking the sounds around them. Like, maybe, the hiss of a snake might have become a name-word for the reptile, for example.

Most of our words are pretty arbitrary in their representation, but onomatopoeia connects language to what it represents - symbol to referent. This has been used to great effect in comics. Comics, and comic books, are primarily a visual medium, but when you see a "Bang!" or "Pow!" or "Snikt!" your mind translates that to sound. And I think that's pretty cool. I still wonder how Deaf people process that, though.