Alaf Khan
Man: the best of creation gone awry
We created man in the best of forms, then We let him sink to the lowest of the low, except those who believed and acted righteously; for them is a reward unending (Al-Quran 95: 4-6).
Who am I, where do I come from, where do I go, and what (if any) is the purpose of my existence? A cow or a cat, a snake or a sparrow, a flea or a fox are probably not conscious of such riddles.
Man, endowed with the unique attribute of being conscious of his consciousness, has ceaselessly endeavored to trace his origin, his genealogy, the evolution of his civilization, his ultimate fate, and the purpose of his existence. Plato defined man as the speaking animal. Greek logic and philosophy captivated Muslim thought as Muslims conquered lands in North Africa, Southern Europe, and Central Asia. Plato and his Academia fascinated generations of Muslim scholars. Lofty institutions in Baghdad, Damascus, Egypt, Southern Spain, and North Africa incorporated Plato’s logic, Euclid’s geometry, and Galen’s medicine in their curricula. These subjects are still being taught in leading Muslim seminaries and universities, especially in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent and Egypt. Muslim thinkers fondly adopted the definition of Man as postulated by Plato. Others have coined different terms. No single definition can encompass the whole range of human attributes. One can postulate an array of definitions that stress various aspects of human personality. The following are some of them.
An animal that:
- Lights and uses fire; 2. Cooks its food; 3. Is conscious of his nudity; 4. Can, and does, tell lies; 5. Is conscious of his being conscious; 6. Uses sounds and symbols to express his thoughts; 7. Names all things — concrete as well as abstract.
The Quran, in a short Arabic sentence, states the one attribute that gives man primacy over the rest of God’s creation: And He taught Adam the names —- all of them — (Al-Quran 2: 31). This singles out man’s uniqueness by virtue of his ability to name all things, i.e. things that have ever been, all those that now are, and those that will ever be. Man’s ability to read and to use the pen also receives special emphasis as his unique faculties (Al-Quran 96: 1–5; 68: 01; 55: 1– 4 ). Naming, describing, and recording all things concrete as well as abstract are the basic ingredients of human language and knowledge. Speech, pen, script, and book are listed in the Quran as human prerogatives for acquiring, storing, and transmitting knowledge. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robots may soon accomplish wonders, but they themselves owe their evolution to human intelligence which, in turn, is a product of man being conscious of his consciousness, and his ability to name things — all of them.
Birds, cattle, and other animals — both wild as well as domesticated — do use sounds and bodily gesture to convey specific messages to one another. The range of such communication is limited and is of the instinctive rather than consciously-willed kind.
Language is a unique tool for organizing thoughts and transferring them from one mind to another through signals of different kinds. Such signals include: - The spoken word, 2. The written word, 3. Signs and symbols (e.g. lip-reading, finger signs for the deaf-mute), 4. Braille for the blind, 5. The Morse telegraphic code, and 6. The flag signals used by scouts and troops in the past.
All these seemingly different modalities are the means for sharing and circulating thought among countless minds. The great profusion of these symbols has resulted in the genesis of thousands of languages. Here we shall limit ourselves to a special brand of English language spoken and written by persons of Indo-Pakistani origin. Wits have dubbed it Pinglish and Hinglish. Some British centers now run formal courses in Hinglish for Indo-Pakistani immigrants.
Students in Pakistan and India copy the pronunciation and idioms of English that their teachers use. Not many of us were exposed in our days to the BBC, VOA, or Hollywood movies. Even those who had access to these media enjoyed the programs without paying attention to the pronunciation and idioms. Words like Flour/Floor, Ear,/Year, Photo/Photography, Provoke/ Provocative/ Provocation, Bow/Bow, Row/Row, Sow/Sow, etc are still often pronounced letter-by-letter as they appear on a surface. Not all of us notice the fine variations in the sounds of these words as uttered by native English speakers. Bomb/Bomber Bombing, Plumber/Plumbing, Numb/Numbing/Numbed, Thumb/Thumbing, and many other words are often deformed beyond acoustic recognition. So, let us have a go at our Hinglish/Pinglish as the Brits call it.
“A E I O U are vowels, all others are consonants”. This was the mantra we had to memorize at school. Almost all our teachers had gotten it wrong. Their students knew no better. We had to take it as our ‘Sir’ said it was.
True vowels are the guttural sounds generated by uttering the letters A E I O U straight from the throat with an open mouth and without the tongue touching the palate, teeth, or lips. When a doctor asks you to say ‘Aaa’ as he looks down your throat he is making you utter a vowel sound. Each of these letters is a vowel if it has the Aaa or E sound like that of the Arabic Hamza. A vowel has the Aaa or E sound if it occurs as the first letter of a word. A vowel merely modifies the sound of the whole word if it occurs inside a word or at the end of it. Examples of such sound-modifying vowels are Bat, Far, Bare, Bet, Bit, But, Both, Box, Boot, Book, Tap, Tip, Top,Tar, Home, Hot, Face, Shut, Ship, Shop, etc. The a, e, i, o, and u are not the initial letters of these words and, therefore, do not have the Aah sound. They simply modify the sound of the words of which they are a part. More examples are given below.
Some of these English letters lose their vowelness if not sounded like the guttural Aah resembling the Arabic Hamza. Consider the following examples:
In Utter, Uncle, Umbrella, Under, Unfair, Uproot, Upper, Unusual, Upright, and Ugly the initial letter U is a vowel because of its Hamza-like guttural Aah sound through the open mouth without the tongue touching the teeth, pallet, or lips. An initial E uttered similarly straight from the throat is a vowel as in English, Equal, Eagle, Ego, Egg, Easy, Eastern, Enemy, Essay, Exception, Extra, Effort, and Entrance. An internal or terminal E has usually no specific sound of its own but still remains a vowel as it modifies the sound of the word it is part of, or makes the world pronounceable. Examples of such E are in the words different, beyond, best, stare, mute, more, etc.
When softly delivered through puckered lips, the letter U becomes a consonant as in Uniform, University, Utility, Union, Usual, Ubiquitous, Utopia, Useful, Universe, and Unique. Note that in these cases the tip of the tongue touches the back of your lower teeth, In brief, the letter U is a consonant if pronounced like the word ‘you’.
The letter E is robbed of its vowel sound when it is followed by U or W as in Europe, Euphemism, Euphoria, Euthanasia, Eucalyptus, Eugenics, and Ewe (pronounced You and meaning a mature female sheep or goat).
The two vowels, E and U, become a single consonant when they occur together as the first and second letters of a word as in the above examples.
The letter H is a consonant in the words Home, Hair, House, Horror, Happy, Hostess, Heavy, Honey, Half, Hope, and many others. Its own sound, however, is swallowed by the succeeding O in the words Hour, Honest, and Honor. An H so deprived of its own sound is, phonetically, canceled and replaced by the succeeding O which is a vowel. It is the guttural sound in a voiced speech that confers vowelness on a letter. More examples will come later.
(To be continued)
