The words we do not have
E koekoe te tūī, e ketekete te kākā, e kūkū te kererū
- The tūī chatters, the kākā cackles and the kererū coos.
It’s when I hear the birds that I know where I am. Back and forth between two lands, it’s the birds that ground me. The sparkling clucks of a tūī on a windy Wellington morning, the trill of a blackbird on a British summer’s eve.
The Māori whakataukī — or proverb — above is a favourite of mine. An onomatopoeic tonic for feelings of homesickness when I am far away, the sounds of Aotearoa New Zealand’s precious native birds dance out when it is spoken aloud. And behind this seemingly simple celebration of birdsong, sits a deeper message too. In Māori conversation and oratory, whakataukī are used to focus minds on shared values and aspirations. This one speaks to the value of diversity: “By appreciating all our voices, our different songs, we make good music for the future”*
So much meaning, in so few words.
Anthropologist Wade Davis describes each and every language as an ‘an old-growth forest of the mind’. An evocative turn of phrase that conjures depth, density, complexity — something eons in the making.
How magical it is that these ‘forests’ should take root and flourish within us. Become our primary means of making sense of the world. It is easy to take them for granted, our own familiar forests. We walk well-trodden paths and sit beneath favourite trees — at ease in our words, in ourselves and in how we see. But from time to time, those of us who are curious will find our way to tucked away dells. Places where the shape of our perception shifts.
I found such a path recently, getting lost in Robert Macfarlane’s stunning book ‘Landmarks’. Seeking to excavate the disappearance of ‘nature’ words from the islands of Britain and Ireland, he begins a compilation of a spectacular lexis gradually dissolving. The words no longer required as our human lives become more separate from our natural environments. He talks of the link between words and wonder. How the words we have — the words we use — shape our fields of vision, imagination and action:
‘Language is fundamental to the possibility of re-wonderment, for language does not just register experience, it produces it.’
New words awaken us to thoughts, sensations and perceptions we may not know were available to us. Knowing a smeuse is a hole in a hedge made by the repeated passage of animals, I see them in every lane and hedgerow. I enjoy the pirr of a soft breeze on the water, remark on how clarty a path has become. It is enlivening, encouraging and brightening somehow.
Perhaps this is also why so-called ‘untranslatable’ words command such fascination. Knowing the Inuit word for feeling so eager about someone’s arrival you can’t help but peek outside —I notice that feeling in myself. Strolling through Edinburgh’s Meadows on a summer’s afternoon, I am more alive to komorebi— a Japanese word describing the beautiful interplay of sunlight and leaves.
Cherry-picking from unfamiliar tongues or harking back to times gone by can indeed help us find the edges of the word-forests we inhabit. But what happens when we choose to purposefully spend time amongst trees and foliage entirely unfamiliar?
My long entanglement with Aotearoa New Zealand has given me such an experience — through a fledgling acquaintance with the compelling, deeply place-based worldview and language of the Māori people. Theirs is a culture of profound connection — to each other, to ancestors, to future descendants and to the more-than-human world. They are the tangata whenua — quite literally, ‘the people of the land’. As well as being an official language of New Zealand in its own right, the Māori language makes a significant contribution to New Zealand English. Words like kia ora, kai and whānau pepper everyday conversation. My ‘old growth forest’ has long enjoyed these ‘new’ shoots, seeing the different shapes they create in amongst the older trees.
What’s more, as I’ve learned more of the language and spent time with those to whom these words belong, I’ve sensed my understanding of the world morphing and evolving in a much deeper way. I begin to see how others see and — consequently— become more keenly aware of the limits of my own particular vantage point:
‘We see in words: in webs of words, wefts of words, woods of words’
— Robert Macfarlane
Kaitiakitanga is a word that epitomises this sense of shift for me. Often translated as ‘stewardship’ or ‘guardianship’, this beautiful word speaks to care, nurturing, protection — at the heart of the Māori sense of how humans are in relationship with the natural world. It holds a sense of warmth, love and respect. And of longevity and multi-generationalism. As kaitiaki we take responsibility in our hands for a while, before passing it on to another. It’s a sense of being alongside, in amongst — not ahead, above or below — but interwoven over time, with an intention of care. This word, this sense of long-time inter-relatedness now infuses my own sense of being and doing in the world.
Language is, of course, but one part of how we prodigious humans understand each other. But a key part nonetheless— perhaps even, according to Stephen Fry, that which makes us human. The sensual and sensuous pleasure of it, the ooze and tickle of it, the constant evolution of it. Such breadth and beauty in all human language— in each of the many old-growth forests of the mind — and yet still, we are constrained.
Simply put, I am in awe of the words I do not have. They teach me so much. Even the slightest new acquaintance shows me how much more there is in the world. How much more to see, feel, expect, enjoy and ponder.
Not one of us will ever have all the words. But maybe acknowledging that is the first step. Staying humble, staying curious and staying conscious about all we do not know.
Like the tūī, the kākā and the kererū — and all the other birds — as peoples and cultures and individuals we each have a unique and special song. In these strange and volatile times, my hope is that we will get better at recognising this. At listening to and hearing each other over those who shout the loudest.
E koekoe te tūī, e ketekete te kākā, e kūkū te kererū
- The tūī chatters, the kākā cackles and the kererū coos.
Now, more than ever, we must take our learnings from the forest and appreciate all the voices, all the songs — and make good music for the future.
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* Translation used in Kia Kaha te Reo Taiao — a booklet produced by the Department of Conservation & Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori /The Māori Language Commission, encouraging New Zealanders to engage with the Māori language of the outdoors
