Who needs langauge, anyway?

Have you noticed how some people talk, not just with their words but also with their expressions and gestures, or sometimes even lack of these!

I remember watching a colleague in the office cafe the other day - even at a distance, I could "feel" his communication though I did not hear what he was saying; but I could see that he was having a very strong effect on his audience. They were so enthralled by his talking that they let him continue without interruption for almost 20 minutes. And this was a lunch table – a place normally reserved for being noisy and brash. People were actually paying attention – though how much of it was attention to what he was saying, is suspect. Had I been sitting there, I would have listened with rapt attention to his expressions!He was using his eyebrows, the narrowing and widening of his eyes, his gestures with specs on and off, head bent forward and then back, hair thrown back, shoulders hunched, shoulders squared, legs crossed, legs spread out in the front, toe taping, hand drumming on the knee...the plethora of emotions...to express! That was some sight, and wholesome entertainment.

I knew a friend like that – she would start talking with her expressions first, and then said "hello, wassup!"...her eyes, eyebrows and head bobbing said it all before her tongue even got into the mood of working! And then today this new guy who joined the team continued talking to everyone sitting around a square table with his head strictly held straight ahead, only eyes turning left and right...looking at everyone from the corner of his eyes. I would not analyze him too much on that, but after a while of watching him my eyes started hurting too.

It’s more fun to watch people from different countries communicate with each other without words. For e.g. I saw that drivers in Portugal used a strange sign of waving their hands in front of their face in case another driver cuts them off. I thought it meant something really bad. At some point when I could not contain my curiosity, I asked a driver what he meant. He said it meant “can’t you see”…there…it was that simple and I thought it was a horrible extension of the four letter word; would there possibly be an extension to that word, I even wondered that! Americans on the other hand, especially at sale counters, have this perpetual expression of “come on moron, why are you wasting my time, hurry up!” even if you have been standing in front of them for 2.5 seconds. They generally have a “you are stupid” communication pasted on their face and I have always felt flustered while paying at a counter in the US. Never mind that it takes them a lot time to understand full wholesome words being said to them in the form of well-constructed sentences. Maybe that’s the kind of communication they don’t understand. Maybe a bubble gum chewing face with a few bobs of the head and bouncing of the whole body in general speaks a lot more than words.

The other funny thing about no-language communication is that many times the intonation of the entire sentence makes us understand what is being said without understanding a word of the language. Someone I knew had a strange experience on an airport. He looks Spanish, and he did not really know that. He was sitting at the airport across another Spanish looking guy with an American looking woman. After a while the other Spanish looking guy started talking to my friend, asking about some place. And my friend answered him in English and the other guy understood. The conversation went on for a while after which the woman could no longer contain herself and asked my friend if he knew how to speak Spanish. My friend said “No!”…she then said how come he was answering the other guy’s questions because the other guy was speaking in Spanish! My friend had not even noticed, he just thought the other guy had a thick Spanish accent!! And the lady said that both the guys were making perfect sense! Fantastic, isn’t it? Who needs language? 