the Book, heralds an unprecedented revolution i the upon which all 5p, this w demons many pieces of a ism niversal languag’ inidamental of th 5 and their component nal information packets — and are ur dreams, itis in this uuiversal language that >| Kf Ey Fy EI mress ourselves, We thus alternate betw express ourselves, We national language of the day and the wniversal lang country an ciby iis rules. This allows for a remarkably mankind’ hislory, past and present BEL, first of a series of te tmiversal language. Future vol Piece ha FQEV Publishing House P.O. Box 6091 J — Jerusalem 91060 —— Abraham A. AbehseraBabelAbraham A. Abehsera By the same author ‘Treatise on Osteopathic Medicine, four volumes. First volume | published by OMC Publishers, Belgium and Maloine, Paris, B ] l FQEV Publishing House [Link]. 6091 Jerusalem 91060Troish to extend my thanks to those that made this work possible: ‘My parents, brothers and sister. My teachers, iv particular R Samuel Toledano, My friends: All who, curing the enrly stages of development, listened, encouraged and contributed their thoughis. ‘Those that made this research possible through their financial helps, MM." David. Boudara, Jean-Michel Elbaze, Meroyn Waldman and Ms. Helene Abelsera Ohayon. Fabien Hababou and Joseph Abehsera helped with the technical preparation of ths edition Parts of the English translation from the orginal French were edited by Mr. Abraham Sulton, ‘Mis. Avonie Barton, Rebega Barchichat anal Mr. Serge Benichai aid the typesetting. ‘Mr. loram Shakar did the drawings. They endeavor to illustrate ‘some of the mast fundamental images of our unconscious ‘Mr. Mike Horton designed the front cover. Finally, 1 would like to thank my wife, the finest and most Aedicate audience this research could hope for. To the One Who Created us. Foreword Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 TABLE OF CONTENTS OF Words and Things One Sound, Two Meanings ‘The Square Unit Naughty Vowels ‘The Mother and her Knight Buming Brains (Of Words and Molecules ‘The Baker and the Beggar ‘The Twenty-Two Letters of the Universe ‘The BOR Combination Right Brain, Left Brain. and the Universal Language “About Letters and Numbers ‘The Geology and Zoology of Language Vowels, After All. Babel Revisited Calf and Veal, the Golden Calf Affair Sheep and Ship Children Stories ‘The World of Dreams About a Sacred Text ‘The Context of the Universal Language “4 19 25 29 45 65 7 85 95 19 133 139 151 161 169 185 199 a 225 237Foreword Prins & Typing Envi 972 30808 | © Copyright EQEV Publishing House 1991 ISBN 965-222-228-3atter, Life and Language are three instances where infinite wealth has been achieved with very little. The variety of matter is the product of the combinations of about twenty-six atoms. The innumerable life forms of our planet stemmed from the permutations of only twenty amino acids. Third and last, the millions of words that make up human language are nothing but the combinations of about twenty consonants modified by some five vowels, In the past fifty years, man has made considerable progress in discovering and deciphering the physical and genetic forces that ‘organize inert and organic matter. No comparable advances have been made in the field of language. Why did English-speaking people use the letters land » to express their LoVe? What compelled them to designate the opposite feeling by inverting the same two rootletters to form Vile? Finally, why were totally different letters ‘used to express these feelings in the six thousand other languages the earth has known? Our thoughts and our words are thus made of chains of letters the logic of which escapes us totally Man, the author of speech, is himself made of chains of molecules and proteins the laws of which are well known to us. We may well suppose a strict continuity between these biological rules and those that organize his highest faculty, language. In other words, we may assume that the laws that rule his flesh also rule his speech. Such a biology of word formation, valid for all of man’s languages, is the subject of the present work. We propose, and will demonstrate, the ‘existence of a set of universal chromasomes which has directed the formation of speech wherever it appeared and which suggests the ‘existence of an unconscious sniversal language. This language is situated at the crossroads of not only all of this earth’s tongues butalso of all forms of expression, such as art, science or children stories. ‘One of its fundamental rules is that words strictly adhere to the objects, situations or beings they designate. Far from being merely convenient tools of communication, words are thick, muli- dimensional, densely inter-related structures which contain limitless information. During at least one-third of our life, we revert to using words in such a universal language. In our dreams we may be called on by a stone or dialogue with a flower, a bird or a waterspring, Dreams are pieces of a whole language in which words are still connected to the objects they designate, Night is thus the time when man recovers is full faculty of speech. Biologists and physicists built their sciences by searching for underlying similarities behind the variety of forms in the physical ‘world. We have searched for the underlying principles that unite all of man’s languages. Accordingly, we have postulated the existence of two universal dictionaries, one in which all words are grouped according to their meaning (synonyms) and the other according to their sound (homonyms). The latter produced a most astonishing result. It showed that whenever the same or a similar sound was given to different objects in two or more languages, a precise relationship between these objects was always indicated. One may say then that the sum total of languages forms a puzzle in which the jmage ~ and thus the meaning — may only be recovered through re- assembling words having the same sound, The fact that in English, for instance, moming and mourning have the same sound could have been just a coincidence. When German and English both reproduce this coincidence by using the same sound to say morgen (German, moming) and morgue (chamber where the dead ‘are laid), Hebrew the same group of consonants (BQR) to say ‘moming and fomb, and Chinese the same syllable mu, to say evening and tomb, we may legitimately ask what lies behind this repetition. What have moming and evening time to do with mourning, tomb and morgue ‘This fourlanguage unit points to a deep common experience between the period of sleep that precedes every moming and death- related themes. Hundreds of other sound-relationships take up and develop it, such as dren and drama, fraion (German for dream) and frasoma; bed and bad; mita in Hebrew which means both death and bed etc... Fear of night and helplessness of the sleeper are some of the ‘common themes that compelled these words of very different origin ‘and meaning to resemble each other. Words are thus crossroads where analogous or correlated experiences meet ‘This Quid, three-dimensional use of language is the product of the right half of our brain as opposed to the flat and precise use of words typical of the left brain, Our speech is always the synthesis of these two languages, one made of global images that include hundreds of objects and experiences, and the other, of sharply defined one-coay words, ‘The images used by the first are common to all of mankind, thus allowing us to say that the right brain speaks 2 universal language. The existence of this universality may be clearly demonstrated in the various tongues man has used. It affects allwords, including family, country and city names. Perhaps the most astonishing aspect of this universal language is that it ignores time, space and specialization. We shall see, for instance, that scientific or technical achievements existed potentially in the names of the objects ‘or forces involved long before the actual discovery, making scientific progress an outgrowth of language. No less striking is the fact that this universal language is the one in which sacred texts have been deliberately writen, and in the present book we shall propose a reading of one verse of the Bible in this language. This certainly opens vast new horizons in our understanding of the relationship between the profane and the sacred, From a purely linguistic point of view, our claim that all languages axe related would have to be substantiated by examples from all comers of the world. When doctors try to detect certain cell lesions, however, they do not check each and every one of the billion cells of the body. They take biopsies i. bits of different organs, in the hope of finding evidence of damage in one of them. We have proceeded in the same way, comparing, pieces of language from language trunks thought to be unselated. This method may lend itself to the citcism of having generalized from isolated cases. The efficacy of our method lies, however, not in the comparison of foreign tongues but in showing that universal forces are at work within English, French or any other language. ‘To make this point clear, we have deliberately restricted ourselves to a few families of tongues, concentrating, primarily on the fate of given sounds within the Indo-European and Semitic groups, Chinese in later chapters and, accessorily, lesser known languages. Additional thousands of words could certainly have been integrated into the present material. They would have made this a much too voluminous and largely illegible work. Sirvilarly, we have refrained as much as possible from using the terminology specific to linguistics or any references to the complex theories elaborated by this science during the last century. The principle technical terms to be used will be the key concepts of homonyms and synonyms, definitions of which will be provided We have also used the simplest possible transcription of foreign languages into Latin letters. The body of the text is [Link] by paragraphs in lighter script (in-depths), Footnotes and studies at the end of some chapters The novelty and wealth of the material has necessitated the use of a methodical, step by step approach, particularly for the fist eight chapiers. They have been deliberately written in as simple a form as possible. Confronted with the language of our unconscious, are we rot all, anyway, lke children learning a new tongue? This book is precisely a voyage into the deepest of our collective and individual “Awareness of the double nature of language proposed here carries with it the immense hope that some of the most fundamental barriers that seem to divide our minds and our societies may at last be removed, Inter-human relationships, child education and psycho- therapy are some of the fields where very positive applications may be foreseen. These will be developed in later volumes.Chapter 1 Of Words and Thingsike other scientists, language specialists are confronted with the same ultimate problem: What happened at the beginning? What were the first words? According to which laws were they formulated? Unlike the biologist or physicist who could derive much information from fossils or cosmic rays, the linguist was left with no clues to answer these questions. The first men did not write and left us no trace of their earliest words. The approximately six thousand. tongues men have used seem to have appeared on the stage of history as finished products. Cousins in Disagreement Deprived of a beginning, linguists tumed towards the classification of the immense quantity of words and grammars known today. Very much like Darwins’s classification of animals into families of species, tongues were arranged into groups, familie, super families, et: Ik is easy to perceive that English and German are closely related These languages are first cousins. The kinship between English and Russian is less obvious, They are second cousins. Still, all cousin languages form one family unit The kinships behocen the vocabularies of many languages. do indeed suggest the existence ofa consmon sour from which all ‘mernbers ofa given family devioed. One original source is known fs proto-uo-Euroean, am antique language whichis supposed to Ihave been the ancestor of such diverse tongues as German, Russian, Persian, Italian, Hindu, Greek, Dutch, Armenian, Breton and English. According to present theris, a loose group of tribes spake this original language « fw thousand years ago. Over an extended period of time, with constant migrations and population increases, these tribes divided into the murmerous Frunches ofthe present Indo-European family of languages. The carlier the separation out ofthe common trunk occurred, the ‘more accentuated the differences, English and German, for instance, are languages that seperated relatively recently nul are Une very close. For ery dssinilar languages, such a5 Persian tani English the respective divergence out of the common trunk s Separated by Phousands of years In classifying languages into families, linguists were confronted with thwo insoluble questions. First, why did cousin-languages adopt very different words for certain objects? Our English apple is pornme in French, sib in Persian, manzana in Spanish, and malus in Latin. What motivated these differentations? Second — and this brings us back to the question of how language was born — what determined the choice of apple rather than adile or attle or any other sound?* The system of logic used by our ancesters to create and differentiate the words of their first vocabulary is totally beyond our understanding. It is rather unnerving to consider that the underlying logic of our thoughts, our dreams and even our speech completely escapes us. This whole affair becomes even more complicated when we see the fate of a given sound within one family of languages. Let us again take the sound apple. In Germanic tongues it is used to designate a fruit. In Latin languages, this very same sound (APL), means something altogether different. In French, for example, apyel means fo call (as in appeal In the same way, Spaniards and Frenchmen understand something altogether different in the sound gato. In French gateax means cake, whereas in Spanish gato means cat.” We thus observe that within the same family, cousin-languages have 1 There would cra neer have bean ay contenu around » new word ie cation frdlbeen he product af uhm Surat though the arcimsance are get ses. tt ses that new woe are aeepeed io the moder leon oly whan they press 2 ‘rain loge [ea ielephone em fee (far aves) and phone (vice) ceigats & Inetument tht alone one to prof ons ois oe a ln dtc 2. Woeds quien as amples here (apple, pore, vue etc) are obviously ate forms. ‘Caran, apple/appet and gteey/gato each passes ther oun efmokogs Our question Frew bs repocin of perc what were the ctr for choosing ane sound or chaningused 1) different sounds for the same object (e.g. apple, manzana etc.) and 2) the same sound for different objects (eg. apple, appel. Faced with this apparent randomness of sound attribution, linguists ended up formulating the following law: Sounds used by each people fo designate objects are the result of an arbitrary - some say conventional - choice. In other words, one day, the English agreed to call a given object glass, the French verre, the Spanish oaso, and the Turks bardak. ‘That the early Englishmen could just as well have agreed on gnass or _grass instead of glass is of no real importance, The important thing, is that they agreed on a given sound, In the same way it was decided that the combination cake would be attributed to a certain delicacy, ake to a form of cooking, fake to a type of deception etc. Every variation of the sound ake was arbitrarily attributed to a particular object. The letters b and k bear no more particular relationship to the act of baking than do f and k to the act of faking. Accordingly, words were considered mere labels that people tagged con objects. There was not and could not exist any intelligent relationship between words and things. Language Surgery In believing that words were products of total arbitrariness, linguists, like surgeons, amputated the world of words from the world of objects. In order to peer at it through a microscope, language was detached from the body to which it belonged. This body is our universe and man’s experience in that universe. There, words and. things have been inextricably interwoven since the dawn of human history. The limits of studying a piece of living tissue under a microscope are known. The thousands of hormones and other chemical mediators 8. Inrare cases the elation fay ar bstuse the objec andthe sound chosen, We ‘ele ere to onomatgpoce rds sich as crock ich aes the sound of being (toed (ar cock which somauhal predic the sound rmadety th br splash fot tte, ‘ce_ The problem wrth these anoratoponc wore that they are torre and hiquetocerinlanguages Moreoer har can be a of wees tke nk? War nae ‘Smade ty out thoughts? How do laters lke THINK rete thi lent proces? that act upon it in the body are ignored. A science of linguistics founded upon the separation of words and the objects deseribed by them suffers the same limits. Stripped away from their contexts, words are deprived of the thousands of hormones that bind them to the world of objects.* ‘With these few facts in mind, we can now define the objective of this book: to find the living unity behind all languages without negating their diversity We shall treat the sum total of our planet's languages as one would treat the study of the human body, namely, as one complete integrated whole, The various vocabularies form a complex organism whose functions are perfectly integrated in the same way that, in the human body, the pulmonary, respiratory and circulatory systems are integrated and synchronized. ‘We shall thus posit that words are deeply linked to objects, that the sound apple, for instance, describes something about an apple. The same goes for pomme, manzana, sib etc. as well as any other other terms used to describe apples in various languages. Like pieces of a puzzle placed next to eachother, these words form a multicellular ‘organism. It is this living organism that is really descriptive of the apple. ‘The greater the number of words for any given object, the more precise will be its definition. With a thousand ways for saying apple, cone will lear much more about this fruit and its meaning for man. All languages thus become necessary because they are all complementary. Far from being the reflection of arbitrariness, the diversity of words reproduces and comments on the extreme wealth of the reality that surrounds us 4 We are not are occ the consderableaonens that moder guste research has Vout eae mare) deeb fhe exc! scope ofa slene operates on epeeChapter 2 One Sound, Two Meaningshe only tongue that would deserve to be called smiversal would consist of the exact sum ofall the languages of our Earth, Its thick dictionary would include all the words known from ancient limes fill today. The system of classification of this universal book would be fairly easy to imagine. Indeed, man, in spite of his six thousands languages, expresses himself through combinations of a restricted number of consonants. With F and R, for instance, some made Tike, others FouR (oven in French), still others FaR (or in Hebrew), et. ‘Thus, under the heading FR of our dictionary, we would find the thousands of uses of this two-letter root all over the world. The same goes for BR, SL, or any other combination of the twenty of s0 elementary consonants of language. All words ever spoken by mankind would find their natural place in this universal compendium which would be qualified as a homonymic dictionary. Let us recall the definition of this term, Homonyms are words that share the same ~ or similar - sound yet carry a different meaning. Example: clothes and close, nail tool) and (Finger) nail For linguists, a homonymic dictionary would be of litle interest since the existence of similarities between words of Chinese, English or ‘Turkish is a pure coincidence. Indeed, apart from the sound, what is there in common between the English far, the French phare (lighthouse), the North African Arabic far (rat), or the Hebrew far (oxn ‘We shall posit that these similarities are not fortuitous, Behind these ‘common sounds stand common meanings. Let us take the word tock which has quite a few homonyms, such as tweak, week, woake etc? One of them is wicked. Having traced the origins of each of these words separately, linguists feel confident that the present similarity between wick and cocked is purely the result of coincidence. Wick comes from the following older English roots: twieke, weke, wice, and the oldest rweoce. As for wicked, it has been traced to wicke and wican meaning fo yield or fall down. Wick and wicked are thus typical homonyms. They have identical sounds but totally different meanings or origins. Everything points to chance in their resemblance ‘This homonymy would indeed not be worth our while but for the fact that it is reproduced in several other languages. Let us take French: wick is méche and wicked is méchant (pronounced mecha). ‘Miche and méchant are also homonyms. Again, their origins are given as totally different. Micke (wick) comes from the Latin micca” and michavt (wicked) is a word built from the prefix mé (equivalent to the English mis as in mis-understand) and chard, derived from the ‘verb choir, meaning fo fall. [Let us recall that the English wicked i also derived from a root meaning fo fall. A wicked man is defined here as one who has fallen.) We thus have two languages which have, over a period of approximately one thousand years, produced a similar pair of homonyms out of unrelated words. Chance is supposed to have been at work in both cases. 'A third language, Hebrew, reproduces the same phenomenon. It says FTL for wick and, again, FTL? for wicked or perverse. ‘That makes three coincidences that traversed thousands of miles, thousands of years, and three major languages. In all three instances 1. Vowels are not considared at root eters ere. See Chapters 4 and 8. 2. This word thes dered from case Latin for wc ma, Hee has no vowels word present thames a eres of consnans, sch as FTL- “See Chapter 3words meaning wick and wicked were made to sound alike. One may legitimately question the coincidental nature of a phenomenon that repeals itself ‘A Moral Tivist ‘The reproduction of the wick-wicked homonymy seems to indicate that wicks and wicked people have something in common. From the English and the French it is difficult to grasp the significance of this relationship. Hebrew, on the other hand, will allow us to guess ~ at least partially — the meaning of their curious association, ‘A wick was made - and continues to be made - by twisting a piece of cotton or cloth, The Hebrew root FTL means, among other things, swisl, A wick (FTL) is thus something fisted (FTL). By extension, a wicked man is someone who is not straight, i. twisted. ‘The idea of torsion or twisting is thus central to the Hebrew root FTL. We may assume that this idea was extended to everything equally. characterized by fisting, ie. wicks and wicked people.* This seems to hold true for Hebrew. What about English and French? Can we also find this theme of torsion? Let us look in a dictionary for the different uses of the roots wick and. rméche. We shall see that, very much like Hebrew, the element of torsion is common or necessary to many of them. Indeed, in English, we find it in wicker, another homonym of wick. Wicker” designates those vegetable fibers used for weaving baskets, chair covers, etc The act of weaving also entails fisting. As for French, miche has two other relevant meanings. It is used to designate the twisted metal drill or bit which is used to bore into walls, wood, metal etc. Alternately, itis used in the expression dre de méche (literally, to be in wick}, meaning partners in crime and describing, any dishonest act committed by at least two persons. We have here 4. In Od Engl, uicked wos pronounced wick, sch tht these tao wane are pect heron 5, This deed fom the Seandinattan vik, branch of awl. a beautiful image. Ee de miche (to be in wick) involves taking two human beings and twisting them into a single wick, ready to perform, by definition, a wicked act. ‘We shall thus formulate the following hypothesis: it seems that around the idea of forson or hoisting a linguistic force-field has been created. A number of names of objects made by torsion were submitted to this field, compelling them, with time, to adopt a common sound. In other words, objects that are similar end up being designated by similar sounds, i. they become homonyms.® ‘The fact that these homonymies appear at great distances and over large intervals of time has led us to posit the existence of ‘unconscious forcefelds that defy linguistic borders. The nature of these force-fields will be qualified as our analysis proceeds. ag 1 Within te same tins amy we bree hae the deformation, nl mora, Cf words of ry fenton. The theme of tr acted a a enter ofa. ‘Assuming, for the meantime, that these fields do exist, a question nevertheless arises: Why do we find these homonymies only in two 6, is Important to emphasize thatthe mutlatone that le to homersmnies are eal ‘henner wee, they ae pro each Ianguge. For insane. Ealsh, {pearl wmhaisbcoe moses hing rk! For fe olson and Ib ‘German, sanguags dose related 0 Enh this boronymzation has ot occured: soz Jsasewheens fo see w sehen Soe Chapt 5 fr the iporance of ths loa value ot homecyms‘or three languages? Indeed, among contemporary languages, the similarity between the words designating wicks and wicked people exists only in English, French and Hebrew. It is not found, for instance, in German, Hungarian, Russian or any other European language. Moreover, in English, the sound wick has many meanings (eg, week, wake, weak) that seem unrelated to the idea of twisting {As localized phenomena that are limited to a few words in a restricted number of languages, these homonymies seem to be little more than interesting curiosities. We shall see, however, that they are the rule, not the exception.” The aim of this chapter has been to call attention to a hitherto unexplored phenomenon, the reproduction of homonymies within various tongues, We shall see that these similar sounds are the bridges that unite languages. They also bridge the world of words to that of objects ‘The idea of a universal dictionary of homonyms evoked above is, thus not meaningless, Words written with the same consonants are indeed next of kins. 7 Two forces seen to be at work nou lnguages 1) ¢cernfug! (repuin) for cases Tay dflren rds to cherge oma common roo. For eee the Lan agi (uot | avy aqua hes become fhe Spach agun fut slo the Ol Pench eve and Bay {Ger Molem French cou, 2) 2 cept! (atacton force eons diferent sound feels to conse ino common fom. It Sears to ap wers and then transfoma tha ‘Sar time unl fey beam Wnt The products of hs conden fre oe the orca Latin mice and OM French chow were ths compel to become meche nd mechont The some occured fr wick and wked Dicgences and snares ‘Stocon words would thus be the product ofthe inquste equtlent of the forces Sones deserbe melon to meter. We could indod compare them tothe ors of epuon/aracion het presided and connie to preside oer te fomaion and the ‘Melony of our pymial universe On the one hand, we have the canal foxee “hiling fem he Bi Bang end the explosion of srs On te ther hand we eth ‘enka force ide force of gry The foe crest ur pane y tengo) fom ge ass the later hep us at 2 rape and wl stance frm the sun Chapter 3 The Square Unitnthe preceding chapter we saw that certain homonymic relationships seemed, by their repetitivity, to convey a message. In the present chapter we shall ask whether this is a general property of homonyms, We shall formulate a model that will allow us to say when the relationship between two homonyms is a necessary one and thus meaningful We shall call this model the square sit Let us retum to the example developed above. In the four words used in our homonymic relationship, the English wick and wicked parallel the French méche and méchant. The relationship between these four words can be represented thus: Here we see a horizontal linkage between two words belonging to a given language There are two possible ways to characterize the vertical element in this arrangement. We could say that the relationship between the English wick and the French mécke is one of a translation from one language to another. Likewise, wicked would be a translation of mméchant. For our purposes, however, we shall qualify this relationship otherwise. Inasmuch as all languages belong to a single universal language, wick and micke may be considered as synonyms, Likewise, wicked and méchant are synonyms, Let us recall the definition of this tem. Two words are said to be synonymous when they have the same or a closely related meaning, Tor instance, the words don and morning are synonyms. Clothing and dressing, dinner and supper, quick and fast, are just a few of the many thousands of synonyms that characterize the English language. ‘As such, the accepted definition of a synonym applies only within a given language. We shall extend it to all languages: Words that are translations of cach other may be regarded as syionyms. In the present case, since they cary the same meaning, the English wick shall be considered a synonym of the French mécke. Accordingly, a French/English Dictionary is really a dictionary of synonyms wherein each English word is paralleled by its French synonym, We may now add a vertical dimension to our model herons ssnanymn ‘mony ‘This is a square writ. A square unit is any set of four words in which two are synonyms and the other two homonyms. ‘This interlocking relationship is the fundamental unit of the universal language. It is always significant, We shall test its usefulness throughout the following pagesBy definition, a square unit will always evoke the following question: ‘what feld maintains these four words together? In the unit above we suggested that the idea of torsion, a theme common to wick and wickedness, is what trapped these four words together. As a rule, therefore, a square unit will always inelude four words and evoke a fifth that explains the existence of the square." Let us note that each element of the unit may be freely integrated into other square homonymic relationships. For instance, wick is a hhomonym of week, weak etc. [The same applies to the French miche.) ‘The word-pair chosen for the first two elements of the unit (or instance, wick/tveek instead of wick/wicked) will determine the nature of the fifth word, i. the central theme. In stating that all foreign words are synonyms and not translations, we take the fundamental step of uniting all tongues into one single supra- or universal language. The vocabulary of this universal language is, by definition, infinitely rich, as it possesses several thousand names (synonyms) for each object. All languages of the earth can thus be entered into tteo universal dictionaries, one that groups roords of the same meawing (synonyms) wider the same heading, and the second that does so for words with the same sound (homonyins), The interlocking relationships betioeen these common ‘earings and sounds isthe universal coment that holds languages together. ‘We shall ask the reader to accept this non-conventional extension of the notions of homonymy and synonymy. They must be made to cross all borders. Accordingly, the scope of our square units will be considerably enlarged. In the above unit, only two languages were used: three or four can be entered. The following are examples in which languages are given various positions in the square unit. Plant Thieves In English, the sound steal means fo rob, whereas in Hebrew, the same sound (STL) means fo graft (a plant, an organ). An American English 1. The squne unit can be defined as a sructre of four that suet foe speaker will immediately be struck by the fact that in his own brand of English. graft possesses two meanings: stolen money and a plant or ‘an organ that is grafied. Again, over great distances of time and space, we find the same phenomenon: the sounds steal and graft have taken a common meaning which suggests that the act of stealing comes down to grafling a given object or sum of money onto a different person. In this sense, a person's money is as much a part of his or her body as any other organ: when itis stolen, it is actually transplanted onto another owner. ‘The field that lies at the center of the steal/graft unit is thus the extension of the notion of transplantation English (Hebrew I grt of an cree, 2 plan) Painful Bread Here is an example of a four language unit. The English pain is an exact homonym of the French pain, meaning bread. Russian and Hebrew reproduce this association with HLB (Russian for bread) being @ homonym of HBL (Hebrew for pain)? We may thus establish the following unit: 2 By metathesis Le. erdon of consonants See Chapters 8, 9 and 10. Vowels are nat ‘ndided se thee ave none in cascal HebeEngh French Pai: (rea senor smog oe In this square, four languages relate the notion of bread to that of pain. The fifth word or central theme can be surmised: pain is incurred in earning one's bread (pain). This servitude of work is found equally in Hebrew which understands in the root LHM both bread and battle. We are told here about the pains suffered during the battle for bread? We have thus completed the definition of the fundamental rules of the elementary unit of the universal language, the square uni 1k must be remembered that equivalent words (translations) from one language to any other are synonyms. ‘The English apple is synonymous with the Spanish muanzana, the English dog is synonymous with the Spanish perro etc. Conversely, words of any language that share the same or similar sound are homonyms. The English apple is a homonym of appel (French for eal, bride (English) is a homonym of bride (French for bridle), etc We are about to explore this immense field of interlinguistic relationships. The language that lies behind them lacks words and is made entirely of associations. This universal language is unconscious. It has governed the formation of words since earliest times and has never ceased to do so. 2. Other nguages end on ths aonhip. tis developed in Chapter 16 Chapter 4 Naughty Vowels1n the following chapters we shall concem ourselves with associating words that come from extremely different languages. Prior to making any comparison, however, we must agree on a sunioersal spelling that will allow us to relate, for instance, a Semitic word to an Indo-European or Chinese root. (Our first steadfast rule is that words will be compared only after being reduced to their consonants. This elimination of vowels is essential as it allows us to grasp the identity of words that appear to be unrelated at first glance. ‘The English fruit, for instance, is found as frutin in Italian, frata in Spanish and froet in Dutch. Likewise, the English beer appears as bier in German, biere in French, bira in Italian. Superficially, these words could have been thought of as different. It is, however, only their vowels that differ. ‘The consonant roots FRT or BR are stable’ The instability of vowels lies in their being very weak sounds and therefore easily deformed. Some languages, such as Hebrew or Arabic, have no vowels as such. ‘Thus, a. written Semitic word presents itself as a group of two, three ‘or four consonants. The Hebrew BOR, for instance, may be read either BuQuR (cattle), BoQeR (morning), BaQeR (examine) or BaQeR (visi, Vowels only appear in these languages during oral reading, Confronted with the root BOR the reader of a Hebrew text will 1 One of the consonaes may be doubled (ruta, bea). Breion and Garman two other Langage thet so tong o te Indo European fan, somautat moa the end of shar versio ofthe weed ru Breton ues fucch and German fut. These vasistions {het fis consonants alo cby carta la Thy wl be death ator on Por our list amples we shel be content wih sdacing words to that Hate consonants therefore have to guess, according to the context, which of its several possible meanings is meant. ‘The suppression of vowels allows us to find the common root between the dozens of local versions of a given word. This applies to words within any one family of languages (such as fruit, froc, ‘rutta, etc.) as well as to words from different families.” ‘We shall see, however, that vowels do play a fundamental role within the universal language (Chapter 14). They help to considerably increase the information transmitted by any given ‘group of consonants. For the chapters to come, however, let us restate the essential definition of a word: A word is a stable nucleus of consonants accompanied by a variable and unstable mumber of vowels. In identifying the nature of a word we will albeit temporarily, neglect vowels. 2, For the unntaed reacing to Ble ns orga indeed » tu inter spert ince ‘he oer proses self as an untamed sere of consnants, Tf wre ol the Bi thus reads BRST BR LHM(T HSMM VHS, [The ltr aephbas been ome ‘our transerson fr has no other sound than tat ofthe vowel ht eccompanis 8. Catan Inguages pose particular pots The worsbuly of Chinese, for empl, ‘const of 2 relate eaticed series of monosilales (uch ay xe shi 90, Pronounced in one ofthe four main ‘ores, each ofthese sales yea totaly dire ‘meaning Chinese, hus &alnost » pute hormonale lnguage ix generale shal ‘Compare words tha share the same tone, The Lat tanscon tx Chinese word the one ateiyhauhores celina, Ls ote eee loners ht fare pour to cata ngunges. Servic lnguages for tance ossst a deep tal Jet, an (2) grbokzed by an accent tat has no eoxtepat athe tno European, fal. Since rogues el eller to pronounce tends be emt em mes spoken HebrewChapter 5 The Mother and Her Knightet us suppose we have looked up the words wick and wicked in all six thousand tongues the earth has known. For only three of them (English, French and Hebrew) these terms are homonyms. This relatively weak frequency is the rule In the present chapter we shall demonstrate thet these rae triplets of homonyms are the extremities of long chains of square units that link all languages. Before examining such chains, however, we shall add a third type of linguistic relationship to homonyms and synonyms: this is association, a cousin phenomenon to synonymy. ‘Two terms are said to be synonyms when they designate the same object [for instance, morning and dawn), Two terms are said to be associated when they designate related objects [such as morning and sunrise} Let us take the word bride as an example. Upon hearing this word an English speaker will almost automatically associate it with white dresses, marriage ceremonies, honeymoons, ete. In French, the word tide (pronounced breed) means bridle or reins. Accordingly, a speaker fof French would associate the word bride with horses, knights, stirrups, etc? In order to decipher this homonymous relationship of brite (married woman) with bride (bridle) we must integrate it into a square unit 1, Relation ty astocaon may boul incidew rt numberof words. Mores "he numer of smoryms depen mach onthe else mpodance of the object they ‘deagnte canbe vay age or vary smal In Eaglsh for nance thre ae alot OO Spores fer the word oct. In Engand boss epresenied a al cee Tow smaet ‘Siference in consnscton from one ype fo nother used naw mane. Cores the ‘robs have wed camel banapot almost excuse for thousands of ars We Gus nd ‘Sout 500 wc esr ths enna Arabic Ln Engish, on te other han we ned ‘nly 2 or 3 wont to desire camel 2-The French bid be) has tuo other meanings. I usd ost slanded! qe as ‘wo ae adhesions around sae. Sarto abil we Te noon of waeton holding ‘emathing in pice tg in bo thas casas We shall do so with the aid of the notion of association as defined above. This will allow us to expand our discussion beyond brides and bridles to all words related to marriage and horses ‘The Bride and La Bride A bride is a woman who gets MARried. MAR, the common root of swords like MARriage and MARried, has, in English, a homonym related to horses: MaRe, ie. a female horse. MaR is thus a root that reproduces our original homonymy between the English bride (married woman) and the French bride (bridle). We have our first square unit: English French ‘sem sociation MaRe! tense noe! This set of relationships seems to suggest that marriage is similar to bridling a horse! Let us see if other Indo-Furopean languages reproduce this relationship. Scandinavian and Slavic, two cousin languages, understand the sound kone differently. In Danish, kone ‘means wife whereas in Russian it means horse.® 8. One may suppose that in the Indo-European rot language om which these vo tongues ‘rgnated one ndeate both a marsed wernan ana horse. Upon separsing, one et ‘st Kone ue) and he cher wth Kare (hrs) Seanaavans ae Slats hus each took thei share of a common hettage: the hose/aierestonship.Seanig —Donsiviussan we) (Kong mee Let us now turn to languages outside of the Indo-European sphere. ‘Mande, a West African tongue, offers us quite a remarkable homonymy which is consistent with the above. Hors is wefo. The plural is irregular, wed, (ores) (vere) WeeFo ‘Weerfo and wed evoke two strongly related words in English, wife and wwe, There can be no wedding without a wife and no wife without a ‘wedding. In Mande, weefo and wed are likewise related; both mean horse. These four terms thus form a perfect square unit that connects marriage and horses: ain i tose) | Weld (antes) English and Mande belong to two very different families. Very cariously, however, these two languages contain precisely the same words, one understanding marriage where the other understands Jorses, This association is reproduced in Chinese. When the syllable ‘ma is pronounced in one tone it signifies mother. In another it signifies horse* Taken together these linkages indicate that cerlain marriage related words (woman, bride, mother) are associated with similar horse related words (bridle, mare). DnithRasion ee be (ute) KON, Chinese f May (horse (moe) | Ma 4, The Jepanese umo hom) 's& homorym of ho Sarit me (mater. Hebrew and Engl ‘fer ancther homonymy. The Het Hales (eronsemert hich petedar ‘mariag) resembles the Engh HORSe. [hough the Hebrew oot bia with er Hephaysehg tort wth on H acu Se Cope ri seca ‘penton consonants,Faced with a repetitive phenomenon of this nature we must investigate the force of attraction that compels the idea of woman to resemble that of horse in all these different languages. As we have already intimated, our frst association is that marriage puts a bridle on one's spouse? ‘The Mother and Her Knight ‘The association between wife and horse is not exhausted by this somewhat unpleasant (to our generation) notion of domination in the ‘marriage relationship. Mam isthe measure ofall things, said the Greek philosopher. Applied to language, this axiom means that all words ‘communicate something primary about human experience. When language transforms words like bride (married woman), wife and tmarriage into homonyms of bride (reins) weefo (horse) and mare (female horse) and thus makes them identical, it is an indication that the objects they refer to share a common life experience. A homonymy of life experiences is reflected in a homonymy of their respective names. ‘The function of the horse in human experience is essentially its capacity to carry and transport a rider. Woman also carries the child that develops in her womb for nine months. Indeed, after marriage, 2 woman traditionally has become a mother, ie someone who wil, unlike the husband, give a long ride to her child. Latin mater (origin of mother) has become mre (mother in French) and. thus another homonym of mare (female horse) and marriage e¢_@—®@ 5, Other Regus rlstonshi unexplored here would ago show us the reve: the spanioge abhi ceo phe taser sty see. For anguoges sens ‘Sapte he pradomaant ans the hasan biding te we ‘The French word for horse is CheVal (pronounced SheVal). In Hebrew, the same group of consonants (SVL), means fo carry and to suffer. Basque uses the sound SaVeL. to designate the belly. During pregnancy the mother (MéRe in French) is like a MaRe (SheVal. in French) that carries (SVL in Hebrew) a burden that lies in her belly (Gavel in Basque). This burden, moreover, is not inert. It isa tiny human being that rides its mother as a knight rides his horse. A Sizeable Increase We have shown that three basic sounds, BRiDe, WeD and Make, function in two spheres, ie. one centered on marriage and another on horses. At the exact point of intersection of these spheres lies the theme of pregnancy. Now we shall discover that each of these three sounds has a homonym that describes the most evident consequence of pregnancy for a woman: an increase in body size. BriDe is a homonym of BroaD. WeD is related to WiDe MaRe/MERe is related to MoRe. When a woman gets married and pregnant, she will become broader and wider. No wonder, then, that French calls the state of pregnancy _grosese, a word that literally means being enlarged. Japanese for large is kirosu, a homonym of horse, which links this theme oF width to the animal associated with pregnancy, as seen above.‘The sound more not only supplies the idea of increase of the size of the mother (mire in French) but also in the size of the family. ‘This is confirmed by the homonymy in Latin languages between filus (on) and plus (p and f being equivalent letters). A child is the more or pis that results from wedlock. Er, in Chinese, when pronounced in the same tone, means son and als; on a different tone, it means #00. From one, the mother has become ftv. FrncivEnglsh 208 Th {More (nen) (more) | MBRE. (eon) (crease) (onl Er — LEE) taco! Our First Ocean With the above square units it will now be easy to unfold a whole set of relationships that describe marriage, pregnancy and delivery in ever greater detail Retuming to the French word MERe (mother), we find another exact homonym in the same language, la MeR (the sea, as in the English ‘MaRine). In which way is our mother related to the sea? Our first nine months of existence is spent swimming like fish in a ‘warm salt water solution (the amanioic fluid). For the first weeks we even resemble tiny marine creatures, since, besides being immersed in water, we possess a tail and gills. During the entire gestation period ‘our mother (MER) is our sea (MeR). This shared element between ‘mother and sea — both carry fish within their bowels — determined the homonymy of the words that designate them. The mother is thus both a horse and a sea for a child® ‘Maternal Insulation Several more words related to mother will further define the image of pregnancy. ‘The consonants of the word MoTheR are identical to those of ‘MaTTuRe. Indeed, the mother is the place of her child's maturation ‘The French sound MuR, a homonym of MeRe (mother), means both woall (as in the English MuRal) and mature, We see here a good example of the dynamics of linguistic force fields. In Frens «the central T of moTher and maTure has been dropped tuming those words into mire and mir. In this shortened state, they become homonyms of mur, the term for tall, These three words (Mther/ Mature/Wall) then form a unit whose central theme is the maturation (Mé#iR) process that takes place under the shelter of the Doney, muscular and cutaneous toalls (MuR) of the mother (MERe) that surround the child during pregnancy. An obvious confirmation that these we. ds were indeed compelled to become homonyms may be found in French. In that language, pregnancy is enceinte, a word. that also means the walls of a city, a perfect echo of the mur/tiir/ rmére relationship above. To become enceine (pregnant) is thus to become an enceinte (wall) for the child's maturation. Similarly, the English pregnant evokes the city-wall-related adjective impregnable, 6. A et of czazshomorymles benween the words designating hore snd sa or sae reinforces this dfn of @ woman's xpeence The Fndish mare female hoe) i Feproduced in he Lan mare (sal ante French mare (water pond ‘The Engi ad's ' homonsm ofthe Arse oued (se) apd coud (horse) and more gener the Indo- Eujopean root wad an ancestor of such English words unter ang wad. In Latin ae rel i oat ain aguas) ehemoaym of eau [hone asin eguine fn equezean). Ou methodology ti fn th chaper has mated an nl sant of ‘eltonehipe tht ins worm o ore anda second sae hts woman war A ‘sing hel to wast uch afsociatos horse and wore Tas ay be ested by the fellowes slog If A Pwone lined Yo B [worn] and B [women] inked t © {bate then A fers nked oC [utr Ths strates vere the wir Tangunge. Ls odd that the mosculne amen th father ako appears bere, Sice wer 1s Tea a homergm of omer (German for father. The faterfwater couple thus ‘comesponds very cael to that of mee.‘Another exact homonym. of this group is MiiRe, French for blackberry. In its first few days of maturation (MiiR) the embryo goes through a stage that embryologists call MoRula, Latin for litle Blackbery. Indeed, it consists of an agglomeration of small cells resembling a blackberry (MiiRe). The first stage of maturity (MaR) is thus called the blackberry (MiiRe) stage. The sound MR has provided us with an important set of relationships describing the maturation of the child within the mother. The Hebrew root VShL (rie, cooked or mature), a homonym of the French ShVL (horse), describes the outcome of the process, delivery.” For the child in his mother’s stomach, maturation (VSAL) is indeed a process of slow cooking in water brought to and maintained at a temperature of 98.6 degrees F. [37 degrees C.] for nine months. Delivery occurs when this cooking has ended and there is a risk of 7h teow bane herent ring fy het he no ow buuming the food when the delivery date Is overdue, [Overdue children may indeed suffer severely.} In English, bors, a word which refers both to the birth process as well as to the act of carrying something, is also a homonym of bur. ® A Rubric of Words ‘Through homonymies, synonymies and associations we have been able to unfold seven principal themes that characterize womanhood from marriage to the delivery of the first child. These seven themes form as many related square units. The first one links the married woman to a horse. The second links a pregnant woman to a horse. “The third introduces the notion of broadening. The fourth links woman to the sea. The fifth links woman to a surrounding wall. The sixth links her to maturation. The seventh points to the outcome of this maturation, delivery. Let us now return to our image of linguistic force-filds. The theme of marriage and pregnancy is one of humanity's most fundamental ‘experiences. In the present series this theme acts as an invisible mass that attracts and traps words of extremely varied etymological origins in its field. This has resulted, with the passing of centuries, in 1a deep modification of sound and form until they have reached complete or almost complete homonymy. These fields of words form the underlying fabric of our unconscious language. Our daily conversation seems to indicate that we can speak of pregnant women, horses or walls as separate and unrelated subjects. At deeper levels of unconscious activity, however, the theme of pregnancy is indissolubly linked with that of horses and walls. This 8, The Englsh bum (Le. cero) ed ho (cared) ellet the sme rbaiorship the Hebrew Shi (0 cook and SU 00 cay). VSL/SVL are anothr engl of metathesis se Chapter 9 Let ety that these new lator bout te mother apply othe theme ofthe horse. “The Hetnew VSAL (orpen and to cool is a horonym of the French SheVaL. (hore ‘The French ful brn sa Remorse of Bra Arai formule te sta descent of the hose Yet oer cron lato Boks hore to eal The Spanish pared (wall th ext hornorym of pared or fred which ments male x horse m brow, Grek oid ‘German. The Basque hora a hamangmn ofthe Enaish horse, means walis evidenced in our sleep where a woman who dreams of a charming prince riding on a beautiful stallion is in fact receiving information that she is pregnant or desires to be so." Homonymies reflect this unconscious activity in our language. Indeed, they play such an important role in language because they reveal not only the link between related ideas and life situations, but between human consciousness and objective reality. By coining words that resemble eachother, language invites us to perceive analogies in life situations Let us note that we have considerably extended the significance of the homonym, As we have said, life situations, very much like words, may be homonymous or synomymous. One of the primordial functions of language is to indicate the deep synonymies and homonymies of human existence. Let us now try to answer the question that inaugurated this chapter. Why do relationships such as wick and wicked (méche and méchan) appear only in a restricted number of languages? Our treatment of the mother-horse relationship will allow us to formulate an initial Let us imagine that only one thousand languages exist and that we have looked in all their dictionaries forthe translations of oman and horse. Among them we find the Danish kone and the Russian kone They confirm the link between a married tooman and a horse. This is again found in Mande where weefo (horse) and ive (horses) correspond. to the English wife and wedding. ‘Two other languages help us further define the role of the husband in relation to his wife. ‘The English bride and the French bride indicate 10. Let us ac thet hom not ony nk woman ithe theme of pregnan. Ikentars ‘umerous other square uns. Vsious example ul be scam i the folowing chapter Bar the rule persia begs cr abject never eet in olaion barter n veto th gtherteings and abject. Thisrul apples to langinge just as much sep really, ‘One can recognize are an eakapalaton of the fundamen wdctn of Lingus ‘Suclualim as propourat by ts founder, F DaSeussre that marriage puts reins on a woman's freedom. |It also restricts the rman and saddles both partners with new cares and responsibilities] Next we see that marriage links the notion of méze (mother) to that of mare (female horse. The Chinese ma (mother and horse) confirms this association. Three more homonyms, the French cheval (horse), the Basque save! (belly) and the Hebrew SVL (carry and suffer, liken the mother’s role to that ofa horse that caries her vider in her belly. Broad, wide and more are homonyms of bride, wed and mare/mére that describe the immediate physical consequences of the pregnant stat. ‘The homonyms mer (ea) and mére (mother) add that child carrying is done in a liquid environment similar to the sea. This process is made possible by the shelter that a mother’s oals (mur) provide for her child against all variations of climate. Finally, the Hebrew VShL (cook, ripen, mature) describes the process that takes place during this carrying, It links maturation to cooking and indicates the conclusion of the process, dezery (cf. English burn/bor) Every one of these languages describes a different aspect of pregnancy. In other words, a complex phenomenon such as marriage and motherhood is cut up into its simple elements and then scatlered throughout numerous languages. Clearly, a word taken in isolation ‘will teach us very little about the object it designates. Only when it is allowed to interact with other words that share the same sound or ‘meaning will it begin to describe larger and larger pieces of reality ‘The greater the number of homonyms and synonyms the more precisely the object will be described. The development of one more aspect of pregnancy will serve to illustrate this fundamental quality of language The Hot and Cold Wall The mother (mire) provides a perfectly stable environment for the embryo developing inside her. Irrespective of extemal weather conditions, she acts as a protective wall (mur) for her baby and maintains the temperature of her inner sea (mer) at an even 98.6 degrees F.Hebrew possesses two words to designate the idea of wall, QiR and HoMah. ‘These two terms each have an exact homonym. QxR (cold) corresponds to Qik and HoM (hot) corresponds to HoMall. QiR and HoMh thus have the curious property of designating at the same fime the concept of a wall as well as the two extremes of = @ ~ sc = ae Hatnow (wal) (boo ‘The central theme is easy to understand here. The walls of our houses protect us effectively from the cold as well as from the heat. Man built walls for protection against the two extremes of climate In nature, however, there is only one type of wall that protects perfectly against all types of temperatures. We mean, of course, the toall that the body of a woman offers to her embryo. By maintaining, the amniotic fluid (the sea) at an even temperature, a woman's body is the perfect QiR (wal) against QaR (cold) and HoMaH (wall) against HoM (hea!) French provides us with a clue as to the exact substance of this wall. Corresponding to the Hebrew QiR is the French Cur (also pronounced Qi) which means skin or leather. Our mother’s Cuir (skin) is the first QfR (wll) that separates us from the world. In French again, CuiR (skin, leaiter) is an exact homonym of CuiRe (10 cook as in cuisine), This relationship confirms that the growth or ripening of a child in its mother's womb is analogous to the process of cooking.” We are confronted here with a rich tapestry of relationships in which each additional pair of languages provides an additional thread. The result, in this case, isthe story of man from initial fertilization to final delivery. The fact that we can verify the existence of any given homonymy [for example, wick-oicked and méche-méchant} for only two or three out of a thousand languages in no way indicates that they are a rare phenomenon. On the contrary it indicates that these two or three homonymies describe one aspect of a given situation that will be found and developed in the 997 or 998 remaining languages. Our thousand languages thus act as conduits to amplify and complexify the homonymous relationship. The image of the mother 11, The home cae i ede ouside of el and expose tothe ements A mothers body onthe cher Rand, potas ts der wihin a conbold envionment. This spel ‘ualiy ofthe won erefleded in sets of homergmies ling the concept of hoes o {hat of temperature Ue above i note 6 should be car hat the horse evoked fhe folowing relesorsips aude o woman] ‘The Fench Shoal (horse) inked the dew VSRE. cook or rpen. Fare or pared (hers or malin Fetes, Greek oc ‘German! ie homorym of Froid ad redo (eo inmost Lats vated Ianguage). The ‘ors’ ong so cata heron of alder Kal (Garman fr ea homo pwed/ared ——— foredo ore) (oota) homens co ect. ‘The Spanish pared means well The Basque zl means hose and reserbles the Arabic la, meaning leather end sin. Moreos, as entoned, Basque Uses the rock sae, ‘esanhng the French chee! hore te desgnate belly. Thaze homonyms ar centred Uy the foc Marthe dan or leuher of tha bay the fac of the suroundg wots (ron wth dich auoman procs the enna. As pentonal sows, Cus lather French) ia homey of cure (eR) and QI wal in Hebree) sce the cooking of he ‘hid cris indo the shelter ofthe mae’ wel of kn. The Save werd onus (od {esarlas the Eneish fore. Those cossreonshps complete the ge ofthe mother ‘it hr salina er pected em cold aswel som heat Un the meno ‘th, Le unt coldng has teen completed,as a horse for her child embodied in one set of languages is completed by the image of the mother asa sea and a worl for her child in another set of languages. In sets of two and three the totality of the initial thousand languages will eventually completely describe the story suggested by these homonymous relationships. To find one single rigorous square unit that precisely obeys the criteria defined above is to be certain that we are standing at the door of a dense series of relationships. Chapter 6 Burning Brains ‘There thus exists a universal meta-language made not from words but from the relationships between words and what they designate. \ S| RY WC{would seem from our preceding analysis that horses and bridles are exclusively linked to the theme of pregnancy and maturation. A. superficial search through some current dictionaries, however, would yield hundreds of words for horse or bridle which bear no homonymous relationship with the theme of matemity in any language. Moreover, there are hundreds of horse-related objects such as saddles, stirrups or mane ete. which do not seem to have any clear value in the description of the human experience of mamriage. In the present chapter we shall see how some of these words do indeed describe a process of growth inside a womb, albeit a womb of a different type than that of a woman. The telationships and interactions offered in this chapter will explore an additional facet of pregnancy in the universal dictionary. By progressively discovering ‘more of these facets, all horse and birth related words in our planet's languages would indeed be shown to belong to the same family of ‘meaning. The example used here will be the human head with its various parts: brain, skul, hair etc... Together, they validate all aspects of pregnancy, ie. protecting walls, hea, transport (theme of the horse), growth and delivery ‘The Brain: Forge and Womb Language attributes to the brain the qualities of a womb able to conctive, nurture and grow a child, Information or knowledge received from the outside is the mule set that fetlizes our brain and allows it to conceive and give birth to ideas. These ideas mature under the shelter of the walls of our skull and are finaly delivered in the form of a word, a decision, or a work of art! 1 Seated cl it malin ppl speak ad ere wrest ‘Le. the art of giving birth. = This aspect of cerebral functioning is found in numerous hhomonymies. For instance, the words concept and conception denote the fertilization ofa future child as well as the fertilization of an idea* ~§ @ = @- - ‘We shall find thatthe brain has all the necessary womb-like features to carry these conceptions to a final delivery. Itis surrounded with seals that provide the necessary protection against changes of temperature or trauma. It also provides constant heat for the maturation of ideas. fall the organs of the body, the brain is the one in which these two features are most distinguished. It is the only organ entirely surrounded by walls, the skull-bones. It is also the organ that consumes the greatest amount of energy, thus producing the considerable amount of heat needed for our ceaseless thinking. Here are some of the homonymies that underline the brain/heat relationship. The English word brain is a homonym of the German brenn(en) (to burn) and the English burn. * FKAR is thinking in classical ‘Arabic, The same word in North African Arabic means both con! and raemory$ Within the Indo-European trunk, the root HRN yields this pair of homonyms: the German HiRN (brain) and the Spanish HoRNo (oven). 2, Noon anise @ homonym of natu both are Ln wends meaning respi deo ‘nd born 83. The Russian woo sh s SHRF, 9 homoram ofthe Hae SRF (bur) and a phonic “equlot ef the French CeRVaas (an, where SC ana FV, soe Chapter 9) 4 In Maghreian abc, FAR dasates memory and FEM means coo. Language has hare dened memories asthe carbonized fouls of eur thinking promstowne) (PKR Arabic (ocal/memory) ig In Hebrew, brain (oF) and hot (HoM) are written with the same consonants North African Arabie has KHMM for think which corresponds to the Hebrew HMM, to heat up.° These homonymies describe the brain as a warm and sheltered place; it is a womb that allows for the conception, growth, maturation and delivery of ideas and thoughts. ‘5. See Chopter9. See ao slow, whee the Hebrw HBSh groom or hares shares the “ame consonants as HSB ic thn). HM (ho is metas tween) of Mod! (ori, The nk between thse to terms renerod bythe flloing tn Heres, Hod smeansboth braun and hes. BRuN or beter, BPN in Fev ia Hemonden of BN, ‘The caial themes lew a uta that ens becomes Bau Heer Hom ane eo) (roan) EnglstyFrench aR Sout BRN reo Hebrew asosts cold with the colour gran: RQ omen 2 homonyn of QR (ool the hemongmy i again ty meahess] The allson tothe vegeta wore Peres lea. rts ore green during the cold season and become tr when ther cooking by the un has Been competed 6 Te coma H (gua) nd ie eur Sei ngage In modem ‘Hebrew, the guttural H is systematically pronounced KH. a The Mane of Man ‘This brain/womb analogy will allow us to reintroduce the horse theme in the above-mentioned context of the head, ‘As mentioned in the preceding chapter (note #6) language ‘erifes systematically the principle of syllogcal relationship. I, ‘through a square unit, A i velated to B, aud B to C. then A is also related fo C. In this case if hors (A) related to wor (By, fandom to bran (C), then horse (A) i also related to tn (C). ‘The horse is indeed found in a series of homonymies that deal with structures related to the skull or brain.” In all Latin related languages, for instance, the word horse is a homonym of hair. In Spanish, the hhomonymy is exact: cabullo is horse and cabello is hair. In French, cheoal (horse) and chevalier (knigh!) are equivalent to chevelure (hair). In English, the homonymy is partial: HaiR/HoRse. It is more explicit in the following relationship: HoRSe/HiRS\utism), the latter being the medical term for pathologically hairy people. a ee ae ae ee Eoalsh ia ; CHIRS) cam ois) ae : ‘The resemblance between the mane of the horse and our hair is an obvious source for these hair/horse homonymies. Indeed , humans, both male and female, often wear pony-lails. The Hippies of the sixties 1. The ban sno, trough many words, deity equated with the horse Far inance, Spanish 5250 (bra) ia wey eons homo ofthe Hebe Sou (horwere characterized by long hair. This nickname was most appropriate since the root hipp- is Greek for hose (as in hippadroma). It is worthy of note that the English word mane is a homonym of ‘mar, This is an inverse relationship of the French where the word for uma hair (chevelure is @ homonym of cheval (horse). Thus, in French, ‘kanta-hair bears the name of a horse, while in English horse hair bears the name of man! * (bai Lee) More generally, language equates the act of thinking with that of ‘rooming a horse. In French, penser means to think, and panser means {0 groom a horse. The same phenomenon is seen in Hebrew where thinking (SHB) and grooming or harnessing (HBSh) are also homonyms. The horse being harnessed and groomed is the brain when itis activated, 8. The French CFBNere (mane) dares form the Ltn CRI, a homonyen of CRaNun (Gl In Lat languages, kal and ha are thus homonyms of mane and hoe. French ae ‘The Galloping Tail ‘The science of anatomy will show us that the above homonymies are not just the product of the imagination of man. They correspond to the finest details of reality. The horse/brain relationship, for instance, will come as no surprise to neuro-surgeons. Indeed, the brain ends low down in the spinal column in a formation called the cada equiva, ie. the horse's tal ia 2 The bean, the spa cord the hors al he spinal cord hasbeen sherened)It consists of thousands of nerve fibers that fan out in a manner that strikingly resembles a horse’ tail The upper brain is thus the body of horse whose tail isthe spinal cord. Another anatomical relationship involves the heart. The German for heart is herz, a homonym of the English horse. This heart/horse relationship is again obvious for the medically trained: the rhythm of our heart (particularly in certain pathological conditions) resembles that of the galloping horse. ‘The ‘common sound made by the heart and the horse has tumed these two names into homonyms (see Study below). The Hammer, the Anvil and the Stirups The anatomy of our cranium will offer us yet another remarkable reservoir of more horse/brain homonymies. On either side of our skull, inserted on the eardrum, are found a suecession of three small bones: the hammer, the anvil and the stirup. Fig 9 The eardrum, the hare, the aril and the stimup, The strap bone ined Tooks exactly like rider's stip. The ather to, however, hardly resemble a hammer or am oo! Weis oly the fact thatthe nner his the aril that led to this fanciful rmaming. Below, we shal some of the other factors at play in the choice ofthese names. Attached fo the eardrum, the hammer ‘an the anv are the most exterior the stirrups the most internal insert on a bony structure thet reproduces the shape of sal sell (the cosa). The spiral of this sell contains a iguid tohich lates the sensory endings ofthe suitery nerves, The sounas that ive hearst the eararums in vibration; this vibration fs transmitted fo the hammer, the anil and the stirrup. The stirrup Sransmits i to the liquid contained inthe bony sell and {from there fo the cerebral centers of euitin, sohere they are Franslated into soos With stirrups on both sides and a superb tail at its spinal end, the Jhuman brain thus resembles the structure of a horse ready to be ridden. The skull in between the stirrups corresponds to the sad ‘This is indeed verified by language: we find that in the Germanic family of languages, the English SaDiLe and the German SchaDLe (clad) are homonyms. ‘The schadle (skull) is a sadile covered with cabello (hair in Spanish) a homonym of caballo (horse in Spanish and all Latin related languages) with stirups hanging on both sides. Who rides this skull/saddle? What sets its feet in its stirups? ‘The rider perched on our skull is the sum total of auditive perceptions = sounds, words and other noises ~ that vibrate our tympanic ‘membrane and thus our stirrups. These noises make us tum our head and stretch our ear very much like a horse under the command of the reins of its master.” The master here is the extemal world as perceived by our ear through a pair of stirups The Forge of the Two Riders Man's head is a horse riden by two riders: the external one, the sounds that reach our ears, and the intemal one, our thinking processes. Our preoccupations, sorrows and obsessions are some of the ‘most Stringent ries of our lnains. An interesting Hebrew word for | an concer is Tp ls-elymology is unkowen, It cam, [Link] the prceding chapter note #6) wesw hat he here was rte to the there of water {ck equi, aqua, ved aud wode, One anatmy reproduces ts atonhip since ‘ur stra est on tho water conte the srl ef our eral ea In Heo, ‘Sai (pd ts shell SHVLL a homeony ofthe Freeh Latin CHeVal (hoselhowever, be ensily explained in ight of the above. The root of ‘the cordial Hip 3X0, exact homonym of the Hebrero lp DX, sulle. The sense of this homonymy is that iohat Concerns a person is what ries and directs im.” As for the other two bones of the middle ear, the hammer and the anvil, they relate to the theme of hes! mentioned above. Physiologically, the brain is the only organ in permanent incandescence. We never cease thinking. It can be compared to a permanently active workshop where ideas are forged with the help of a hammer and an anil. Homonymies evoked earlier, such as brain/ bbum/brennen and FaKhR (think/memory/coal) find here their natural context. ‘The two sets of homonymies linking the brain either to the horse or heat are thus exact reflections of the anatomy of our skull. In our ear, we find the tools of the blacksmith (hammer and anvil) as well as those of the rider (stirrups). As for the brain itself, it actually ends with a horse's tail, As we shall often see, language conforms perfectly with reality. Again, words describe fully the objects they designate ‘An Infinite Sentence ‘The homonymies in this and the preceding chapter have shown us that terms associated with heat, horses, maluration, ec. apply to several types of human experience such as marrage, pregnancy, sound perception, thinking, etc. All are characterized by a common center of ‘gravity that includes the notion of fertilization (ideas, children), the development within a shelter under a constant, warm temperature, and finally a control of the mobility of the whole (theme of a tamed horse). ‘The brain and the uterus of the mother share such features in common. It should not come as a surprise to find that the names of these two organs are related through a whole string of homonymies. A large number of additional homonymous relationships could be integrated here that would allow for an even greater unification of the different aspects of our experience into a coherent whole, 10. This iden is equaly found in the folowing: Ye French oud (sara ronounced ‘SouSed isa heronym of the Hebe’ Sou hors. Within he Indo-Europenn fam, ‘he German sore) and the Pesan sg (ad re cose heron. ‘Our objective with the series developed in the last two chapters was to show that words function essentially as supports or communications lines for essential relationships. For instance, some form of the term horse will appear every time an object or an experience inchudes an clement of transport and of controlled mobility. Pegase (or Pegasus), the ‘winged and flying horse of Greek mythology, isa case in point. The Greek PeGaSe is a homonym of the Hebrew PeGaZ, meaning avillery stall. This type of weapon flies and transporis an explosive load towards a predetermined target (i. controlled mobility). PeGaSe and PeGaZ thus have enough features in common to be designated by homonyms. An intial relationship such as Pegase/Pegaz, once well centered, will always be followed by a string of further details. It removes, for instance, the mythological aspect of the story of Pegasus. ‘The Hebrew homonym Pegaz (artillery shell) indicates that all horses {ly like shells that carry a rider as a load. ‘The anatomy of the horse helps us confirm this shell analogy. The legs of that animal are built in such a way as to allow for highly efficent running. At gallop speed, a rider feels suddenly as if he has taken off the ground. Galloping on a horse is as close as man gets to riding a flying animal ‘The Hebrew pega: (shell also suggests that the rider is propelled on a shell. Accordingly, the various parts of the horse's foot, ie. that unique anatomical configuration that turns this animal into a highly effective runner and cartier, have very evocative names: in English, the upper part of the horse's foot is called the cannon; in French, the lowest part of the foot is called the boule (literally, the carmon-bal. ‘The horse (Pegase) with its rider is indeed a loaded shell (Pegaz) propelled by a cannon (horse's foot) ‘The different ways of saying, horse on our planet contain all the basic features of transport and control that this animal embodies. We see again that language is not dissociated from the objects it describes. It consists of a complex web of interrelationships that turn it into a single, immense sentence that includes all words ever pronounced. “That immense sentence is wed with the world it describes and reflects that world in all its subtlety. In this book, we have purposely separated homonymous relationships into artificial series in order tobe able to decipher this infinite sentence. Each chapter must be considered a surgical operation performed on a language and a universe made of one piece." Study 1: A high frequency heart The sound HRS supplies us with important analogical information with respect to certain parts of our anatomy. Coming back, for instance, to the relationship between the English horse and the German herz (heart), we may introduce another homonym: her is. the intemational unit used to measure the frequency of sound. Indeed, itis through its sound effect thatthe heart resembles a hotse, hence the fact that Herz has taken another meaning: one of sound measurement, Furthermore, the frequency at which the stirrup of our cars vibrates could only bear a name (her2) homonymous to horse.” The heart/ear relationship is further underlined by the fact that the ear and the heart have structures named or shaped after each other. ‘The upper chambers of the heatl, ie. those that receive incoming blood are called the auricles .e. the ears, Ears collect sounds coming from all directions very much like the two ears of the heart (auricles) collect blood from the entire body. This equation between sound and blood is instantly verified in French where son (sound) and sang (blood, pronounced san) are exact homonyms. Ears (auricles) collect son (sound) very much like heart auricles collect sang). The French sang (blood) finds another mate in the English song or sing, another effect of the voice. Indeed, the heart, with its constant thumping, produces the only natural body rhythm or song. Lying down at 21. The series of words explored nthe following chapters are thus ll ested To underine this fndamental characterise of oguoge, some ke-homongtaes al be explored more ‘fan once, al sach ime fom a dle wont 12, Here clout we enter amas emurlabe aspect ft language reaonsips. Not only do they ince wey pre cent dt, but alo, our proper names for, 2 hn Fess the name of the man who dscovere the viata ato sound. This pet's tobe deat weh, bey, ser chaps ni at grater lang inthe acon sone of Babel night, particularly in certain positions, we may well percei ears the song’ of our sang (blood) Bae fren FeenlyEngich £ Song. Reciprocally, the part of the ear that collects all sound-vibrations, ie. the eardrum, is itself heart-shaped. is 4 The eardrum, a hear shaped suc,‘Anatomy and language present us with a beautiful antinomy. The cochlea, the part of the ear upon which the stirrups are articulated, is snail-shaped. ‘There, the vibrations transmitted by the stirrups are sorted, organized and differentiated into their various frequencies. In other words, the snail in our ear slows down the impetuous information carried by the horse/her Like the horse, the snail transports, but at a diametrically opposed speed to that of the horse. The human ear needs these two opposites: fast, initial carrying horse) followed by a slow, selective one (snail). This meeting of the horse and the snail in our ear is confirmed by language: Hebrew for snail is ShVLL, an exact homonym of French CheVaL. (horse). The ‘numerous homonymies that exist between house and voice, further explain the presence of a sail in our ear (it carries its house, see next chapter). Fig 5. The eashapa cochlea and the straps Deaf, Mute and Hoarse “The ear/horse relationship evoked above allows us to resolve a umber of homonymies common to the Semitic and Indo-European trunks. Deaf people are generally mute. It is widely accepted that their rmuteness is not due to any speech defect, ‘They can speak provided they are‘taught how, but even then, their voice comes out as unclear for normally-hearing people ‘Some of these notions come out in the Hebrew HRS, ie. deaf, a hhomonym of the English horse or of the Germanic herz (sound unit. ‘The notion of mufeness appears in the word that characterizes the state closest to being muite for a normal man: hoarse, an exact homonym of horse. The couple HRS (deaf)/HoaRSe is exactly reproduced by the following French/Hebrew homonymy: SouRD is deaf in French, whereas SRD is hoarse in Hebrew. Fench/ Hebrew ESRD) trace) Speech, the natural complement of heaving, has been introduced in this square unit. Since we are dealing with impaired hearing (deafness), it appears as impaired speech (hoa). Ear Furrows The root HRS in Hebrew possesses a double meaning: deafness (of the cars, as above) and filling of the land). This remarkable precision wll alow 3st farther expat the pretence of Fiz oud frequency) inthis series of homonymies. The notion of furrows suggested Hebrew (HRS, dating) is also present in English since da a homonym of deep, the definition of a furrow. The component of speech is equally present with till being a homonym of tell. Deep/deaf and tilltll reproduce well the double meaning of the Hebrew HRS Uiling/ deafness.The center of these square units is clear speech creates waves in the air that are strict equivaients of furrows in tiled ground. To tell isto Jill the air. The number of such air furrows is measured in HeRZ, a homonym of the Hebrew HRS (tilling) but also of HoRSe. Here appears, indeed. another homonymical function of the horse: it has been used from time inamemorial to fill the ground. Study 2: Brain Fuel: Relationships like BRciN/BuRN, HiRN/HoRNo (brain/oven), FKAR/ FEAR (think/coal) ete. evoked at the beginning of this chapter, define the brain as a furnace where thoughts are forged. We shall see here some remarkable homonymies that further define the nature of the fuel sed by the brain. As with any other furnace, this fuel is wood, a wood defined, however, in human terms. Hebrew supplies an initial homonymy: ETS means wood and ETSa means advice. The brain burns as a fuel the wood (ETS) ie. the advice or information received from others. That information reached our brains in the form of a smaller branches. voice. In continuity with the above homonymy, we propose to see how language and anatomy confirm the woody nature of the human The Voice of the Carpenter The airflow used in voice production comes from our lungs. Tt is contained in a system of channels called the bronchiae. We perceive immediately a_homonymy with the theme of the wood: bronchia and ‘branch are exact homonyms. Not only do the bronchia resemble tree branches by their name, but also by their shape: they indeed look like the thousand branches of a tree, their collective name being the bronchial tre. "They form a tree, whose trunk (the trachea or wind- pipe) divides into two main branches, each of these dividing into EEMoreover, the above similarity in shape (tree/bronchial tree) is centered by a complementarity of function. Indeed, our hings absorb oxygen and reject carbon dioxide, Where did that oxygen come from and where does this carbon dioxide go to? The vegetal kingdom produced that oxygen and uses that carbon dioxide to ‘make the food we eat. The tree inside us, the bronchial tree, works in perfect symbiosis with the tree outside us. Each consumes what the other produces. “The bronchia/branch homonymy is thus centered by a homonymy of shape and function which allows us to consider the air of our bronchial tree as human wood. Furthermore, the frequency and volume of the human voice is determined by the amount of opening ot closing, as well as the tension of the vocal cords. By their constant modulation of the quantity of air that passes through the larynx, ‘vocal cords act as carpenters. They constantly chop the air nto pieces. Hebrew well reproduces this notion: carpenter and throat are consonantic homonyms (NGR and GRN, see Chapter 10), In Indo- Furopean languages, we find the same theme: the English log (piece cof wood) corresponds to the Greek fag- (word asin lgic). The French say briche for log, an exact homonym of bouche (mouth). French for oice and wood (voix/bois) are very close homonyms. ‘The larynx is a carpentry shop that sculpts the wood we expire. That wood (expired air) is further re-absorbed by trees and other plants for further recycling. It may also penetrate into the ear of our fellow men to be burt there as fuel; ie. when thinking (FKAR, Arabic), the BRaiN BuRNs the adoice/wood (ETS, Hebrew) it received and tums it into coal (FKAR, Arabic)” From the lungs of the speaker to the ear of the listener we thus have continuum of homonymies that remarkably relates our voice not only to the anatomy involved, but also to the natural sources (vegetal) and destination of the air we use. 19, We mentioned that the name Here srs to mesure the frequency of sound. Earcars inate In Her. We sow the varous homentms (eg. Horse to which this term ‘bls, "These vations oft ear were peace’ nthe Et plac by the coer ‘woof te lana. The ere of wood maybe ntocuced have) Genin wood © LZ, ‘sconsonane homonjmn ef HERZ (kahd laze equalent consonants, see Chap 8). ‘Our eau played by the wooden sis of eachother oneChapter 7 Of Words and Moleculese shall now indulge in some exercises of square unit construction. In other words, we will experiment with the method that will allow us to extract the basic elements of the universal language from the raw material contained in the world’s dictionaries. Let us suppose that we have found two homonyms that we shall call Al and A2: Homonym AI Homonym A2 "Neat, let us look for some synonym or associated term for AI. We may look for that synomym in the same language as A1 or, if not found, in a language of the same family or, lastly, in a language of a different family. We shall thus obtain: Homonym AL Homonym A2 ‘Synonym of AI ‘Third, we must look for a synomym of A2 that will, at the same time, be a homomym with the synomym of AI. We shall thus have: Homonym Al ——— a Homonym A2 — Synonym of AZ Synonym of A2 ‘This simple arrangement is the fundamental unit of the universal language. In itself it constitutes a true linguistic methodology. Let us consider it as such and try to apply it to concrete examples Bed and Breakfast We shall use the English synonyms home and house as the inital vertical element of a square unit. We find a homonym for home in the Hebrew HoM, meaning hot or heat, Together, HoMe, HouSe and HoM supply all but one detail of a square unit: Chomomen At) SOME HOM homonsm 2), (enon of 0) (Hou We are left with finding a synonym for A2, ie. the Hebrew HoM (heal), ‘The word we want to find must possess two properties: it must mean hot [synonym of A2] and at the same time be a homonym of house [synonym of AI). Having found it we close the square on all four sides. The word that fulfils this double condition is the German HeiS (hot) which is a homonym of the English HouSe. We thus obtain the following square unit:pints SSN ENE ton £2) ‘hen (hororgm At} HoMe EnglhyGamnan le 2 FHEIS) norm Cp tas bot tonenm House ‘We have constructed a square unit out of three languages which links house to heat. As a general rule, it is fairly easy to identify the fifth element that binds these ideas together. In the present case the theme of house and heat are clearly associated by the shelter that every house offers against changes of temperature.” By definition, a square unit relationship is made by two concepts linked by four words. It is always accompanied by a central theme that acts as an epicenter of gravity that pulls various terms towards its vortex. In the unit above, the house-heat complex suggests the notion of shelter against cold as its central binding, idea. The home/hom/house/heis square unit is a coherent structure that Provides us with a simple piece of information. In it, language has reproduced a natural link that relates the idea of a house back to the reason why it was built in the frst place: to feel warm, Let us take this same square relationship but change the initial word, Instead of the English home, we shall begin with the French maison (home). From there we shall follow exaclly the same procedure as 1) This trout out inthe English werd heath, which used to designate house a wl at the canal source of heat above, taking synomyms and homonyms from the same languages As in the case of home, we must find a Hebrew homonym for the French maison (pronounced MaiZoN). It exists in MaZoN, a word that means food or sustenance. We thus have: Crows) MaiSpN MaZoN tod) Let us look up in English and/or German a synonym for food, ‘The most evident is the English eat or the German essen. An ancient etymological form of these two words, still used in Scandinavian, is ede (d often is transformed into # at the end of a word, making eat resemble aed]. In English, this ancient form survives in the word edible. Our square thus appears as: emonmn tau) MaiSON MaZoN tooo son se 2 venonm — g ‘We are left with finding a tongue in which the word are means house. This will complete the square on all four sides. We shall posit as a mathematical axiom that such a word will always be found to complete the square when three of its comers have already been built. In the present case we can be certain that a language exists in which aede or a homonym of it means hous.Latin offers us the necessary word since the root aede means house in Latin. In modern English and French this root survives in edifice. We thus obtain the following square: se French/Hebrew : thous) MaiSon’ — Set ‘ons ue Ge anon) ssronyan (ext i } This square underlines man’s privileged status with regard to the connection between eating and housing. Only man eats in a house ‘This house food relationship has emerged by substituting the French ‘maison for the English home, In other words, the English Hebrew interaction (HoMe-HoM) describes the heal aspect of house whereas the French-Hebrew interaction (MaiSoN-MaZoN) describes the food aspect of howe. Each time it was possible to verify that this relationship existed in another language. We have thus far completed two elementary square units. They have enabled us to define the double function of a house for man: bed and breakfast. We shall now learn how to develop their potentialities. In other words, after having formulated a square, one must look for the more general context in which it is integrated or of which i is but a Patt, ie. the chain of information to which it belongs. Calling from the Roof In the previous chapters, we deliberately looked for specific elements that linked horse to wife. Here, we shall proceed by trial and error, ‘We shall take an elementary unit and let it reveal the story which it contains. Our objective is to create new units that conform to the general model proposed above. As stated, in order to develop a proper square unit we begin by searching for a new homonym for ‘one of the words that pertain to the square. We then proceed .0 perform the same mechanical operations listed above, i. look for a synonym for that homonym, etc. The elements of our frst square {home/hom/house/heiss all possess ‘numerous other homonyms. Let us choose one, the most exact possible, from one of the three tongues already used in this square. The German heiss (hol is an excellent starting point. The sound hiss has two meanings in German, hot and call. Thus, when asking someone in German, Wie heis) es? one can mean either What is this [object] called? or How hot is this? This German homonymy links temperature (hof) to speech (cal). We thus obtain the following relationship: ¢ @ = = ra “The geometric arrangement realized here is one of a square in which cone side has been lengthened. The meaning suggested by this square must be a function of the three ideas, house, heat and speech. fecal The homamymy cotibted by the Garman aan et) mst fit be confirmed, however, in otter languages. The link bate ph nd et oro n many cer ong int Often in uring soa. Tne, sithough German fas kd Spec to hea we sal find chee that ned fa Antthess col In Hebrew the rot for he word io al (QRo) is tn ext homonym of the ord for tol (Qa Ens al td cle re homo of ol ond cll Thshononymy ‘eyo ne Penh) the Egle he Grekey (cl) al of which are associated withthe Hebrew QR (lo call sand coi), The sound GLS means ice in French (asm glove) toad ic in Russian. In Basque, ce again find the link eth heer ‘io cal is @ homonynt of hit or ht. Germian for collie Hungarian provides us with tea interesting homonyms hl call) an Ell fo incdate or fo hate Fungi ea ——— i This ast homonymy reproduces our intial German homo 4s tht and to cll. Ii obtained, ower Ueongh Be Hungarian iol Gab) which menyssomelingSoplely ‘iffernt than the German la ok We have this been able to assemble a certain number of words roi Kink ea! and cold othe theme of se Calling ls od and These relationship indate that the German homonyay fais (cil an tis ell reproduced in seer languages We con ‘us consider it to be significant and exploitable Let us now take two close cousins to house, The English words rof and ailing are mot synomyms but are nevertheless strongly associated with the idea of house. We often hear that someone is looking fora roof over his head which indicates an equivalence between these terms. By definition, since rof and house ae interchangeable, the links already found for house and call apy equally to auf. In other words, through homonymies, we should be able to build one or Several square units that wil link the words roof and eiling to calling Let us verify this, CeiLinG and CaLlinG are a first and obvious relationship. In Hebrew, roof or ceiling is TiQRa. This word also ‘means call! Tt i the imperative or command form of the verb Quk (to call and thus shares the same root as the adjective Qar (coli). = : 1ot be considered significant if itis not Again, this homonymy cannot be consides verified in other tongues. English ancl German do so with roof being an exact homonym of the German raf, which means fo call, These terms allow us to build the following square unit: ~- @—= 7 | _ fo “ What is the center of gravity of this unil? As a first approximation wwe could say that the roof is traditionally the place where one is able to call from one house to another. As we proceed we shall see, however, that this homonymy reflects a much wider experience of the concept of house. Let us summarize our exploration of the above relationships. We have established two primary square units, one founded on the English word home, and the other on the Hebrew word TiQRa (rod ‘The first includes four terms (home/hom/house/heiss) that connect the idea of house to that of warmth. One of its components, the German hiss, possesses an exact homonym in its own language that means fo all. We can thus define the first unit in terms of a predominant house-heat relationship and a secondary or possiblehhouse-call relationship. The German hess may be said to open up our square unit to a potential link with another set of relationships We have traced such a set in the TiQRa-roof unit which is centered on the house-call relationship. This unit also includes an accessory clement of temperature since the Hebrew TiQRa (roof) i formed from the root QaR, which means fo cull as well as cold. In other words, what is essential in the house-heat square unit is accessory in the hhouse-call unit, and vice versa. These two square units complement each other since they include two individual meanings as well as two ‘meanings that are shared by both. This can be illustrated by the following schematic: Unit 1 Unit 2 proper meaning —— common meaning (how (on ‘common meaning —— proper meaning fan (hoxse/cal (One can thus build long, chains of square units in which each one brings into actualization what was potential in the previous one. We observe here the mechanism of the dispersion of sense or meaning between languages. By rings that include each two or three languages, true linguistic chains are constructed. These chains tell us a story. Moreover, the number of possible branches is as large as the number of rings. Each word possesses numerous’ homonyms, the exploitation of which would lead to the formation of collateral chains. In this way one can formulate or construct extremely dense networks of words and meanings. Our initial square unit can thus be symbolized by the following arrangement: home ——— house. TiQRa roof hom = heiss —heiss — TiQRa rut, ‘The upper line includes words meaning, house and roof The lower line begins with the Hebrew HoM (hot), continues with the German Hiss which means hot and fo call, and conchudes with the Hebrew ‘TiQRa (to call) and the German raf (to call). We shall describe this set of two square units as a moleclar sequence. Until now we have borrowed images from physics to describe linguistic relationships. The notion of gravitational force-fields has enabled us to visualize forces that, over long distances and spans of time, seem to have compelled words into becoming homonyms. We proposed to see in homonyms the final, steady state of the system. | In the middle we have a nucleus of meaning which acts as a center of ‘gravity around which the various homonyms orb The house/heat/call series that we have just seen evokes another science, chemistry We propose to consider each square unit as a molecule made of four atoms, Although bound to its neighbors, each of these atoms retains some free binding sites with which it connects to other atoms outside the molecule. They are thus available for linkage with other square units. In our unit above, the German word hiss can be described as an atom possessing two links. We have bound one of them (hot) in the house-heat relationship and left the other [al] free to establish the house-call relationship. To ths lst we were able to connect the other unit {tgra/roof/rf) With this successive branching off, square units can thus form true crystals of words, molecular arrangements that, through progressive additions of meaning, will express an ever more complex story.* 23) Ths recourse to sens ther than Huis snot purely metaphorical. Innate, ‘sles and chery area ingle ety. ‘They only form tn dint Ben rer fumes The unaral langunge is abo natural or orgne A such obeys the same [Ete ae atom One must not cee In woes mere conentons or sla human Ivins, "Thay hae mater and eer, ps and sub-parts, vay ruc The atoms. Words Go not imply dscrhe rater, they are combined wh. th may {laws in pss and chenity may these apple to Ingusice "See the woke of Bachelire, or move receniy, Mechel Sere, "They demonatate mewvelsiy the Domegendty ofthe socalled @actsclnoes wth the sence of ran 4) These ays can grou to inte ses proportion to the numberof languages Inmoduced. "Thay ae of amense mmpranoe and lb dlisted, na frre volume, der the ie Pardes.eee physical shelter over one’s head. Although it cannot be denied that 7 bie ina house to warm, it is no less true that a house is a Place from which one calls and speaks to other people. The walls of thehouse tke istunt ae tar paced by Ke oe from that house in the second unit. The heat of the house is a function of the presence of a voice, a dialogue. ‘The absence of such a voice is @ cold which is no less biting than the cold of a freezing wer n'a deed refon. Ones ete he ea not achieved if both of these forms of warmth and heat are not The French fot (roof, pronounced foua) is an exact homonym of the Pronoun toi (you ie. the one who is being called). The tot (roof) allows us to say foi (you). We build one structure in the hope of establishing the other, no less essential one. Moreover, the fi (of) is a foi (you). ‘The other person is a raof when he or she shelters and comforts us. German reproduces this organic link between roof and yous Dac is roof and dich is you. Likewise, the Hebrew TiQRe (cing, call!) is an imperative, ie. a supplication to the other. (roo (toi) ere (woo) DaCH In addition to TiQRa, another Hebrew word for roof is gag. a hhomonym of the English gag. This last relates roof to the opposite of speech since when someone is gugged it means that he or she is prevented from speaking. Gag in English also has an antithetical ‘meaning and refers to something which is done to make one laugh. The Latin root DoM (house, as in domestic or domicile) is a homonym of the Hebrew DoM meaning silence. A roof ean thus be a lid on a tomb for the living, = (ee Hevea 6G (sence, s F Late/Hdew (house) DOM DoM) (tence One could develop clusters of homonyms that would open our square units to other dimensions. For instance, the French triplet, habit (as in habitation), habit (clothing) and habit (as in habituated, introduces other functions unique to the house. Our habitation (house) is our most extemal clothing (habit). In it our habits take root These relationships fill the word house with heat, cod food, speech, silence, oppression, laughter, clothing and habits. From a neutral relationship such as house-heat or house-call, square units progressively contrast events and experiences carried by the word house. ‘An isolated word such as house is a dead term. It indicates nothing more than a heap of bricks and wood arranged in a certain order. Whether man lives there or not this house will continue to exist. Theuniversal language, on the other hand, extracts the human value from the word house, such that without man, this term would disappear. ‘This is underlined by the homonymy of the English home with the Latin homme (mar, as in human), House and the man that lives in it are one. Without a voice to call the roof has no raison ‘As we have seen, itis only when a word is allowed to interact with its homonyms and synonyms that it lives. Not that it is dead when it is detached from these interactions, since, as we shall see later, a word 's never separated from its square unit mates. It is only detached in our day-to-day languages, those that are called English, French, Chinese, etc. In our brain, where language is forged, words live in ‘molecular chains. Just as we will never find free floating carbon atoms evolving alone in the surrounding air we shall never find free floating words. The only place we find free atoms is in the scientist's laboratory. This state is, however, not natural. It needed enormous forces to obtain it. Likewise, the only place we find free words are the various cultures or nations that inhabit our planet. There too, one must exert an enormous force to maintain them in a free state. ‘This force is called nationalism or patriotism. It tears words from their context and with them, it tears mankind, Chapter 8 The Baker and the Beggar€ shall deal here with some of the simple rules of linguistics that will be used in the chapters to come. We shall « successively 1) the law of phonetic equivalence and 2) t 7 mnelthsis and anitha m2) coves Phonetic Equivalence: Vowels Human beings use a restricted number of sounds number of sounds to express themselves. These sounds can be divided into vowels and consarans, ‘he principle effect of vowels is to color consonants. With B, for instance, one can make Ba, Bi, Bu ete. From one region or culture to another, words retain their consonants while their vowels vary (cf ts fri, fact ete). This vasiabilty allows us to consider ll Vowels as accessory. For our purposes, therefore, four is equivalent to fr fe fr he. The speci ole of tone wl et Chapters 11 and 14 Phonetic Equivalence: Consonants Linguists group consonants accord 8 according to the part of the mouth used to pronounce them. Man produces his vocal sounds through various tmotions of the lips, the tongue or teeth. Most consonants. are vocalized through five of these oral motions. In other words, the twenty consonants used by an English speaker bent cn yan English speaker may be grouped in ‘Mand for instance, are produced by a sudden opening ofthe lips without any intervention of the teeth or the tongue. M and B we thus called labials (from lips). Likewise, the sounds K Q and G are Produced by motion of the tongue against the pulate, called palatals magne age palate, they are What is important to our thesis is tha consonants that are produced by Snir mations ofthe mouth ensily replace each other inal languages of the ‘world Words «written with equivalent consonanls can thus be considered as homonyms. These equivalences exist within each group. The Labials The labials, for instance, are B, M, P. V, F and W. They all involve the same motion of a sudden explosive opening and closing of the mouth. By whispering them discreetly, one will notice that they become indistinguishable, P is thus equivalent to B, which is itself ‘equivalent to M.! Consonants produced by close regions of the mouth are also interchangeable. P and F are good examples. In languages like Hebrew they are carried by the same letter. English also demonstrates this property since the addition of a H to P tums the latter into F, asin Philp. Some Latin languages have not adopted this convention (eg. the Spanish Felipe). V and W are also related to the labial group. They are thus equivalent. The French, for instance, pronounce W as V. V and F are also frequently interchanged. At the end of a word Fis often pronounced V (eg. the English of, pronounced or; the verb of half is halve). Slavic names end alternatively in off or oo, and the German ao is pronounced off B and V also permute freely. In Hebrew, for instance, these two sounds are carried by the same letier* In Greek, the letter Beta (B) is read V. The Greek alphabet thus starts with A, V instead of A. B. Likewise, in Russian, Bis read V. Finally, the conversion of Finto Bis a frequent phenomenon in both German and English. For instance, CCalF is said KalB in German. (Our first group of interchangeable consonants thus includes the labial family BM, P, F, Vand W. 1. tn canain languages such as Arabic bree no P sound An echive Acie spsker oil rend Baer send of PaPer 2. Accented ts ead Bat cron, Vet‘The Dento-Linguals ‘Another group of sounds is produced by the snapping of the tongue against the back part of the teeth. D and Tare members ofthis class, Here again itis easy to verify that, when whispered, these letters are indistinguishable. This has led to their very frequent interchange. ability, in most cases at the end of a word. For example, the English bread is related to the German brot. In the transition from one language to the other, vowels have changed and the German T became the English D. Likewise beard is bart in German. Let us note also that a final S and T often interchange. We saw above that hoT is heiSs in German The Palatals A third group is pronounced by a snapping of the tongue against the palate. Most important in this group are, on the one hand, the letter G- and on the other, the leters K, Qand a hard C. Here again, when whispered, Q (or K and C) and G cannot be distinguished. They are therefore easly interchanged. For example, the English equal appears in French as egal The Spanish agus (water) derived from Latin aqua. ‘The English second reads segond in French and segundo in Spanish, There are certain consonants that differ in their written form but not in their pronunciation. In non Semitic languages such as English, Q, Kand C are all used for the same sound. German is more srit inthis sense. A hard English C (as in colossal) often becomes K in German. (bolosa, In the series to come, we shall therefore consider words lke baker and beggar as phonetically equivalent The Whistled Letters A fourth group includes the so-called zohisled letters such as §, CH, SH ot Z. The equivalence of these leters is obvious. Sometimes, as in the English poisor or the French maison, Sis ead Z. In Hebrew, § and Sh are bome by the same letter We shall note other groups in passing: M and N are considered Nasal eters, K ana Lare Liss and often interchange, eb. Thee is also the problem posed by spelling. The letter C can be pial sin cr or while sin pe. resort to these In the pages that follow, we shall often have to phonetic equivalences for the following reasons. First, the fact that homonyms are the links between languages of very different writing and pronunciation compels us to use a kind of universal alphabet for the words that we shall compare. Such an alphabet can only be realized through the use of these equivalencies. Second, this system allows us to grasp apparently diferent words like bread, bind, bot tori efter pe, prt wed e820 any tential homonyms. All these words possess a constant centr Consonant (8) 2 variable first consonant that belongs to the labial group (BF, V, W, P) and a final dental consonant (T, D). Linguistic Operations In order to establish a basis for comparison of words in different families of languages, we shall subject them to two operations: First ‘we shall find their skeleon, ie. suppress vowels. Second, we shall ‘write the other possible forms of a word through the use of the rules of phonetic equivalence. For an example of the first operation we can take the word grove First, we write GRV or GRoVe, either completely suppressing the central vowels or writing them with lower case characters. In this form (GRV), Grove becomes a homonym with grave, grieve, groove, etc he phonetic equivalents ‘The second operation will consist in writing the pk of the skeleton that has been oblained. ‘The above GRV is thus equivalent to GRF (F=V), GRB (B=V), QRV (Q=G), or ORB. Its importat to remember the following: Homonyms are to be defined as swords that are made of the same or equivalent consonants, Metathesis ‘A meiaihessis an inversion of eters. In a given language or fry yen that a word may appear wil of languages it can sometimes happen that the same letters but in different sequences (abc, bea, orb). Linguistscall this phenomenon metathesis. For example, ask is often Pronounced aks (particularly in American English). ‘The K and 5 have changed places. Aks i thus a metathesis of ask. In Old English, Bird was pronounced brid. The Latin forma (form) is found in Greek, but with its letters reversed: morph (as in morphology) In Ficbrew, metatheses are a frequent phenomena, The Bible, for Instance, uses the words KeBeS and KeSeB almost interchangeably to designate sheep. Flame is ether LHV or LBH. A coat is indifferently SML or SIM ete Linguists generally hold that metatheses are remnants of the various forms that certain words originally had. With time, one form dominated.” We shall propose a totally different perspective Metatheses are not restricted to certain languages or periods. They are a fundamental rale of linguistics. In Chapters 9 and 10 we shall demonstrate that all words are metatheses, Antithesis We have encountered this phenomenon in the preceding chapters in the form of antonyms. We shall define them as words that mean one thing in one language and exactly the opposite in another. ‘The English cold, for instance, is a homonym of the Spanish caldo (ho), They have the same sound (CLD) but opposite meanings. These anttheses are very frequent. They balance the universal language by systematically presenting the two poles of every concept 3) Hebrew wes wten ta very ey dae when several fons ofthe sre words ween use ‘Tes maatheses ware included in weing, and tansmited down Yo our sores Engl bepen fo be uiten much er han Hebrew By hat es demroasg ee ben chosen, and the meathess diappeared aoe Herons The Way re Tete, Chapter 9 The Twenty-Two Letters of the Universe€ shall develop a series in this chapter which will allow us to put to use the various elements ofthe universal language discussed up till now, including the linguistic properties (phonetic equivalence, metathesis, antithesis etc) introduced in the preceding chapter At the 1sk of shocking somewhat, our series will deal with a slang Word, The alLimportant place occupied by this so-called vulgar language in the vocabulary of the majority of people certainly deserves our attention. We shall see that slang is a particularly rich field of expression for the universal language." Of Screws, Nuts and Bolts In proper English, the word screw designates a particular type of bolt or nail. In American slang, it designates, in a rather derogatory way, the sexual act. Sera may thus be said to have two homonyms (he foo] and the sexual act). Its etymology will allow us to illustrate the notion of antithesis seen above. In old English, sco (tol) was written serowe. In old French, this same word existed as esorowe, In modem French, escroue evolved into éerow, ‘meaning the mul into which serews are inserted, 1 The edent ofthe importance of tans canbe verted inthe ees of New York ce Par share ope hea eran kay slang words repmoted ve or st tes n'a Wek ed ‘etencl A seperate werk wi be plated on thse hay openions - ts um @ @ ex. — um @—=-@= ut ‘The antithesis is clear here: from a common ancestral fom odes ie. the male element, English coined a word designating the screw, ie. whereas French forged a word designating the md, ie. the female complement of the screw? Let us return now to the double meaning in American English of the term screw, It allows us to set the first member of a square unit into place. Ger Exava song 3 ee he ped ert eninge wt fiurtoe meaning i'n We shall eons hat see Rae ie deel using the word bread or dough to mean money, Americans have Foils Rope Rept, Aral nie erm, Sra ei 9 pee paeetre iy reap ren ee i ants Seopa cet (seal oaNow we must find another language which will confirm the homonymy sugge: sted by the double meaning of screw. ‘The French 2s (cree) possesses an exact homonym in the Latin vis, a word which designated force originally and later sexual potency (as in virile). ‘This double meaning of wis (srew/virlty) reproduces very closely the fie sugested by the English ses Our fist square unit will thus Eg (bolt) ‘screw: _ FrechLativEngh et lecee) (ig Hebrew also closely reproduces this parallelism with VRG meaning screw, and GVR, a metathesis meaning virile. A strong homonym te this series is the English ViGoR, a synonym of virile HareuEngits —_—— @ wi) GIVER [Link] Arabic US and the Franch BiSe [iS both designate Sed a woman as a sre ihn mut See belo blend We have thus three languages: Hebrew, French and more recently American slang, that have closely reproduced the same analogy between a mechanical device, the screvi, and virilily Vices and Screws ‘A considerable number of words of the VGR family naturally integrate with the above square units giving us further details on this analogy of the sexual act. In continuity with the Hebrew root VRG (screw and virile), for instance, we find the French VeRGe (ie. the ‘male genital organ); it specifies thatthe verge (male organ) isthe voreg (screw) that performs the sexual act. The female plays here the role (of the mut (scrove in old French). This is reproduced in yet another homonym of the VRG group: ViRGin (from the Latin ViRtGo) a term that supplies us with the antithetical female aspect of this act* In medical terminology, moreover, the external part of female genitalia have a name of very clear relevance to the above: the vulva. This word has two meanings: the extemal genitalia of the female and to turn (es in evolve, revolve etc). The introduction of the notion of turing is clearly relevant in a series where the sexual act is compared to the motion of a screw in a mi. The concept of motion appears with the close homonymy between vagina and wagen (as in wagon), a Germanic root meaning motion, We have thus far obtained the following: ‘4The Ena lean tam fr sodomy fs bugger, 2 word of BGR form, When iterate 0 Hatz GBR (ll an rene URG ims organ spent appopeate word to designate an ac which onl mele papas sre concen——_ iGoR ‘ tm ms tekce Se a. i The above relationships have allowed us to verify our initial Proposition: a homonymy created recently by American slang exists clearly in other languages and, quite astonishingly, in words that are a few thousand years older than the various meanings of screw ‘We shall now associate what we have called collateral chains with this series, Let us remember that a square unit functions like a four-atom reactive molecule, each alom (ie. tord) possessing free binding sites Wee shall see that the image evoked by screw, verge, virgin and vis is integrally reproduced and amplified in another root, BTI, that represents the translation of many words of the VGR combination, In Hebrew, for instance, Virgin is BeTula (BTL). One of the rmetatheses of this word is BoLT, a synonym of screw. The VoReG/ \ViRGin relationship is thus an exact equivalent to that of BolT and BeTula. 5. Larqunges used to vey the Amecan hmong ee fr elder than the invention othe setow ise “Language proves the cjece 2 more ea desu, 9 tame devloped Englah/Hebrew EB on French for bolt is Boul oN, a homonym of the Greek BaLaN, the glans ‘or crown of the penis (a term still used in anatomy), ie. the tip of the screw. The balan (glans) of the male ongan is thus the boson (bolt) that is screwed in the nut Pig Te ‘The above relationships show that man, through his slang, has seen in the sexual act an event that strictly parallels the act of tuming a screw (the male organ) in a nut (the female organs).® Language even offers a judgment of the sexual act seen from the above perspective, 6, Aparcular tee slevent here, he birch, Language eats the female sen of he Ven Bich = boueas in French, a hamseuen of Bouton bd Bolen and beso ee [rotouncod aoa th smear are carts roman eer form, Bui, eneal ttt. [Lan fand in carent boreal deszipons), the veh aes scale etl,» werd ot ‘means urgin in Hebe Tach is Ds he hemongn of fot and ign. fe come fens ulth the theme ofthe virgin ae ts gadous and ellaninate tances fl J Kaw the rch ros sp and adhe of eas Ban ths heuer, bark pel of long is leogt, ging ita tom, rage spect. Thes aneches of ark cones eB ‘zea the tearing ofa womans vagy. Lal us ole thet EAC a Fomowym of he Het BaSaF Inet) Bech comes om od Engies tes,» phone valet 12 Peis, the operation lied ty the wii