27 Days to Germany and Couting Down – Idiom and Communication

The original version of this post, in portuguese, was published on 27 dias para a Alemanha e contando – Idioma e Comunicação, in December 27th, 2007

—

“In principio erat Verbum
[...]
Omnia per ipsum facta sunt…”(*)

“The Invention of printing is the greatest event in history. It is the mother of revolutions. It is humanity’s mode of expression totally renewed, human thought discarding one form and putting on another, it is the complete and definitive change of skin of that symbolic serpent which, ever since Adam, has represented intelligence.”
Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831

In the post 30 Days to Germany and Couting Down, i did comment about two of my oldest memories about sympathy for Germany: a classic episode from Woody Woodpecker and a Kohlback Motors TV advertise.

I think the very first empatic and sympathetic contact to Germany was exactly the idiom, the basic code which without no communication happens: either by using images, by writing, by speaking, it is needed a code set, a idiom, in order to exist a communication. And if the obvious importance of communicate in a trip to a overseas country is not enough, the german idiom and the Germany importance in the commmunication has always and deeply fascinated myself.

The german language origins are in the several dialects from Central Europe – origins shared by a lot of anglo-saxonic idioms – and some latin. We could say it is a borderline that became a strong independent territory. in Brazil, this process still happening and it is stronger, since our idiom has origins in the convergence point of several languages and cultures: portuguese, all the Tupi family, the africans linguistics groups, and, with less intensity, all the idioms from the groups that migrated here. This cultural and linguistic dinamic makes the countries to have a huge historic influence. And if today Brazil are having more cultural, economic and political influence, as has been stated by many authors, the Germany, it’s culture and idiom had a fundamental role in what could understood as the biggest revolution in the Cristian Era: The Protestant Reformation.

Without zooming in details – you can find more info about that in the Great Divine Oracle or on Wikipedia – the Reformation just became a revolutions with great proportion because of the creation, by Johannes Gutenberg, of the the mobile types press printer, which allowed Martin Luther to dare the Catolic Church spreading manifests on panflets, in german, everywhere. By this time, information was strictly controlled, and all the sacred books, used to regulate everyone lives, were writen in latin, and any book was handmade, in a slow rhythm and very limited production. Few people could read latin and the access to books were hard, few people had ways to questionate the foundations of the order. Gutenbergs invent and Luther courage did open the ways to oppositions, discussions and paved the way to mass education and communication. As consequence, it allowed that ideas were spreaded easier and free from the need of its author be in the same place.

Not fearing to use a cliché, what cames after, is history: Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Marx, Hitler and Goebbels , Saramago, Me, Ulrike and you, reader, could communicate to the world.

“Blame” the Germans!

Schreib mal und lies mal!

Write! Read!

hug’

Celso Bessa

* = In the beginning was the Verb:
[...]
All things were made by him…

(John, Chapter 1, Verses 1 e 3)