The Elders Speak
Hey, peeps. I don’t have any news in the ongoing story of Openfly and her escape from Shalampax to report today, but hearing about the bonobos’ language and Openfly’s natural ability to understand and speak it brought something to mind that I hadn’t thought much about before.
If you go to the history section of the official Shalampax Web site you’ll see that it claims that the people on this island (which hadn’t yet been named at that point) didn’t have much of a language at all before Marie taught them English in 1952. According to the Web site, back then, folks here just did a lot of, “gesturing, grunting and getting unbelievably bitchy over the fact that, despite one’s best efforts, people usually didn’t have the foggiest of ideas as to what anyone else was trying to communicate.”
Hmm … grunts. Sound familiar?
Well, it gets even more interesting.
When confronted with claims of a lack of a comprehensive language on our island before 1952, some of the old folks around here say that’s a bunch bull crap. The elders say that, au contraire (actually, they don’t say “au contraire,” they’d never say anything as pretentious as that, but what they do say has a lot more swear words than I want to reprint here), they had a very rich language. But when Marie came, she couldn’t recognize that their grunts and other sounds were a language, so she taught them English.
According to the elders, even when they learned English and told Marie that their grunts and shrieks were a language, she didn’t believe them. The old tongue was eventually abandoned because it didn’t help Shalampaxians in their goal of extracting as much money as possible from the rest of the world.
The elders’ stories aren’t on the official Shalampax Web site because the elders can’t get the hang of the Internet. They’re convinced it’s a passing fad and it’s not worth their time trying to learn how to use it.
What’s more, most of us never pay any attention to the elders. As we often lovingly say around here, “Ignore those doddering, old, senile fools. They haven’t a frigging clue. I wish they’d just hurry up and die already.”
Now, I’m not so sure. Maybe their stories are true. Maybe there really was a language on our island before 1952. Maybe it was the same language that the bonobos use today. I don’t know.
I felt the need to put that thought out there for everyone to consider. I hope to have more news from Openfly or Dr. Don within the next few days. I’ll keep you posted.
If all the frigging senile elders keel over, aren’t the breeding stock women of Shalampax going to be really ticked off having to be pregnant to replace them to maintain the population quota?
Ill advised at best – and besides I bet the geezers can’t remember what they were grunting about in 1952 anyway.
@David: Good point about the breeders. Besides, the women here tend to like the geezers. Women complain that us young bucks rush through sex too much, but the geezers’ equipment doesn’t work as well so they take much longer to finish. The women seem to like that. It’s just the young men who wish the geezers would kick off. Of course, we don’t have to breed replacements.
Good point also about the memory of the 1952 grunting. Anyone that ancient can’t possibly have much of a memory left. They’re probably making the whole thing up.