From time to time when I am out among other people I overhear conversation in a language I am vaguely familiar with. I can only decipher a word or two, so I have to infer the jist of the dialog loosely. And I reflect on how language unites and yet separates us from each other.
When I was in Japan, I made friends with a couple from North Korea. They cheerfully served as guides for me in a country with all the instructions written in (worse than Greek!) Kanji symbols. There are roughly 2,000 commonly used Kanji characters, each representing a unique concept or word. Kanji is difficult to master as it is a hieroglyphic (not phonetic) format. Nevertheless, Kanji is very aesthetically appealing, hence Penny's choice of Kanji character tattoo in the Big Bang Theory.
As my North Korean friends and I were walking through a park in Hatoyama-New Town, I saw graffiti artistically spray painted in bold, colorful Kanji characters on a concrete bridge. "What does that say?" I asked breathlessly, marveling about a society so intellectual that even its vandals were poets, expressing themselves in obscure characters that took years of study to reproduce.
The North Koreans exchanged glances and shook their heads sadly. "It is very bad. The message means they want to kill other people."
I felt somewhat like a dog that had been called vile names, but in a sweet and kindly voice. And I was reminded of how much of human communication, particularly written language, is meaningless outside cultural context. Teaching literacy helps us to overcome the isolation that can accompany cultural identity, which if not addressed, can breed misunderstanding and contempt.
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