“It is dead night…
The stars are shining in the sky tonight, the snow lies white all around, the frost is cruel…
Here is a lonely old farm where everyone is sleeping. All but one…
The Tomten is awake. He lives in a corner of the hayloft and comes out at night when human beings are asleep…. (he) goes first to the cowshed. The cows are dreaming that summer is here, and they are grazing in the fields. The Tomten talks to them in tomten language, a silent little language the cows can understand.”
The old Tomten goes ahead around the farm and speaks the same silent language to other animals. And also the horse, sheep, hens, dog, cat, fox, they can all understand!
… even the children could IF they were awake! This is what the Tomten stories reveal to us: the existence of a silent language.
In several fairy-tales we also learnt about the possibility of communicating using the same language.
Without those stories we would probably know nothing about the silent language of Tomtens and other special beings. Our present life-style is in fact a “no-tomten life-style”, for it overloads their silent little language with its lack of time for listening.
Every winter in our family we read the beloved Tomten stories again and again and set a bowl of cereals and milk in the porch to welcome the Tomten, when he goes around in the night to check that everything is fine. And every year the same questions resound: is the silent language just a sweet creation of fairy-tales and legends? or does the silent little language have a real existence? can someone understand it? can someone speak it?
Who speaks the silent language?
The Tomten, say the story. And the animals. And the children. I can also imagine quite a few more creatures. One can say that this is still fantasy, no much real, no much concrete, I actually daresay that every human being can understand and speak the silent language, even though many people are not aware of it and don’t know anything about their potential.
We, humans, are in fact plunged into the world of the silent language even when it is noisy all around, even if we are not aware of this condition: the silent language is widely spread in our daily life and plays a vital role in our everyday human relations. Some times the silent language moves on with our gestures, some times it rides over the rays of our eyeblinks, some other times dances on words of the proper spoken language and reaches the secrets nooks of the listener.
What is then the silent language?
Edward Hall wrote about the “Silent Language” (1959) based on his experiences and studies as anthropologist and brought to light that every local community has a silent language as well as time and space have their own language.
To some extent, the silent language can be considered as the flow of contents (concepts, feelings, intentions, multiple meanings underlying the spoken language) that goes unspoken amid human beings. Or more in general, amid speakers and listeners. T
he silent language is a sort of endless activity of our soul that continuously radiates contents, whether we are conscious of it or not, whether we are actually speaking or not.
May I suggest two moments when we can experience the activity of the silent language; two moments when the silent language becomes visible, real and concrete for everyone.
One is the moment of inspiration.
Based on the silent message of their inspiration artists visualise it in their paintings or sculptures. Musicians in their compositions. Poets in their poems and pieces of literature.
The second moments when we remember. Our memories are probably the clearest and deepest evidence of the silent little language. Memories of joyful events, memories of beloved people, memories of historical events, memories of our daily life.
The vocabulary, phonetics and structures of the silent language are still in progress and won’t be ready before years, so we all are still on time to get involved in this process, if only each person who wants to participate has in his or her pocket three tools (or weapons): silence, determination, consistency.
Interested? May I suggest you to read the Tomten stories for you will enjoy regardless your age.
Not interested? May i advice to read the Tomten stories for you will enjoy regardless your belief.
Meanwhile, let’s practice and improve our spoken English language, the most spoken second language in the world: let’s “Actively Learn English” then and dream of the summer programmes like the cows dream of grazing in their fields!
vr