Yes, that is also our way:

we say, ‘We are all related.” 

He explains that there was a time when all beings spoke the same language and could understand one another, so all of Creation knew each other’s names.

Excerpt from Braiding Sweetgrass 

By Robin Wall Kimmerer 

Language is a living thing. It shapes, creates and evolves. 

With the subtle movements of eyes, a few simple nods and hands reaching to hold kin—before words had meaning and made worlds—the early humans unveiled each other’s inner landscape through silence and gestures. 

The silence broke with utterances. Words after words, the tongue-shaped sentences and language were born.

The origin of the word ‘language’ comes from the Latin lingua, meaning ‘tongue.’ And unlike language, the tongue is not solely a human construct.

As the vertebrates left their aquatic home for the terrestrial world, the metamorphosis of the tongue made life possible.

The flickering tongue of a snake smells the surroundings. The tongue of a chameleon, twice the size of its reptilian body, catches prey with a speed greater than Earth’s gravitational acceleration. The clicking tongue of the Egyptian fruit bat locates prey in the darkness by echoing surroundings.

As for us, with the awakening of consciousness, a riddle emerged on our tongues: How did our language originate?

The Proto-Indo-European language lived in the tongues of people. It was written for the first time by modern humans after 2,000 years. How did linguists accomplish this? They awaken the dead languages by phonetic reconstruction, following the common roots of words in genetically related languages. And yet I wonder, how long will it take us to reconstruct sounds that take us back to nature?

Language moves in a certain direction: softer sounds transcend, leaving behind the hard sounds. Perhaps that is also the direction of life—hard nutshells shedding for seeds to awaken, water wearing away the rock, and the human spirit ascending from havoc, only with humility.

Is this the reason ‘Human’ and ‘Humility’ hum from the same sounds?

We travel from past to present and to future, with language taking us back and forth. If eyes are the windows to our soul, language is a window to our intellect. We meditate on abstract sounds that live inside our mouths, and the worlds we will see will be gauged from them.

The distance between humans and nature appears wider than ever and yet, with words, it can be reconstructed in seconds. The future we witness is not far from what we speak.

We have moved from creation stories and folktales to a more fluent and analytical world. Our tongue coordinates and articulates language, while the non-human world remains muted.

But is it only the human tongue that creates sounds? How could abstract words be given meaning, and yet the meaning from the conscious be stolen?

The expressions of more-than-human worlds are often considered unsophisticated communication; their gestures lack meaning, their calls are not structured, and yet they whisper in an ancient tongue, speaking in balance with the rest of creation.

The spider on the wall is vibrating the web, sensing the prey and communicating with others. The trees are holding and sharing resources with their community through mycorrhizal networks. The clouds are being created by moisture released by trees. What if the human language has borrowed very little from the language that the whole natural world speaks?

Our senses are limited; we see less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum and only hear frequencies between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz. To the bare human ear, the intricate whale songs and dolphin whistles are silent. 

There are only two ways to interpret language: we can choose to be sole speakers or learn the mother tongue of nature. I believe in the possibility of the latter.

As of now, I can hear the birds singing near my window; they too have dialects. Even though I’m unaware of the meaning of their songs, it is still music to my human ears.

If change occurs within the observer, through listening, we enter into communion.

When the winds rustle through the leaves,
the ice cracks, and the river gurgles,
nature sings louder and louder,
giving birth to language with buzzing bees and chirping birds.

When these songs reach our inner landscape,
a connection is made.

Isn’t this a language too?

A universal mother tongue,
living and breathing
through all beings.

When the Earth sings,
why should we be apart?

Words by Priyanka Singh Parihar,

Founder and Editor-in-Chief