Parsnip. Magnanimous. Sepulcher. This could be the beginning of a particularly esoteric New York Times Connections puzzle, but it is also how I chose to begin this week’s column. By selecting and recording arbitrary words that popped into my mind, I demarcated this piece of writing as a piece of writing; I began a series of words that followed from this obscure beginning and, taking this series in sum, I thus constructed a unified column upon the parsnip-laden ground. This is the raw power possessed by my first words.
Well, technically, these aren’t my real first words. I’ve definitely written other words before. By my mom’s eyewitness testimony, my first spoken words included “mama,” “dada” and “wawa.” This linguistic entry into the world is exceptionally common among babies (unfortunately, I was not a unique child) although the choice of words is not solely due to the immediate proximity of mama or dada. In order to encourage suckling behavior, babies have evolved to be particularly sensitive in the fronts of their mouths, meaning that words that form there are easier to enunciate. Moreover, these words are easier for babies to observe and mimic — the more frontal ‘mama’ is much easier for a baby to say than ‘sister,’ for example.
While we are each endowed with an individual first word, that particular instance that marked our first moment of genuine expression, it becomes apparent that there exists a collective first word. After all, humans have not always possessed a spoken language, and written language is an even more recent innovation. So what started it all? What was ‘the’ first word?
The written record is largely incomplete, but it captures some concrete first words floating around. Sumer, widely considered home to the first written language, contains the oldest love poem yet discovered, which recounts the king’s marriage to a goddess in order to ensure prosperity in the coming year. It is a tale of passionate, deeply erotic love — “You have captivated me, let me stand tremblingly before you … Give me pray of your caresses.” The depth of sexual passion and the human reverence of beauty forced these poetic words into creation, beginning an eternal struggle to render the world in verse.
Unfortunately, much like we cannot remember our own infantile first word, that very first spoken word is tragically lost to the eons of spoken language that followed it. Amazingly, however, we do have clues as to what some of the first words may have been. A 2013 study found 23 English words whose roots are cognates in four or more major language families, meaning that they probably developed from a single root, so these are some of the earliest and most durable words still around. The very first word on the list — the first potential first — is “thou,” beating out “I,” “man,” “fire” and, oddly enough, “bark” or “worm.” It is common across all seven Eurasiatic language families. The most universal, most primal word we possess is ‘thou’; our first need is to address the person immediately before us, to relate ourselves to them. We first speak a ‘you’ into existence and we become social, linguistic beings.
In truth, I did not capture the full story of the average baby’s first words earlier. (Notice that the fact that there are words in this column that came ‘first’, before these, allows me to refer back to myself — it creates an ordered narrative that creates this work.) Babies do not always describe what they see; rather, tykes are teeming with more immaterial, socially-oriented words, like ‘uh-oh’ (the fourth most common baby word) ‘hi’ and ‘more,’ that only gain meaning when directed at other people. We implicitly understand, at first, that our language draws not just from our environment, but from the simple presence of another listening individual.
What was the first word of this column? If you remember any particular word I have written, it is likely to be that one. This is the commonly known primacy effect: The first item in a list is one of the most salient. Herein is the subconscious power behind the first word; we must begin somewhere and thus, no matter how inconsequential, that beginning is imbued with the incredible significance of all that it allows to follow.
Karl Marx once referred to language as “practical consciousness,” for it only arises from “the need, the necessity of intercourse with other men.” We could then consider language, in its practical and social function, to begin our outwardly expressed consciousness — the only consciousness that we can really articulate. Our first words are nonsensical. And yet, they awaken us to the world. They are compelled, forced out of our mouths and pens, by the intense passion, the novel idea, the profound consciousness that follows from them. To begin is to announce that there is more to come, to entirely create oneself in the eyes of an audience. To be and to open the question of becoming. Word up.
