Plumbing the
Orthographic Depths
with
Djacq-Jhacq
Kū-Stowe
[The following is the transcript of the narration of a never-aired 1968 nature program by famed deep-sea explorer and documentarian linguist Djacq-Jhacq Kū-Stowe, presented here for posterity. —Eds.]
Ah, the vast European sea, a mesmerizing expanse where languages float, sink, and shimmer in the orthographic currents. As we prepare for our descent, we can see deteriorating bits of Esperanto bobbing at the surface—an artificial raft of letters lashed together with pluck, idealism, and ugly diacritics. Its crystal clear transparency is too perfect, erasing, as it does, the subtle beauty found in the texture of the small imperfections of natural languages. Ultimately, it is nought but plastic debris, floating conspicuously insensate on the surface, a reminder of what happens when we try too aggressively to refine what nature has made. Now, let us dive deeper into the orthographic depths, where the true wonders lie.
As we plunge below the surface, the first glimmers of the shallow orthographies greet us. Finnish words are brightly translucent, their clarity reflecting an elegant, organic simplicity—that which Esperanto was unable to replicate. Beside it swims Italian, vibrant and melodic, its orthography as regular as the tides. Here, every vowel and consonant plays its part in a symphony of predictability. “Ciao!” it calls, and we understand immediately.
Moving slightly deeper, Spanish joins the scene. Like schooling fish, its spelling and sounds move largely in sync, a few rogue phonemes—silent ⟨h⟩ and the two-headed ⟨b/v⟩—flitting erratically at the periphery. Nearby is Croatian, as precise as the shell of a Nautilus, its orthography a marvel; its letters each perfectly fit to a sound.
Drifting into the mid-depths, we encounter a rich variety of languages that mix general pellucidity with a hint of mystery. The swaying and interlocking consonant clusters of Polish are reminiscent of a great kelp forest, their patterns both bewildering and beautiful. Here, ⟨cz⟩, ⟨rz⟩, and ⟨sz⟩ form tangled branches that conceal more predictable pronunciation beneath, while the allure of ⟨dz⟩, ⟨dź⟩, and ⟨dż⟩ masks hidden dangers to those who would incautiously swim in these waters.
Swedish and Norwegian also glide along at these depths, sleek and adaptable. Though mostly regular, their vowel shifts and tonal quirks remind us that even in clear waters, currents can surprise. Icelandic looms like a glacier—ancient, unyielding, and preserving the orthographic relics of a bygone era. Its regularity is tempered by its complexity, a frozen world where old meets new.
Then, just below these relatively lit shallows, the orthography becomes murkier. German passes us, a compound leviathan, its transparence obscured by its sheer size, silent letters and unpredictable stresses apt to snag the unwary.
Ah, now we reach the twilight zone. French emerges, a shipwreck cloaked in seaweed and mystery. Its orthography teems with silent letters, unpredictable liaisons, and archaic forms—barnacles clinging to modern usage. Pourquoi? it seems to whisper. Why spell what is never spoken? A cold, dark museum, preserving history at the expense of logic.
Portuguese—cousin to French—drifts nearby, less opaque but still cloaked in layers of nasal vowels. It sings its orthography rather than dictates it. Greek, too, inhabits this zone—an ancient mariner navigating between historical spellings and phonetic realities, its orthography a palimpsest bearing traces of millennia-old sounds that now slumber in the dark depths.
As we descend further, the light grows dimmer. Dutch swims past, its vowels stretched and twisted by strong, deep currents. Striving for regularity, the oddities of its diphthongs and borrowed words create confusing ripples.
And then, below them all, we find the deep abyss—the orthographic trenches where light scarcely penetrates. Here lies English, a monstrosity of contradictions, its spelling rules as chaotic as the currents of a maelstrom. Borrowed words swirl turbulently, each bringing its own rules from French, Latin, Germanic, and more exotic sources once completely foreign to these waters. Silent letters drift like ghostly jellyfish, and vowel shifts churn unpredictably. What remains is the wreckage from the clash of titanic dreadnoughts—beautiful, complex, and utterly incomprehensible to the uninitiated.
Near this trench lies Irish, a dark and enigmatic presence—a labyrinth where sounds hide behind veils of silent letters and unexpected mutations—a challenge to speakers, rewarding perseverance with a profound beauty that lies in its depth.
From here, we can peer outward and downward into the distant and unfathomable depths of the Asiatic sea—and shudder. Chinese, with its logograms and tonal layers, lies in an entirely different domain, not marked by transparency or opacity but by a system almost completely alien to the phonemic waters of Europe. It exists in a world unto itself, a deep-sea ecosystem where meaning, sound, and writing coexist in a delicate balance of immense pressures.
And so, at last, we rise, leaving behind the terrors of the deep—carrying thoughts and memories of things both seen and unseen—to be cocooned once more by the warm salty shallows of this sunlit sea, our thrilling expedition a resounding success.
