Are all languages capable

There’s an old controversy about language. It revolves around whether all languages are capable of expressing complex ideas. Some contend that all are and others take the position that only some are. In other words, some people think that some languages are primative and others are sophisticated. C. S. Lewis noted that “sincerely pious people in the sixteenth century shuddered at the idea of turning the time honored Latin of the Vulgate into our common and (as they thought) ‘barbarous’ English. “

At that time, the most widely used Bible translation of the day was the Latin Vulgate. Some people had become so used to hearing the Bible read in Latin that when they heard it in a lesser language, such as English, the Bible sounded crude and lightweight to them. And English was indeed a lesser language in that day. Latin was the language of education and literature. Consequently, Latin had a more words including words for advanced concepts. English did not. This points to a problem – important languages fade into obscurity and lesser languages become important. How could that happen if some were inherently superior or inferior?

Also, God chose to give us his Word in two unimportant, unsophisticated languages – Hebrew and Koine Greek. Hebrew was a language of little importance with no scientific or litterary tradition. Koine Greek was the everyday language of the streets. It is notable that the apostles did not write the New Testament in classical Greek, a language with lots of literature, science and philosophy.

Then we have the events recorded in Acts 2 where people from all over heard in their own languages, many of them unsophisticated languages of ordinary people.

Even today this controversy is alive here and there. For example, in Jamaica some oppose the translation of the Bible into Patois, the most widely spoken language there. For example, the BBC quotes Jamaican Bishop Alvin Bailey “I don’t think the Patois words can effectively communicate what the English words have communicated.” “Even those (Patois) words that we would want to use to fully explain what was in the original, are words that are vulgar.” I take the position of those who, in the 14th century, first translated the Bible into English in spite of those who then said about English what Bishop Bailey is now saying about Patois. Here’s what Henry Knighton, a 14th century chronicler, wrote about translating the Bible into English. “Christ gave His Gospel to the clergy…but this master John Wycliffe translated the Gospel from Latin into the English…common to all and more open to the laity and even to women…and so the pearl of the Gospel is thrown before swine and trodden under foot…the jewel of the clergy has been turned into the jest of the laity…and has become common.”