Tag: hu

Posted on in Poetry

Apfelsaft

for my father

The sun set in the glass.

Did you know what was coming

when you crouched under the stairs

and listened to the bombs

drop on London?

Did you know what was coming

when your guardian travelled down

to see you

in the grand surroundings of Christ’s Hospital,

Vaughan Williams’s shock of white hair

in the chapel,

and shuffled off

in the growing darkness

to catch the last train home?

This was love,

wasn’t it?

Did you know what was coming

when you stuck it out

to become an officer

and were put in charge

of men older,

more savvy,

than you were?

Is this when your appreciation

of Bach

began?

Did you know what was coming

when you shared a bedsit

with your mother

and became determined

to better yourself

by listening to all of Beethoven’s symphonies

from the library?

Or when Eddie

took you to the terraces

at Brentford

(“make way,

he’s only a littl’un”)?

Did you know what was coming

when you measured up

to my grandfather

and married Mum

(early colour photos

of us pottering in the garden,

you look dashing in them)?

Clearway Promotions,

Claygate Dramatic Society,

Cancer Research Campaign

– you built yourself up.

You drove us

in the dark

to foreign countries

where they spoke funny languages,

you put us in tents

a stone’s throw from the water

(we would need those stones

to weigh down the corners

when the storm came along).

You took your responsibility

very seriously

and instilled it in us.

You could be bloody-minded

– I wouldn’t have wanted

to cross you –

you grew in stature

and yourself became a Samaritan

to those in need.

You were widely respected,

you were somebody,

an ugly sister, Bob Cratchit,

you had a sense of humour,

and that twinkle never quite

left you.

You liked in the early evening

to stand by the drinks

– yours was a G and T,

Mum’s was a sherry –

and while smoking a Silk Cut

to tell me what was going

through your mind.

It helped you to lay it out,

you were not one to leave things

to chance.

And so,

when we sat on the terrace

overlooking the Black Forest,

you poured sunlight

into my glass.

It was something new,

something I hadn’t tasted before,

and this gave you a great satisfaction.

I don’t know what we talked about,

you probably reminisced about your time

in Germany,

the dunes of Sylt,

but I have glimpsed that sunlight

ever since:

on the ghats of Varanasi,

on a starlit night in the Sinai,

sitting with Bedouins,

in Piornedo,

on a Sunday with a hangover,

on the rocks of Lakatnik.

I will keep it with me

for when the stormclouds gather,

it will be the stones that weigh down

the corners of the tent I inhabit.

And I give you a drop of the golden liquid

for your onward journey.

You have realized now

that the demons are insubstantial,

their only weapon fear

of what doesn’t exist,

and the easiest way

to unravel a knot

is to slice it.

You are breath and water,

creation itself,

the sound God made in the beginning.

You can sing to your heart’s content,

join in the chorus,

as when you sang an aria

from the Messiah

to the doctor

with a sheet over your lips,

except that now you are voice itself,

running water,

a ribbon that God laid

on the earth

to give us life.

Jonathan Dunne

Sofia, 24 December 2025

Posted on in Heart of Language

9. AIO

After the creation of the world (in the beginning, the letter A), we find ourselves in the era of the Fall, which centres around the ego, I. We have to take this line that separates us and open it, count down, perhaps just turn it around, so that we get O.

The correct progression of human life is that represented by the Greek alphabet, AIO (sometimes written AIW). The Greeks are known for their interest in philosophy and theology. Having made the progression from the A of creation to the I of the Fall – the period we find ourselves in – we have a choice: to count up (as the Latin alphabet does, AIZ) or to humble ourselves and count down, AIO.

Language favours the second option. We have seen the examples AM-I’m-om, no one and amen, mean, name-mine-nemo, omen. We go from the name of God in Exodus, AM, through personal importance and gain (I’m, mine) to calling on God again in the Holy Trinity (om) or on God the Father, no one (nemo in Latin).

In the Garden of Eden, between Adam and Eve, there was no competition. So, we have a draw. In today’s world with its competing egos, we set out to win. The vowel in these verbs has changed from A to I. But Christ comes with a different message. He encourages us to turn the other cheek, to lose our life for the sake of the other (in order to find it). So, he encourages us to lose:

draw-win-lose

Here again, we find the progression of the Greek alphabet, AIO (with a silent final e, very common in English, ignore the consonants).

We have seen that we are made to call on God. The first word the human apparatus is capable of producing is a combination of breath, h, and the first vowel to emerge from the throat, u: hu, which is Sanskrit for “invoke the gods” and the root of our word God. We are made to call on God. Similarly, if we turn away from the selfish demands of the ego, represented in English by a straight line, I, we make three symbols, A+O, which spell another name of God, Alpha and Omega. So, again, when we turn away from our selfish desires and embrace the other, we call on God.

In the Judgement of the Nations, Christ goes so far as to tell us that the other is God: “Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40). If we remember that the Greek word for “God” is theos, we might see a close similarity between other and theos (step in the alphabet r-s). Language confirms what Christ is saying.

It is ironic, therefore, that after Adam and Eve have eaten of the fruit of the tree of knowledge in Genesis, chapter 3, it is God who calls to Adam, “Where are you?” (Gen 3:9). Of course, he knows where Adam is, and he knows what has happened. But by asking this question, which is the question Adam should have been asking, he is somehow indicating to us what our approach should be.

Make the progression from A to I, and from call you have like (in reverse, addition of e). Like is what we do on Facebook. We indicate our preferences. It also gives kill, and there has been plenty of killing in the history of humankind.

Now, count down from I to O, and you get look, which is the message Christ is trying to get across in the New Testament, the importance of opening our spiritual eyes (our egos or Is) and bearing spiritual fruit. We have seen the relevance of this in the Parables of the Sower and the Tares. So, we have:

call-kill, like-look

And then there are the examples that relate to the animal kingdom. Let us start with swan – a white bird, and white is a symbol of purity. Progress towards the ego, and you get swine – pigs in the mire, we have dirtied God’s image by rolling in the mud (just as the prodigal son does in Luke 15, a metaphor for dissolute living). When we come to our senses and realize that the things of this world will not satisfy us for long, we set out to purify ourselves once more, to return to our father, as the prodigal son does, which is not a return to the way things were before (swan), but a movement onwards, to something new: snow. So, we have:

swan-swine-snow

And finally, what is that most ancient mammal if not a whale that continues to patrol our oceans, despite our best efforts to wipe it out? Make the progression from A to I, and you have while, an indication of time. Time started after the Fall, this is when Adam and Eve became mortal, when they were expelled from paradise. Time will end for us individually when we die (the past tense of I) and for the human race when Christ comes again to judge the living and the dead. Now, count down from I to O, and in a while you become whole again. Whole is a remarkable word, and we will see more of it. So, we have:

whale-while-whole

All are examples of the progression made in the Greek alphabet, where we count down from the ego, which is represented in English by the letter I, and turn to God, the eternal symbol O.

Jonathan Dunne

Heart of Language 9/15

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Posted on in Heart of Language

3. Human

The elements of speech – breath, water and flesh – are the same elements that are present in the act of creation in the Book of Genesis. The world was spoken into being, which means that we, and the world around us, are a form of language.

Language is made up of three elements: breath, water and flesh.

The first element is breath. Breath forms the basis of all speech. Without breath, you are dead. Breath is represented by the letter h, a letter that is dropped in colloquial speech and silent in some languages, but for me the most important letter in the alphabet:

h   (breath)

The second element is water. This is when we add voice to our breath and form the vowels. Hold a vowel sound for long enough, and water will collect in your mouth. The vowels are listed in the alphabet in the following order: a-e-i-o-u. But this is misleading because the vowel sounds are formed, from the back of the mouth (where language originates), in a different order:

u-o-a-e-i   (water)

Since breath on its own doesn’t make a word (it only expresses exasperation), the first word that the human apparatus is capable of producing is the combination of breath, h, and the first vowel sound to emerge from the throat, u: hu. You might think this is unremarkable, but, as we have seen, hu is Sanskrit for “invoke the gods” and the root of our word God.

So the first utterance we can make by our very nature is to call on God, just as when we move away from the ego and produce the symbols A+O, we say another name of God, Alpha and Omega. While the science of etymology stipulates that human derives from the Latin word for “man”, homo, I would suggest that really it is a combination of hu and man. We are spiritual beings.

The third element of language is flesh. We obstruct the passage of breath with our lips or tongue (our flesh) and produce the consonants, which can be voiced or voiceless. The consonants are divided into phonetic pairs according to where they are produced in the mouth. There are seven simple pairs:

b-p   d-t   f-v   g-k   l-r   m-n   s-z   (flesh)

We see all these elements – breath, water and flesh – in chapters 1 and 2 of the Book of Genesis. Take, for example, Genesis 1:1-2:

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.

I would suggest that this passage in Genesis is really a description of speech. Or the creation of man in Genesis 2:6-7:

But a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground – then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

Again, all three elements of language are present, which would suggest that the world was literally spoken into being. This would explain the proximity between space and speak (the letter c, a redundant letter in English, can be pronounced k or s), and also the presence in world of word and lord (the reiterative verse “And God said”).

What is also remarkable is the word these three elements have in common: father. We have seen the phonetic pair f-v, but v is also connected to b and w (think of languages such as modern Greek, Spanish, Latin and German), so through the intermediary of v, I can make the connection f-b/w.

In this way, we see that breath and father have the same letters, water is in father with the addition of h, and flesh is in father with the addition of a (phonetic pair l-r, step in the alphabet s-t).

Father contains speech.

Jonathan Dunne

Heart of Language 3/15

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Video
Posted on in Theological English

Theological English (14): The Names of God

In this fifteenth video on “Theological English”, Jonathan Dunne looks at the importance of names. “Name” is “man” in reverse with a final “e”, and we read in Genesis chapter 2 that God brought the creatures to Adam so that he could “name” them – in effect, so that he could translate them and choose the right word. God didn’t ask Adam to make the creatures because he is not an author – he cannot create out of nothing. He, and the rest of humankind, are translators. So “name” is central to man’s role in this world. What can the names of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary tell us about their roles? And what meaning can we find in the names of people like Strauss and Grant Gustin, and countries like Ukraine?

To access all the videos in this course, use the drop-down menu “Theological English (Video Course)” above. The videos can be watched on Vimeo and YouTube.

Posted on in Theological English

Theological English (3): The Alphabet

In this fourth video on “Theological English”, Jonathan Dunne looks at the twenty-six letters that make up the Latin alphabet as it is used in English – h, five vowels, three semi-vowels, fourteen consonants, and three “redundant” letters (c, q and x) – and sees how these letters are used to represent the three elements of speech which are also the three elements of creation: breath, water, and flesh.

To access all the videos in this course, use the drop-down menu “Theological English (Video Course)” above. The videos can be watched on Vimeo and YouTube.

Posted on in Word in Language

Word in Language (10): Father (0)

What do we know about the Father? Perhaps we know about him as much as our ability to love. He is generally portrayed as an old man with white hair and a white beard, next to his Son, with the Holy Spirit hovering above. We may associate him in particular with the act of creation and the Fall in chapters 1-3 of the Book of Genesis. According to Orthodox tradition, all appearances of God in the Old Testament are by the Logos, the Word of God, that is Jesus Christ. The New Testament is associated with the earthly life of Christ, his birth, teaching, crucifixion and resurrection. And the Holy Spirit is associated with Pentecost, the beginnings of the Church. The Father can remain in the background. Certainly, we cannot know his essence, and of God’s qualities St Maximos the Confessor says that it is only infinity that can be grasped fully by the intellect (see the end of his First Century on Love).

 

In an earlier article, I made the connection between TREE and THREE and put forward the analogy of the Father as the trunk and the Son and the Holy Spirit as two branches, as in a child’s drawing, the Son begotten and the Spirit proceeding. This is why in the Orthodox Creed it is said that the Spirit proceeds from the Father – not from the Father and the Son, as is erroneously stated in Western Churches – because otherwise the Spirit would have to be a sub-branch of the Son, making for a lopsided drawing. This doesn’t make sense.

 

Christianity is the only religion that professes God the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This is shared love, which crucially involves a third person, otherwise it could be construed as being exclusive. This love among the three persons is not jealous. It is like love in a monastic community – it professes love for the brethren, but also welcomes pilgrims, newcomers. The arrival of newcomers can be very unsettling, but somehow we have to find a place for them, to see that our reaction is immediately, naturally, spontaneously, one of love.

 

You cannot have the Father without having a Son. His first characteristic is that of being a Father, which immediately places emphasis on relationship. The Holy Spirit can be seen as a kind of conjunction – and – that welds the love together. I have already stated that this little conjunction, AND, contains the name Alpha and Omega (A ’N’ O) and spells DNA in reverse. It is a crucial word in language, and barely a sentence exists without it.

 

I would like to suggest that there is proof in language for the existence of the Father. This doesn’t surprise me, for from him all things come. The Son is begotten by the Father, the Spirit proceeds from the Father, and we are his creation. We saw in the previous article how the world is a kind of spiritual womb, from which the body of the Church is in the process of being born. We make the mistake of thinking that life in this world is all there is and our birth has already taken place, but I don’t think this is quite true – our physical birth has taken place, sure enough, but our collective spiritual birth is still happening, which is why for me St Paul writes, ‘We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now’ (Rom 8:22).

 

The first indication that the Father is who we understand him to be – the source of all life – can be found in the alphabet. But we should sound a note of caution: if we can find proof for the existence of the Father in language, shouldn’t that point us in the direction of the Holy Trinity? Shouldn’t that suggest that the Father is truly behind and in his creation, just as we make him out to be? How else could he be in language, a set of words we ourselves have come up with in order to communicate, a set of letters which we use to write these words down? This should give us pause for thought – if we can find proof for him in language.

 

Language is made up of three elements. The first of these is breath. Breath forms the basis of all language. There can be no language without breath. Without breath, we are in effect dead, and we are not going to communicate by means of our bodies. Breath is represented in the alphabet by the letter h, a very important letter since it represents the basis of all speech, and yet (or because of this) it is dropped in dialects like Cockney and not pronounced in languages like Spanish. That for me is a sure sign of its importance.

 

If all we do is huff and puff, we are not going to make much sense, and so, as anyone who has been present at a childbirth knows, the next thing that comes along is voice, the vowels. We breathe out (the baby breathes out) and add voice (the baby bawls – loudly), and now we have sound. We also have words – words like a, I and o! We can even put a vowel before breath and exclaim, ‘Ah!’ We have the beginnings of speech.

 

If we hold a vowel for long enough, as when we visit the doctor’s, water will collect in our mouth, and this is because vowels are like a river – they flow. We can see that FLOW and VOWEL are connected by the phonetic pair f-v, addition of e. But the vowels do not emerge from our throat, where language originates, in the same order that they appear in the alphabet. Actually, they emerge in the following order, from the back of the mouth to the front:

 

u – o – a – e – i

 

forming a V-shape as they do so. This means that the first word the human apparatus is capable of pronouncing is breath (h) plus the first vowel to emerge from the throat (u): hu (I am assuming that breath on its own does not constitute a word, which I don’t think it does).

 

You might wonder, ‘So what?’ Well, this little word hu is from Sanskrit and means ‘invoke the gods’. So the first word a human is capable of pronouncing is an invocation of God. It is also the root of our word God, as any good dictionary will tell you. This is extremely interesting, but it doesn’t stop there.

 

Have you noticed that we are human? The science of etymology, which studies the evolution of language over time and, like all science, is limited in its vision (only faith is not limited, which is why we need it), will tell you that human derives from the Latin word for ‘man’, homo. Yes, maybe. But word connections – which are the study of language outside time, and hence far more interesting – will enable us to see that HUMAN is a combination of HU and MAN. It seems that God stamped us with his seal when he made us. We have already seen how MAN contains AM and AN.

 

But we still haven’t seen any proof for the Father. Let us continue. If all we had was breath and water, h and the vowels, we would do a lot of whining and exclaiming (some people do that, it is true). But to form words, real words, we need to obstruct the passage of air with our lips and tongue to form the consonants. Now we get proper chunky words. The consonants, as I have explained, can be divided into seven phonetic pairs:

 

b-p     d-t     f-v     g-k     l-r     m-n     s-z

 

depending on where in the mouth they are pronounced and which piece of flesh – the lips or tongue – is used to obstruct the passage of air when they are pronounced.

 

That accounts for twenty letters, but the English alphabet has twenty-six. Three of the remaining letters are semi-vowels – that is, the passage of air is only partially obstructed. The semi-vowels j and y correspond to the vowel i; the semi-vowel w corresponds to u (think of the name of the letter).

 

And the other three are what I call redundant letters. We don’t need them. They are c, q and x, all of which can be written using a combination of the letters k and s: the letter c is pronounced either k or s, q is pronounced k and x is pronounced ks. And yet they serve a purpose, because the double pronunciation of c as k/s enables me to make word connections through both these letters (we will see an example in a moment).

 

That accounts for the whole of the English alphabet: h, five vowels, seven pairs of consonants, three semi-vowels and three redundant letters. The letter h corresponds to breath, the vowels to water and the consonants to flesh.

 

What is very interesting is that the exact same three elements – breath, water and flesh – correspond to the act of creation in chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis. Remember that a wind (breath) swept over the face of the waters (Gen 1:2). Remember that to form the sky (air/breath) God separated the waters from the waters (water) (Gen 1:6-8). Remember that God then gathered the waters under the sky into one place and formed the land (flesh) (Gen 1:9-11). Remember that man was formed from the dust of the ground (flesh) (Gen 2:7) and God then breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (breath).

 

So the same three elements of breath, water and flesh are involved in the creation. But why should we be surprised, given that we know that God spoke the world into being? Doesn’t almost every paragraph in Genesis chapter 1 begin, ‘And God said’?

 

Do you remember how the letter c can be pronounced k or s? We might now see a connection between SPACE and SPEAK.

 

We might also see that WORLD contains LORD and WORD. The WORLD is a combination of LORD AND WORD:

 

world = lord + word

 

Hence those three words that are constantly repeated in Genesis: ‘And God said.’

 

But we still haven’t found proof for the existence of the Father in language. You need to know that there is an ‘eighth’ phonetic pair (and it isn’t even a pair): b-v-w. These letters are closely related. In Modern Greek, b is pronounced v; in Spanish, v is pronounced b. In Latin, v is pronounced w; in German, w is pronounced v. This enables me, through v, to connect b/w with f (the partner of v according to the phonetic pairs), and many word connections are made using this combination.

 

Now we will begin to see that the three elements of breath, water and flesh – the elements that make up speech, a daily occurrence, and also the creation of the world we inhabit – have one word in common. I am not making this up because I am obeying phonetic rules, so it is in language (not in my imagination!).

 

BREATH is clearly connected to FATHER by this combination I talked about, f-b/w.

 

WATER is clearly connected to FATHER by the same combination, f-b/w, addition of h (one of the two most commonly added letters).

 

FLESH is clearly connected to FATHER by the phonetic pair l-r, the alphabetical pair s-t, addition of a.

 

The elements of speech and creation have the word FATHER in common. That is remarkable and ought to make us bow our heads in worship. The next time we open our mouths to speak, we might be a little more respectful of what we are doing and remember how the Father is in the elements of speech, in our very human being.

 

Jonathan Dunne, http://www.stonesofithaca.com