Green Life

Can you write as fast as you can speak? Almost nobody can. But very often it is necessary to take down the words as someone speaks them in order to have a record. One way of doing this is writing in shorthand. Shorthand is the art of writing by means of signs that can be made quickly. These signs, which are not the same as words, can be read later by a person who knows the system. Today, the word shorthand is used to describe the method, but it has also been called stenography (which means little or narrow writing), and tachygraphy (which means swift writing), and brachygraphy (which means short writing).

In 1829 a man called Louis Braille, who was blind himself and was a teacher of the blind, developed a system that could be read by the blind and written by them too with a simple instrument. The Braille system consists of dots. Imagine an oblong block. This is called “the Braille cell.” On this block are arranged raised dots, form one to six. The cell is 3 dots high and two dots wide. The Braille alphabet consists of different arrangements of the dots. Since 63 combination are possible, there can be entire arrangements of the dots. Since 63 combination are possible, there can be entire alphabet plus signs for punctuation and contractions and so on. The Braille system is one of the most widely used alphabets for the blind, and has helped many blind people to enjoy the pleasures of reading and writing. In fact, today there are about a hundred Braille magazines and newspapers published. Another help for the blind today is the “Talking Book.” This is a long-playing record of a book, and there is even special “Talking Book” for blind children.

Now two things can happen to make this accommodation impossible. First, as people get older the lenses in the eyes lose their elasticity. They can’t change shape to focus images correctly. The second thing is that some people are born with eyes that are too short or too long.
People with too short eyes are far-sighted. They can see distant objects well, but they must accommodate very strongly to see close objects. Sometimes it is impossible to do this enough to focus the image on the retina. So they wear glasses. The glasses do the job that their own eye lens cannot do. They focus the image on the retina and don’t have to accommodate at all.
A near-sighted person has eyes that are too long. The image is focused in front of the retina and looks blurred. But the near-sighted person can do nothing about it. If he accommodates (makes the muscle contract the eye), it will only make the image move farther forward. So he wears glasses that focus the image farther back and on the retina, and then he can see clearly.

If you were unfortunate enough to be blind, one of the greatest Losses you would feel would be not being able to read. Just think that how important is that ability to read books is to you. Well, people realized this a long time ago and tired to find methods for enabling blind people to read. For example, as far back as 1517 there was a system of engraving letters on blocks of wood so blind people could make them out with their fingers. A person’s fingertips are very sensitive, and a bind person can”read with his fingers. A great many other systems were worked out over the years, using raised lines for the letters. But they all presented on big problem: while blind people could learn to read in this way, they couldn’t easily write this way because they couldn’t see how to form the letters.

Up to about seventy-five years ago, the deaf were taught to communicate ideas almost entirely by means of signs, facial expression, and the finger alphabet. With the hand alphabet, some deaf-mutes can spell out words at the rate of 130 a minute! But they still depend mostly on sign language. For example, the forefinger rubbed across the lips means, “You are not telling me the truth.” A tap on the chin with three fingers means”My Uncle.” Today, the deaf are taught to understand what is said to them and even to speak themselves. They learn to speak by watching the lips of the speaker, and by observing and feelings the lips and vocal organs to the teacher and then imitating the motions.

Just imagine what life was like for millions of people before eyeglasses were invented! If you were near-sighted and you looked up at night you couldn’t see clouds or distant mountains, or birds flying through the air.
Today near-sighted people can see as much as people with normal eyes, because eyeglasses can correct their vision. To begin very simply, we can see because light enters our eye and falls on the retain in the eye, which is like the sensitized plate of a camera. Obviously, if the light falls in back of the retina or in front of it, we won’t be able to see. So the eye has a lens to focus the light and make it fall in the right place.
When normal eyes look at distant objects, the image falls on the retina without any problem. But when the same eye looks at a close object (say less that 5 meters away), the image falls behind the retina. So the lens of the eye “accommodates.” It means that a certain muscle contracts and changes the shape of the lens. This makes the image fall on the retina and the eye sees the object clearly.

Most people call a person who has lost any of his sense of hearing deaf. Actually, this term should be only for those who were born without hearing or who lost their hearing before they learned to talk. Loss of hearing is caused in many ways. It may come about through some disease or through severe injury to the head, or through something being wrong with the inner ear. Why can’t deaf people talk? Nearly always, it’s because the deaf person never heard spoken words! It is a condition that can be remedied. In fact, nearly all deaf children with normal intelligence can learn to talk if they are given special instruction.

What first developed from Low German in the direction of the English Language was a dialect called Old English or Anglo-Saxon. It was introduced into Britain during the Anglo-Saxons conquest, which took place about the year 449. Of Course, when Anglo-Saxon began to be mixed with the native language that the conquerors found (probably Celtic), a new language began to develop. This language, as it was spoken until about 1150, is called Old English. From 1150 to 1500, the language is called Middle English, and from the year 1500 onward in which came the language we know as Modern English.

English is the native language of about two hundred million people. Chinese is the native language of about four hundred million people. Chinese is the native language of about four hundred million people. Yet English is by far the most important language in the world today. This is because it is spoken in more different parts of the world than any other language, it is the language of commerce; and it is the second language of many countries. The English language is about five hundred years old. Like most of the languages of Europe, it can be traced back to a language described ago on the steppes of southern Russia, probably by wandering tribes between the Rhine River and the Aral Sea.