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An Undiluted Inner Voice

I beg to differ with one sentence of Judith Bair's introduction to the Winter 1999 issue of College Park. She writes: "On the other side, the silent reading of a well-crafted poem yields a richness and resonance undiluted by spoken interpretation or intonation." Indeed, what a richness it is. But undiluted? I must say, there are those of us, who, for whatever joke of chance, have never learned the shortcuts or tricks of bypassing the auditory cortex in "silent reading." I, for one, am all but incapable of experiencing words,without recourse to the sounds they represent. That is, not that I read aloud, but that the sounds invade the internal world of my cognitive processing.

   But diluted? Oh no, dear Judith, the words I experience, in every reading, although much slower in rate than the average reader, are enriched by the sounds I imagine them to be-the inflection, the timbre, the mysterious tone of voice. To read a page without a voice in my head, is all but unimaginable for me. Oddly, I confess, how disappointing it often is to hear poets read their own words. How strangely flat their voices seem. How unexpressive. Their voice, in my head, nearly always seems that much more imbued with color and verve...

   How it is that so many humans can share language, and yet experience it in so many varied ways, is one of the beauties of the enterprise.

Jonathan Geoffrey Pearl
Denver, Colorado

Speaking Up

First, I would like to say how much I appreciated your issue, "Speaking the Language." However, there are some campus activities that I would have liked to see covered, particularly as your magazine goes mainly to alumni. There are many campus programs to help foreign undergraduate and graduate students to improve their spoken and written English, such as the Maryland English Institute, the ESOL classes and speaking partner programs of the Learning Assistance Service, and the English Editing Program of the graduate school.

   It has been my very real and lasting pleasure to volunteer in the last two programs for the past 12 years. Some of my students have become my friends after working with me for three of four years; and I have learned much due to their many different fields of interest.

   After doing this for a few years, it became clear to me that something should be done in the other direction, that is, that the university was offering no prizes to encourage American students to learn foreign languages, as is regularly done in the engineering and scientific fields. For five years I offered $250 prizes in each of nine languages; then we changed that to $1,250 scholarships in two. And I did give a charitable gift annuity to the Maryland Foundation, to be used for language scholarships after my death. Considering that I am not a Maryland graduate and that my resources are not unlimited, I did not feel I could do more, yet I also recognized from the beginning that my contribution could not be enough to make language study as financially rewarding as studies in many other fields.

   I am aware of the general campaign to increase scholarship funds that is now gearing up. Maybe that will be enough to cover language study satisfactorily, but somehow I doubt it.

Donald B. Hirsch
Silver Spring, Maryland
The writer received a B.A. '46 and M.A.'48 from the University of Michigan.

Editor's Note: The Bold Vision - Bright Future campaign has a goal of raising $30 million for undergraduate and graduate scholarships for students in all majors. Many scholarships, including the university's prestigious Banneker/Key scholarship program, are open to students studying languages. A few examples of scholarships established in recent years to support languages include the Adele Austin Rickett Fund for Chinese language, the Dr. Tsung Chin Fund for Chinese language and calligraphy, and the Hermine and Luc Secretan Memorial Fund for graduate fellowships.

Letters do not necessarily reflect the viewpoints or policies of the magazine staff or university administration.