‘Verbal,’ ‘oral’ and how we have mixed up the two words

Kenyans deploy the adjective verbal appallingly wrongly to mean “spoken”, as opposed to “written”.

A headline on page 18 of the Standard of August 23 was typical: “If your husband is verbally abusive, he needs counselling”.

A “verbally abusive” husband, apparently, is one who throws sharp words at his wife.

To “attack verbally” is thus to pelt with words. Yet, though such words may include non-verbs, Kenyans wrongly use the adverb verbally to mean “through the mouth”. 

Yes, language is essentially verbal, so that, whether it is through the nib or through the finger, what merges is that all other parts of speech are verbal. It is thus that what the Bible calls the Christ in English often appears in French as “le Verbe”.

ADVERB

This translation was what was compounded by deploying into English a Nilo-Christological concept as “the Word”, a term thoroughly misunderstood throughout Christendom.

Thus — as against the adverb verbally  — orally is what I would recommended.

Thus the translation into English of an original Nilo-Coptic term as “The Word” and into French as “le Werbe” is problematic because the adjective verbal does not mean “by mouth” (as so many Kenyans think). Concerning the mouth, oral is the correct adjective.

For verbal means merely “by means of words”, where, clearly, “words”  can refer  to all of a people’s vocabulary, spoken or written;  whereas oral, not verbal, is the correct adjective for it, meaning merely “by  the mouth”.

In Latin, oralis was the word for the lip, the original carrier of what Europe would later deploy to conquer over a great deal more than half of the human world.

ORALLY

But be careful because not all words issue through the mouth. Ever since writing was invented, the human finger (working on some human contraption) may also conjure up words.

Thus, if “word of mouth” is what you mean, then orally, not verbally, is the correct adverb.

For verbal means merely “through words”, whereas oral is what means “through the mouth”. All of us eat orally, never verbally, never “through words” (whether or not the words be verbs, written or by mouth). However, the adverb orally refers only to the mouth, from the Latin oralis, the lip.

During the last century, the literature departments of many African universities have spoken increasingly of “oral literature”, a self-evident contradiction.

For I must warn that, if it is merely oral, it cannot be called literature. For the word literature refers specifically to writing.

SOCIAL FOOD

Humanity’s oral traditions contain social food as nutritive as any written material. But, manifestly, the term “oral literature” common on our university campuses is a self-contradiction. For, if it is merely oral, then it is restricted to the mouth.

You cannot call it literature because the word literature refers to certain hand products known as letters. Thus the noun literature refers to certain hand products, whereas the adjective oral refers to what Latin called oralis, the lip.

However, the adjective verbal means “through words”, and not merely “by the word of mouth” 

 Philip Ochieng is a retired journalist. [email protected]