Please be gentle.

This has nothing to do with the current writing sugestions but I see that sport was a sugested subject last year and I offer this  as my first post.

Talking Sport.

As an ex SCUBA diver I would be the first to admit that we divers are rather introverted soles. This stems from the fact that underwater communication is limited to a few basic hand gestures and, although we usually dive in pairs, once submerged we are very much alone with our own thoughts, uninterrupted by the idle chatter experienced by players of other sports.

 

These hand gestures are limited to the ubiquitous OK signal, which can be used as an inquiry, ”Are you OK?” or as a positive response, “I am OK.” The other signals are largely self explanatory, a thumb pointing up, may mean either, “I am going up” or “Will we go up?” a thumb pointing down, either, “I am going down” or “Will we go down?”  A wobbled hand with the palm facing down and the fingers splayed may be used as an indication of a malaise of some kind, usually motion sickness, or of an ‘iffy’ or questionable situation, and that’s about the limit of the lexicography of the average diver.

 

Most other sports, and I use the term ’sport’ rather loosely here as referring to any form of physical activity, tend to be more verbose.

 

Ball games in general are a good example of this effusiveness.

 

Take football, in its many forms, the pitch resounds to calls for the ball to be played this way or that and members of both teams constantly advise the referee as to what he should do with his whistle. The marital status of the referee’s parents is of interest to both players and fans alike, and even the management and the coaching staff are not spared the knowledgeable counsel of the spectators.

 

There are three exceptions that come to mind of this ball game verbosity.

 

Cricket communications appear to be confined to a group of players on one team throwing their arms in the air and shouting “Owsdat” in unison. This is responded to by the referee nonverbally by either waving his hands in a horizontal sweeping movement, sometimes with the additional sad shake of his head, or by pointing to the stands. This somehow indicates to the man holding the bat at the time that his game is finished and he is directed to walk off the field of play, only to be replaced by another, and so the game (?) goes’ on.

 

Another exception is, of course, Tennis.

 

The players of this game have two very unusual and very differing sounds that might be interpreted as communication between the players. These noises emanate quite differently from players of dissimilar sex.

 

The male of the species tosses the ball high in the air and attempts to hit it as hard as he can across a net. As he hits the ball he warns the player on the other half of the court that the ball is about to come his way by emitting an agonizing grunt that may be heard for some considerable distance.

 

The females of the species, when playing this game perform a similar toss of the ball, but they emit a squeak or a squeal, similar to the sound produced by a rabbit or a hare when trapped, or caught by a dog.

 

Occasionally understandable words are uttered by the players; these are usually directed toward the referee perched atop a rickety step ladder to one side of the playing surface. These words seem to be taken from a very restricted linguistic list and are confined to “You must be joking” or “Chalk dust, I saw chalk dust”.

 

A word or two is necessary for the Tennis referee; he is the most loquacious of the actors on the field of play. He speaks loudly and authoritatively whenever a participant fails to return the ball to the other player. He calls out seemingly random numerical couplets, and rather embarrassingly occasionally calls for “Love Juice”.

 

Golf has but one official word it seems.

 

“Fore” sometimes erroneously referred to as “Four”

 

This word, shouted loudly as the player hits the ball, it may be a warning to other golfers, often seen wandering aimlessly about in search of their lost balls. Or it may be used as an entreaty to the great God of small white balls, that this particular example may fly straight and true toward the small hole many yards distant.

 

What chatter may transpire during the long walk to where the balls have landed is steeped in secrecy. It is to be generally understood that many business deals, both legitimate and underhanded, are concluded during this time, when all contact is effectively severed with the outside world.

 

Much socialising is done at the ‘Nineteenth hole’ as the Golf Club bar is affectionately known, but nothing of import is ever discussed there.

 

Those that engage in the ‘so called’ sport of jumping from perfectly serviceable aircraft are rather restricted in their communication due, initially, to the noise of the light aircraft’s engine and later, after leaving the safety of the flying machine, by the air rushing past their ears. Three sounds encompass the entire vocabulary of their sport.

 

The first is an entreaty to a long dead Native American Indian, one ‘Geronimo’. His name is shouted loudly as they fling themselves into the slipstream of the aircraft to begin their plummet toward the earth. If all goes well and the flimsy parachute opens as it should, the next sound you may hear from them is a loud grunt as they land, rather heavily, in some random farmer’s field. This is occasionally followed by a gentle whimper if they happen to have twisted an ankle or landed among stinging nettles or brambles.

 

If all is not well with the equipment, if for instance the silk of the parachute is torn or tangles with the many ropes and does not deploy as it should, then an earthbound observer, may, hear the terrified screaming of the unfortunate as he falls, unrestricted, towards certain death.

 

Mountaineering or rock climbing chatter is constrained in the most part to safety instructions, and terms like “Give rope” or “Take the strain” echo about the cliffs.

 

Hill walking or trekking, as it is sometimes called could easily be renamed, “Picnicking on hilly ground” or “Chatting and strolling on low hills”, this is probably the most sociable of the pursuits mentioned here and the subjects discussed range far beyond the limits of this brief discourse.

 

Sailing is a peculiar sport where verbal interaction is concerned. Within the confines of the boat orders are given, usually by the captain or skipper, as to the safe and efficient running of the vessel, these orders are seldom questioned and usually require little or no response, although muttered curses from the crew may be heard by the attentive listener.

 

Communications with other boats, on the other hand, are often delivered whilst the skipper hops up and down energetically, vigorously waving his arms in the air, and are often accompanied by expletives of the foulest kind. Sailors of all nationalities are known to have a vast lexicon of swear words, and can, in times of stress, produce strings of profanities for minutes at a time and never be heard to repeat themselves. 

 

The rules of yachting call for the simplest of interactions with rival vessels, along the lines of ‘Starboard’ or ‘Water’. Such simple and seemingly innocuous words are well understood by experienced mariners, the added profanities are unnecessary and may cause confusion or embarrassment.

 

Automobile sport in the higher echelons has been rather spoilt by the drivers constant radio chatter with the technicians and strategists in the pit lane, unlike those racing in the lower ranks, they still rely on their own ability and remain mute for the most part.

 

Rallying on the other hand, involves a hapless passenger reading aloud from a pre prepared list of instructions informing the driver of upcoming bends. The driver meanwhile remains generally silent, concentrating on his driving, until, that is, he runs out of road and deposits the car into a ditch or collides with a tree. Then he can be heard to curse loudly and blame the wretched reader for his incompetence.

 

Board games, while not strictly a physical activity can be very competitive and are generally silent when engaged by serious players, while similar games played with the family or with children of any age tend to be an excuse for constant chatter and much merriment.

 

So you see whilst SCUBA diving is not strictly antisocial, it is not especially social, in as much as it does not allow the participants to socialise or disagree whist underwater. But it must be noted that obscenities and foul language, while difficult to impart with simple hand gestures, can be achieved with just the finger or sometimes two fingers of one hand pointing upward.