Football. The word is universally understood. Even in the States, to see the word spelled futbol,  is to see a little soccer video in one’s mind’s eye.

The Stanley Cup games finished up last week, so I turned to the FIFA World Cup for new sports action. I love a good game!  I don’t know much about soccer—obviously, the basics are easy to grasp—but two years ago, I didn’t know much about hockey. I relied on sports-savvy fans to tutor me in the finer points of the sport.

Even when we speak different languages, we speak. We humans are extraordinarily equipped to express ourselves, through language, in subtle and specific ways. From Scripture to Cicero to Shakespeare to the Gettysburg Address, we have a genius for using language to convey ideas and emotion, to connect, and to influence.

We don’t always need words. Everyone, regardless of native language, seems to make similar sounds situations.  We express emotion in universally understood ways, beyond language.

This brings great joy and cohesion to sports fans. Watch any sporting event, regardless of the language used by the announcers. The crowd says it all: Cheering for a superb play, groaning for the missed chanced, booing a bad play or bad call, roaring for victory. Even the slump-shouldered silence of the defeated speaks.

The crowd, as a community, can be as significant to success as a team member. Home team advantage isn’t just about the field.  During the Stanley Cup playoffs, did you watch any of the San Jose/Denver games?  Avalanche goalie Craig Anderson had such a stellar game 3 that the Denver crowd happily chanted “Andy! Andy! Andy!” in appreciation. Just days later, in San Jose, as the Sharks trounced the Avs, San Jose fans chanted “An-dee” in a different, taunting tone. Same words, different message.

Back to futbol. For the FIFA World Cup, we do not have crowd noise. We have vuvuzelas. The nasty bee-buzzing noises you hear throughout the matches come from wretched plastic horns blown by the hundreds of South African futbol fans. The horn sounds one note only (B flat) with limited modulation—never soft, never loud. Just incessant. No change in tone, in pitch, in volume.

I’ve been watching games during my lunch hour. I’m not especially concerned about which teams are playing. I don’t know any of them yet, so I watch to learn, to enjoy and to become more involved as competition evolves.

Except how involved do I want to get, since I must suffer the obnoxious vuvuzela? I can hear the commentators, but I can’t hear the people in the stadium. When a team scores, I have to believe the sportscaster who tells me that fans are cheering. Indeed, the camera shows fans who appear to be cheering, but I cannot hear them above the bee hum. Each game is deprived of expressing any personality, because all comments from the community of fans—cheers, groans, chants, boos, and applause—are silenced.

I’m not the only one who detests the sound of the vuvuzelas. (Type in “I hate vuvuzela” at Google and see what you get.)  But Joseph Blatter, president of FIFA has said that the South African fans should not be deprived of their traditional sporting habits in their own home towns.

Why not? FIFA wants us to consider soccer to be “a  unifying force whose virtues can make an important contribution to society.”  Does shutting out the cheering fans from real participation at the World Cup stadiums promote that mission?  The Republic of South Africa has spent how many millions of dollars to host the World Cup, to draw tourist interest and dollars into South Africa, and to promote their country as a modern, hospitable nation. Does making people want to turn off the soccer game help them to achieve their goal?

No. That’s a universally understood word, too.