The Power Of Words

Our language is one of the most amazing, and, at least compared to its significance, least celebrated features of the human species. Our ability to form vocalizations in our throats or scribblings on a surface that can convey feelings as diverse as something as mundane as confirming the purchase of a liter of yogurt to the declaration of everlasting love to another person or the the desire to start a war against another nation, is something that is often overlooked in the humdrum of our everyday lives, where our language is mostly being used to navigate daily routines, such as the problem solving and socialization at work, the bonding with and raising of children, and maintaining the relationships your friends and/or spouse.

_{A picture of Shakespeare in a blog post about words and language. Cliche, I know - picture from Wikipedia}

I think it is important to remember that this use of language is equally amazing and worth of praise as our world’s most celebrated poems, stories and sonnets. While it is easy to point to the great masters of language such as universally celebrated playwrights, authors and songwriters like William Shakespeare, Haruki Murakami and John Lennon as the most significant contributors, the language we use every day in specific friend and family groups help to establish bonds and relationships that are unique, and our private use language or specific words helps form and reflect our personalities and personal idiosyncrasies and just a few choice words to a friend or a loved one can inspire to both mirth, love and hope. This strongly indicates that there are more to language than just the meanings of words that can be mechanically used to convey intention and meaning. If you are a non-native English speaker like me, you have undoubtedly encountered words in your own language that are hard to translate to English in a way that truly convey the meaning that the word hold to you as a native speaker and if you are studying foreign languages, you have most likely like me realized, that it takes a very high level of both language study and cultural sensitivity if you wish to reach native level ability.

_{The Japanese noun of yugen, like the Danish word hygge, are one of those words that defies proper translation to English}

This meta language that is equal parts vocabulary, culture, extra-lingual communication and context is what is at play too, when we in our native language engage in the countless Face-to-face conversations, phone calls, Discord channels and Facebook chats of our everyday lives. You have friends you can joke and goof around with and use words and phrases that would be meaningless, bizarre or even outright insulting to outsiders, but to you and this friend or particular group of friends carry meaning and reinforces your unique relationship. The idiosyncrasies of private language need not be restricted to just vocabulary; other components of communication, such as subtle movement and facial gestures can definitely come into play as well. While it is true that the before mentioned can only come into play during face-to-face conversation, the relatively new communication form of chat clients such as Messenger, LINE or Discord are interesting too, as they give you access to a whole new visual and extremely flexible component in the form of GIF's and emotes.

_{One of my favourite GIF's at the moment}

As important as our personal language and its idiosyncrasies are for maintaining our relationships and distinguishing us as individuals, a blog post called ‘the power of words’ would be remiss without at least a passing mention of the cornucopia of aggregated written and oral works that humankind has produced in an attempt to convey the specific events or particular aspects of the human experience to future generations. Whether it is cautionary or gruesome tales of human folly or cruelty, songs of exuberant declarations of love, rough rap lyrics depicting tales of the hard life on the streets, religious texts, epics describing long journeys and heroic deep or something entirely different from the immense library of compositions that humankind has produced throughout its existence as a sentient species that moves you, I find it extremely fascinating that we as humans can be moved to great emotional heights of both joy, sadness and despair not only by the words of those close to us, but by the words of people that are entirely alien to us and who might not even be alive or might even not have ever existed.

_{The Iliad, one of the most celebrated and read epics in human history by an author, who is most likely as mythical as the Iliad itself - picture from Amazon}

I will end with a reminder to remember to celebrate language in all its forms, both by consuming the art, music and literary works that you enjoy and are significant to you but also by relishing in the private language of the deep conversations of your best friend and the random goofing in your favourite discord server or group chat. In the times of cancel culture and increasing censorship of the social network platforms that have come to dominate our social lives more and more, I think this latter part is becoming increasingly important: Whatever language or words you are using privately to form meaningful bonds with the people you cherish are just that, private, and no one should be able to tell you a word or a phrase is hateful if you have no intention of using it such and the recipient do not perceive it as such either.

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