I was thinking about
words the other day – as I was trying to explain to my 2 year old the subtle difference between want and need. She is excellent with her words, but she cannot differentiate between what she needs and what she wants. Given, at her age, I think she really thinks she needs that $30 doll that she will probably play with for all of 2 seconds after we get home, but I’m trying to teach her that she doesn’t actually need the doll. She simply wants it, and she cannot, unfortunately, get whatever she wants. A mantra I have heard others use as well – although mostly played out across different relationships in different situations.
I started thinking about the subtle meanings in languages. For example, in English – there is a difference between “listen” and “hear.” In Chinese, there is just one word for listen/hear. It is just assumed that if you are “hearing” the person – you are “listening” to them as well. When you hear parent yell at kids, it’s always, “Can you hear what I’m saying?!” I like the subtle difference in the English language, because – it’s clear that I can hear you when you’re yelling at me at 11 decimals above normal. But I may not be listening. McSquared employs this ability often and frequently.
In Japanese, there is an entirely different “respect” language that is completely different from what men speak with each other that women must employ when they speak to men and elderly people. Completely different – that begins with “o” and end a lot of times with “masu.” It’s amazing.
Our languages, and the way we speak them, has a lot to do with the culture, and therein a lot to do with the way people interact. Using the word above, it shows that for Chinese people, in general, there are no subtle differences. There is no understanding of the grey areas. You are or you aren’t, and if you are – that word is loaded with a boat load of assumptions. It is assumed that if you ware “hearing” someone you are “listening.”
The manner in which people speak to each other is also amazing. Most Asian cultures, the women are much more soft-spoken than their male counterparts in public. That says nothing about what goes on behind closed doors (those same soft-spoken women can be loud, obnoxious and rude..) In my neighborhood growing up, Italian women were warm, welcoming and loud. Boy were they loud. Jewish women in the neighborhood were ever regretful about something horrible that has happened, and never really said the word of something bad happening to a neighbor circulating the rumor mill. “Cancer” she would mouth, sometimes with a hand covering one side of her face.
One conversation may make or break a relationship depending on the tone and the words used. A man could lose the women he loves forever, because he doesn’t know how to express to her that he loves her in the words she needs him to say. Words are amazingly powerful.
I almost got into a full on fist fight with Luscious over one simple word, and our interpretation of it. The word was “choice.” Of course, she was wrong, and I was right – but it didn’t negate the importance of the interaction, and how heated the discourse was. I almost knocked her sideways. It would have been a good fight – and I think I would have been able to take her.
Despite the overwhelming importance of words, it seems to be the thing we take the least amount of consideration in using. Most people don’t think before they speak. We choose the shoes we put on our feet with more care than the choice of words we use with the people around us. Only when we are in front of strangers and people we don’t know – do we carefully consider the words coming out of our mouth. But isn’t it more important to consider the words we use when we speak to loved ones - people that matter to us the most?
We often poo poo it away as unimportant because we feel that our closest loved ones “understand us” despite the words we use to describe what we feel. We think that even if we choose words badly, they’ll “get it.” Yet, I’ve lent my should out, and have asked for many a shoulder – to cry - on as a result of what for all intents and purposes boils down to a poor choice of words. I didn’t mean to tell my mother that she needed to get over it New Year’s Eve. I didn’t mean to say those things to McSquared, or point out so bluntly to my sister where I thought she had chosen wrong in her life’s decisions. I didn’t mean it.
The words we use on a day to day basis are so important, because it is the only presentation of how smart or dumb we really are. You are only as intelligent as you can articulate, either in the written word, or the spoken one. You can be the smartest person in the whole word, but if you cannot use words to express it – it takes you that much longer to prove yourself to a doubting crowd.
The other interesting thing is – people are inherently suspicious of words. It doesn’t matter that McSquared tells me he loves me, if all his actions directly refute the words he used. Fickle things those words are. When used for good, words are amazing, and can do amazing things. We all know it was words that got our President Obama into office. But, when used for evil, words can be scarring. When people use words to create and spread lies, people come out of those types of events hurt, scarred, and as a result, baggage ensues. Deceptive words can make all future words seems laced with deception as well – even if that isn’t the case. We walk through life, once being hurt by words, inconsolable to their good uses. Often jaded, we doubt the power of words, even when we’ve fallen victim to their exact power.
I’m rambling a bit, sorry about that – but it’s amazing what little regard we have for words, when they are probably the most powerful weapon, resource, instrument, asset we have. Understanding the word, either in your native tongue, or that of someone else in another country, is probably one of the most important things we can do. Words build as swiftly as they destroy. We need to be as careful using words as we are using nuclear powers.
I implore you – think before you speak or write… And if you don’t know the words, don't use words arbitrarily. The results may be scary.
On a side note, my daughter speaks Chinese, English and Spanish. None really fluently, but we’re getting there..
