What's in a word?

In the true spirit of globalization a lot of us choose to travel, not only for fun, but also to try to achieve exchange and integration into cultures different than ours. While routines can often be adapted, language is one challenge that is often tough to tackle.

It can be tiring, that search for the right words; finding the precise expression that will convey not only, the practical message, but also the underlying sentiment. I sometimes ask myself; how much of the meaning of what I say gets lost in the banality of the words I’m using?

Still, most of the time I manage to make myself understood, without really knowing how I finally got my point across. After seemingly endless minutes of fishing for words, associating across languages and attempting chance-creation of new linguistic constellations we finally arrive at the crucial point: the answer; the main teller of whether you’ve made any sense what so ever. So I wonder, if I manage to make myself understood with an insufficiency in both vocabulary and verbal skills: What’s in a word?

First I think about the components of communication; individuals and language; where each constitutes complexity within itself. Considering the fact that every one uses language differently, or even uses different languages, and most of us listen from our own perspective, thus we hear what we want to hear. Honestly, it’s a wonder we ever understand each other at all.

One can only admit it; we hear things in a way that suits our world image and help support it. In the end, everyone wants to be rubbed the right way, whether there is truth to the word or not.

Second one must reflect on whether people actually really apprehend the impact (or insignificance) of what they say. I mean do you really fully understand everything you say? Being accustomed to using foreign languages, many of which I do not fully master, I know it can be difficult to estimate the weight of a word. That is, to understand the feelings it can potentially provoke in whoever is listening.

More easily put, assumingly there is a gap between what you say and what you understand that you are saying, which brings us to another component essential to contemporary, cross-cultural, communication; tact. Collins dictionary defines it as a sense of the best and most considerate way to deal with people so as not to upset them. I would call it an ability to know how and when to say things, or quite simply; what is vulgar and when to shut up.

Now this is not an evident thing (as you would say in French). Tact takes a different shape when applied to different languages. What is apprehended as offensive in Swedish would in another language just be taken on the chin. Words even though translated are frequently used in varied ways.

An example close to heart would be the Spanish verb Querer which can be translated into to Love as well as to Want. Now, in a German stemming language these are wisely not mixed (unless in bed, where they belong together?). In Spanish, on the other hand (depending on how you say it) it can be completely asexual (obviously if you were to pull someone forcefully towards you and whisper it in their ear with desire it could easily be the equivalent of: let’s go to bed immediately).

Finally, putting this together, vocabulary, knowledge and tact, I’m still thinking, which one of us has not heard a speaker with plenty of authority and pride and still felt as though his words were empty? And accordingly stopped listening to this person within five minutes even though he (or she) was incredibly correct? On the other side of the equation there would be this whirlwind of a person, who would accidently step on a few toes, but wholeheartedly grab everyone’s attention. Because the way they spoke appealed to people’s emotions.

So is it precision that gets the message across or is it effort, patience and sincerity? In the end, the word is really just a tool, as any other. The word itself carries little significance, it is how you build with it and support it. What is in a word is finally not a lot theoretically speaking. What is in a word is really just the sentiment you wrap it with and the emotion you put into it….And still we can only ever hope to understand and to be understood.