The Beautiful English Language

By Nadine On January 30, 2013 · Leave a Comment

One of my favourite books growing up was the Oxford English Dictionary. Yes, seriously!

One year for my birthday I asked my mother for a dictionary and thesaurus and I kept them on my desk, often reading through them to discover new words, learn what words meant and look for new ways to describe the world around me.

There is always a word, in the English language somewhere to describe exactly what you are trying to articulate at any time. This is the beauty of the system. We can communicate every nuance with a different word. Those subtle differences in expression or meaning, that take something you say into an entirely new direction because you created a new feeling around your words, just by choosing an alternative declaration. Maybe that last paragraph was ‘wordy’ or maybe it just had ‘clarity’. Two ways to describe what I’ve just said. Two different interpretations. Aren’t we fortunate to have so much choice and an abundance of words at our disposal?

I’ve been experiencing a state of dormancy of late. A kind of hibernation because of the cold, snowy weather that means I cannot physically ‘go’ and ‘do’, but also an internal feeling of being without direction. Whilst such feelings are uncomfortable, when they come they are necessary to explore and process, so I can ultimately work through them and come out the other side, stronger, more grateful, with renewed purpose and an excitement for life that wouldn’t have been there had I not acknowledged the rocky path before me.

The dormancy is welcome at first, in the middle of a busy life where the days are filled with meeting the needs of others, keeping the home running and the financial affairs afloat. Christmas brings enforced dormancy for most of us as the world stops the routine for a few days and shuts down, giving us chance to rest and rejuvenate before the wheels turn again. In my case the inertia remained long after Christmas and throughout January. Whilst fully functioning to the outside world, my days were an act of going through the motions whilst I wrestled inside with a hopelessness that I recognise well, but didn’t particularly want to see again, having fought so hard to be rid of it last time.

Today however the sun is shining. There is a different mood around the day and things look brighter in all senses of the word. Thoughts and feelings have been explored and processed and having written this blog post, released into the ether. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but there is comfort and freedom in that too.

Words are knowledge and knowledge is power. The pen is truly mightier than the sword. Choose your words carefully because they define you and shape your experience of the world. But most of all, select the words you use with yourself even more carefully, the words in your head that don’t get spoken, because these become your truth. I’m fascinated with words and have great respect for them and what they can do.

Let me leave you with this. Did you know that Chinese is a spoken language with no characters but the chinese writing system uses thousands of characters? Amazing. So don’t use the word ‘language’ when referring to Chinese, when you actually mean ‘writing system’. I found this out in the thesaurus under the word ‘language’.

The thesaurus is a boring looking book from the outside, but we should never judge a book by its cover. Look at what intellectual riches it holds within it.