I have come to learn that most words people use I don't think are real. This is because of various reasons.Sometimes it just strikes me that a word...is funny. It's just random sounds. And although I know the intended meaning, I can't seem to get over the fact that it doesn't seem like the words around it. I get a reality check on what language is--various sounds understood widely to convey meaning. It creeps me out to feel that what we depend on as a society to communicate and function is completely fabricated and so borderline to nonsense. It's as if I am that close to being completely useless and helpless in this society, if only I had the barrier between my thoughts and language or between sounds and processing. How much of our brain is really accomplishing this? It can't be much. Perhaps this is a factor of autism.
Sometimes I just don't...get a word. "How could that, of all things, be a word? Why is it even in our language?"
A lot of times I just don't believe in a word. Not morally, not physically, not conceptually (I don't even know the exact definition of this word, but I am SURE it fits here), not socially. I just don't think it should ever be used. And I think that the world is better off without it and I decide not to believe in it. If someone says it, then I remark to myself, "Pffft! That's not a word!" And these aren't cuss words, if that was the line of thinking you were following, a lot of times those fit more into the first category. These are words like "unique". It's so overused, misused and unjustifiably used that it has been thrown out of my vocabulary. I refuse to say it (this would be the one exception.)
Words...what a joke. I laugh in the face of words. Come to think of it, words don't even have faces. They are such cowards that they can't even look me in the eye and tell me what they mean and why they are here and if they are necessary. Words are a figment of our imagination, get real!
The telekinetic communication age will be much more efficient and less confusing.
3 comments:
Oh boy, that's a scary post.(or maybe you were half joking??) Words are meaningful insofar as they are able to convey meaning between and among a specified group or society of people. Even in English the same word doesn't mean the same thing to people of different countries, regions or even neighbourhoods. But that's okay because a living language is constantly evolving, changing, growing. We are always in a state of creating and recreating language. So words do not simply exist in and of themselves to be plucked for the exact right occasion. They are like fluid ingredients to be mixed, blended, stretched, re-shaped for whatever we're trying to communicate. Do you have an OED? Have you ever taken a linguistics course? I highly recommend both. Don't hate words. You're so good with them.
whoa you wrote a lot since the last time i checked in... yay!
i agree. words ARE a figment of our imagination. they don't actually exist. they're kind of like numbers--they're just an abstract concept. i felt so weird the first time i realized that "two" or "three" don't actually exist.
It's quite the opposite xup, I think I love words so much that I am intimidated by them. Sometimes I can hear something or say something that would make no sense had I not been on the earth in the exact way I have been up til this point. And it's scary how vague language can be and yet still evoke feelings in separate entities because of the knowledge from our similar minds and our similar experiences which our minds use to fill in the gaps which language does not fill. (that was quite a long sentence for such a small "idea" correct? so so inefficient! =P)
I was kind of joking, but there is always a large amount of truth in any joke that is made.
I have thought about linguistics before, mainly concerning the word love. There is a word for it in every language, and we are only led to believe it means the exact same thing. Does this mean it is real? Or that humans are so similar as to think of the same things?
I'm currently in my second year of Spanish. Although a linguistics course would be quite fascinating.
And Webster's is where it's at. =P
myhyenaflewaway (wow what a mouthful), I vaguely remember, or perhaps it was one of my classmates trying to grasp the concept of 0. "But...why have a word for it if it is nothing?" "What do you mean you have 0 apples! You don't have any!" My father taught me, before kindergarten, to begin counting with 0. But I didn't completely understand it at the time. The school un-taught me.
I think I am just a bit stubborn in all this, sometimes I get an idea in my head and defend it at all costs. But I make a few valid points, eh? =)
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