For a person who studies words all day long, I often find them completely inadequate. Because we can't just make up a new word for every thing we want to express, we must use and reuse the words that we already have in our vocabulary. The word may represent what it is trying to convey well, or not so well. When almost-right, but not quite words are all combined together to form a lovely thing called a sentence we often have not quite communicated what we meant to say.
Wouldn't it be great if we could abandon words completely and send each other "mind-streams"? Like tuning into a radio, we could get the full force of what someone else was meaning. This would also solve the problem of language barriers. But thats a little too sci-fi, even for me.
Now for a fun break from my textbook like talk, I will refer you to a Calvin & Hobbes comic:
Nothing proves a point like a Calvin & Hobbes comment.
Unfortunatly, however, most of the time when we try to abandon represenation, like the convention of language, we end up with some undescernable blob, somewhat like Calvin's snow structure. Oh well, it was worth a shot.
Going back to language barriers, however, let me relate to you a "fun" story that happened to me today. This year I decided to take a 2nd year Spanish class to follow up the Spanish classes I took last year. However, I am finding that the jump from 1st year to 2nd year to be a bit more of a leap over a gigantic gulf, and I am somewhere in the middle of the gulf. The entire class is carried on in Spanish and some of the time I understand what is going on and most of the time I spend looking down in case the Prof wants to ask me a question that I may not understand, or know how to respond to. (This way I just look really engrossed. "Oooo, Este libro de texto es muy interesante!") This "keeping a low profile" way of learning has been working for me for some time now and so I was feeling pretty good about the class. Today, however, we were talking about the Prado Museum in Madrid, and I rashly said, "I went there!" Perfect, I have now singled myself out as the resident expert about Spain. First the Prof asks me something that I reason out must mean, "What was your experience like?" To this I respond in the most eloquent way I know how and say "Uhhhh.." followed by a dose of "Ummm.." and finally I manage to say something resembling "It was interesting." Wow, now there is a complex sentence for you. The experiences and the answers that followed flowed in much the same stream and I would rather not speak of that painful experience. In the end, the class ended (as classes) do and I continued on my way feeling slightly to very inadequate at Spanish. Thankfully no one else I come in daily contact with speaks Spanish so my embarrasments can be contained to that classroom alone.
