The Language Block

Language said the Sage is all about communication! Now how you do that is your problem.

Many of us confuse the need or the purpose of language. Instead of communicating we try and use bigger obscure words which masks and covers what we want to convey. This leads to misunderstandings, confusions and chaos.

Why do you need language, what is it? Language is nothing but just a means of communication, but we make it into a big deal. There have been wars fought over language, there are still fights, quarrels and disturbances around the world over language.

Belonging to a country where there is such a diversity of languages, India, I am very much aware of the passion that language causes.

 I myself speak or understand six languages of my country and I find all of them beautiful and my abiding regret is that I am no longer able to pick up languages as easily as I used to as I age.

Maybe it is because the pathways of the mind get inflexible as you travel on the path to become an old curmudgeon J now that’s a big word in these times.

No no don’t look it up… it only means a mean tempered fellow, mostly an old male of the species.

I guess this passion arises as we identify so strongly with the language.  And we poke fun at other languages or even with other accents!

What is writing all about, it’s just communicating your ideas your knowledge to another person in a way he or she understands. But we are so caught up in our own wonder at our knowledge that we forget about this need of communication. 

We happily use jargon, technical terms not bothering whether the other person is in a position to understand what we are trying to say.

When it comes to verbal communication adding to all the above is the accent, the tone and whether the other person is listening.  

We rarely bother whether the other person is listening and when our ideas are not understood we blame it on others.

For the other person to listen, we need to have empathy, we need to put ourselves in their shoes and speak accordingly.

Now this holds true for written communication too.

Compounding all this is the perception in our minds. Many a time we may have labelled and slotted a person into a certain persona and we tend to color our thinking with this labelling or profiling.

So how do we avoid the pitfalls in communicating, transmitting our ideas.

The solution, to my mind is simple, use simpler words, it will be easier on you too, use the minimum of words required to convey; as more the number of words used, the greater the chance of miscommunication.

That’s one reason I keep my blogs short and my poetry so minimalist… not because I am lazy Lol!

All of you who have taken the trouble to read till here, I would love to hear your views of this, please post your comments so that we can have a discussion rather than just a write up…

Namaste till next time.