Why More Than Words?

What is More Than Words? And why should you care? (Excellent questions.) In brief: Because language really matters—and so do languages.

When I was very young, my parents spoke one language to me while most of the people in the world around me spoke another. This is not at all unusual; millions of people (Tens of millions? Hundreds?) around the world have exactly the same experience. Being a toddler at the time, I didn’t realize this was true, or (indeed) that more than one language existed. Actually, beyond that, I had no idea that language (as such) existed at all—only that my parents and I could convey thoughts back and forth to each other by making mouth noises.

Soon after I started preschool my parents switched to English, so that (in their minds) it would make it easier for me to communicate with everyone else around me, not just them. I have no memory of this change happening; maybe for the same reason that no one remembers learning to walk—one day, you go from not walking to walking, like everyone else around you is doing, and a week later you forget you ever couldn’t. But when I was about six years old, a life-changing revelation struck one day, thanks to a magical television show that (as it happens) was born the same year as I was:

I saw “Sesame Street” for the first time. And nothing was ever the same.

Specifically, as part of Sesame Street’s founding mission to teach, inspire and nurture children (in addition to entertaining them), the show included brief animated vignettes featuring numbers and words. A voice-over counted “one, two, three” and ended “nine, ten” while colorful digits flashed across the screen. Of course, I thought. Obviously. But what blew my mind was when the same cartoon came back five minutes later, with the same digits in the same order, but the voice sang instead:

“uno, dos, tres…” and stopped with “nueve, diez”.

I was flabbergasted. Did this mean that there are actually two ways of saying the same thing? Why? And what do you call that? (Consulting my parents, I learned the answers to those three questions were: “Yes, even more than two ways”; “Because”; and “Spanish”.) Soon those bilingual animations became my favorite part of the show, and I learned the meaning of other fascinating words like “peligro”, “abierto”, and “cerrado”. My joy at having made this discovery was undiminished by the fact that no one else in my (suburban, ethnically homogeneous) preschool understood when I used them. I felt like these words were the keys to a secret world that I might discover one day, when I was all grown up.

To make a long story short… it turned out to be true. That early fascination with Sesame Street Spanish was followed in turn by discoveries of other languages (French), then other alphabets (Russian), then other non-alphabets (Chinese). Along the way, I learned to appreciate that language—whether delving deeply into one, or dabbling across several—could be not only fun, not only useful, but… transformative. Even life-changing. Language is not just another topic for academic study (though it is also that); it’s also central to the experience of being human. Language is the indispensable tool that allows us to create culture and be part of building society. Of course, this is not a new insight. A significant fraction of the world’s population use two or more languages on a daily basis, and thus experience constantly the magical power that words have to engender connections between people, deepen understanding between disparate communities, and facilitate (perhaps lubricate?) the flow of ideas globally—making thoughts accessible to more and more people in less and less time.

But at the same time… it can also be human nature to take things for granted. Again like the toddler learning to walk: It’s an incredible feat of balance, neural connectivity and coordination, but as soon as you can do it, it becomes automatic—there was never a time you couldn’t. The capacity of the human brain to convey thoughts, ideas, and emotion through language is so complex that even now in the 2020s, with artificial intelligence-based programs that can use the entire Internet as their collective/combined linguistic database… they still can’t communicate as creatively as a 12-year-old. We forget what a minor miracle it is that any of us can talk to one another. Many people feel bad that they can ‘only’ speak one language. Others who are bilingual worry that “I’m not good enough in either one” or fret when they mix languages. Or feel ashamed that they can’t converse with Grandma in her native tongue. How many of us have bought Italian phrasebooks, watched German DVDs or listened to Mandarin podcasts—whether the reason was fun, vacation prep, or work—only to become discouraged when we haven’t ‘picked up’ the language in the six weeks promised?

To all those notions of shame and inadequacy, I say: Rubbish! Repeat after me: Language is a super-power, and I not only have it, I get to use it every day. Whee! (The ‘whee’ is optional, but I find it helps.)

So, what is More Than Words? This is a blog celebrating both language (singular) and languages (plural), including:

– How each language is unique

– How languages are related to each other

– How languages shape and revitalize each other

– Why languages are worth noticing, celebrating, and saving (in ways big and small)

– What adults can learn from children about language learning

– Why language matters to you—yes, you—and why you’re “better at languages” than you think you are.

WHAT IT ISN’T:

– A guide to learning any one language

– A set of detailed linguistics lectures (Damn it, Jim, I’m a doctor…not a linguist!)

– A reason to feel bad about your ‘language proficiency’. If you’ve read this far, congratulations!—you’re already fluent in English, the world’s most useful and widely spoken language. So whatever else you may learn or take away from reading this blog… it’s just icing.

To kick off this New Year of 2025, not to mention More Than Words itself, I plan to start with the following: Each week (more or less) I will choose a word or set of words (or more properly, an idea or set of ideas) and present how they are said, and written, in a selection of languages from around the world. I’ll point out which languages express the concepts similarly, or differently, and why—sometimes because they’re related, the result of an ancestral language evolving over time into divergent sibling tongues; sometimes because languages bump up against each other and bits of words (or grammar) rub off and get absorbed into somewhere they weren’t previously. I will also point out details of language that I find either interesting, useful, humorous, or some combination of the three. About my choice of languages: With thousands of languages used throughout the world—and intentionally I mean ‘used’, not just ‘spoken’—I had to limit the project to an admittedly arbitrary number (40) and selection to include on a regular basis. In my next post, I will explain why I’ve chosen each of the forty; apologies in advance if your own favorite language is missing from the list.

Until then… au revoir, and gracias for reading. See? Mixing words is just fine.

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