Yeah, What She Said

“People find something very comforting about the notion that words are the problem, not concepts.  When words fail us, we tend to blame the words.  We’ve all experienced the frustration of not being able to say what we mean to say.  When we struggle with language, we have the sensation that our clean, beautiful ideas remain trapped inside our heads.  We accuse language of being too crude and clumsy to adequately express our thoughts.  But perhaps we flatter ourselves.

“Sometimes we do find the words to express an idea, and only then realize what a stupid idea it is.  This experience would suggest that our thoughts are not as clean and beautiful as we would like to believe.  Instead of blaming language for failing to capture our thoughts, maybe we should thank it for giving some shape to the muddle in our heads.”

-Arika Okrent, “In the Land of Invented Languages”