# How language works Language is, broadly, a set of base [symbols](symbols.md) that create [meaning](meaning.md) when assembled. Speaking uses mouth sounds, while writing uses characters. [Math](math.md) itself is a *highly* logical language. We use language when we're trying to communicate [ideas](values.md). While we often think of [speaking](language-speaking.md) and [writing](language-writing.md) as language, body expressions are often language as well. APPLICATION: Language isn't for thought, but for communication. When we self-talk, we are communicating with ourselves. ## Ideas presented Language itself represents the pinnacle of [understanding](understanding.md) within our perspective. If we can frame ideas in words, we have a fuller capacity to [logically](logic.md) work with them, and it means we can work with an idea, including [building something](results.md) or [communicating it](people-conversation.md). APPLICATION: To take understanding even farther, we must use simpler words. This proves we can simplify what is really happening. At the same time, language *isn't* understanding, and is only the reference point for what we place in our mind. The pinnacle of understanding comes when we can [work well with something](purpose.md), and language is how we indicate the form that a thought can express itself. Words have implicit feelings that associate to [human universal interpretations](humanity-universals.md) (e.g., the nonsense word "ah-no-ma-ha" feels *far* less threatening than "ch-ak'tchnapth"). This can have a cultural impact depending on which words apply to which [physical things](reality.md). APPLICATION: [Communication](people-conversation.md) is a massive part of the [human experience](humanity-universals.md) and how we [understand](understanding.md), so our word choice directly defines many aspects of our existence. Because of this, people can [easily abuse](image-distortion.md) words, and the beginning of [living well](goodlife.md) comes in speaking its existence correctly. APPLICATION: All good language uses poetry to make it more aesthetically pleasing and easier to digest. When speaking, each sound represents a syllable (e.g., "ah", "em"), and a combination of syllables creates a "word", which represents a complete idea. Vowel sounds link a word together (e.g., a, e, i), and consonants provide more of the [story](stories.md) about how the word makes us [feel](mind-feelings.md). Every letter, word, and phrase is a [symbol](symbols.md) that represents both as an [idea](values.md) of its own and as a relationship to other ideas. Each idea comes with unique [images](image.md) and [feelings](mind-feelings.md) as we interpret it in our minds. In languages like English, each character has an abstract meaning that only forms [ideas](values.md) when they're assembled into words. In other languages (e.g., Eastern languages like Chinese), the letter itself has a clearer meaning. Written and spoken language are *not* the same language, and run parallel to one another in any [culture](people-culture.md). They're connected directly with each other, though, so we tend to treat them as one singular codex. The ideas of a word are *not* simple. Each word often contains *dozens* of associations that form into a [story](stories.md). These stories include [ideas](values.md), [feelings](mind-feelings.md), many [implications](image.md), and even *more* of the same from other words' relationship to those ideas. Until we reach [adulthood](maturity.md), every letter and word is passed on to us from our [culture](people-culture.md) and imbued with [implications](mind-feelings.md). When we get older, we predominantly use [logic](logic.md) to [understand](understanding.md) secondary languages (including [writing](language-writing.md)) instead of [intuition](mind-feelings.md). We must delicately balance between precision and brevity, and our [choice](people-decisions.md), and we tend to intuitively figure it out based on [our listener](people-conversation.md). If too precise, the listener will become [bored](mind-feelings.md). If too brief, the listener will be confused. In that sense, the communicator only meets that balance by [understanding](understanding.md) the [purposes](purpose.md) of their audience. The complexity of expressing ideas either succintly or elaborately, as well as the [image](image.md) we wish to convey, means we will create similar words for nearly the same idea to convey different [feelings](mind-feelings.md) and [values](values.md). We will also employ body language, timing, visual cues, and context to [emphasize or diminish parts of those ideas](language-speaking.md). ## The stucture of language All ideas start with nouns. Nouns state something as a concrete [value](values.md). They frequently represent [metaphysical reality](reality.md), but can also be [hypothetical](imagination.md), but are essentially "pointing" at something. Verbs are values of action, and are *always* connected to a noun (even when the noun is simply implied) and help us understand what [purpose](purpose.md) to assign those nouns. While nouns are relatively static, verbs come in *many* forms, including time (e.g., "was", "will be"), details (e.g., "ran" vs. "dashed"), and [framing](image.md) (e.g., "escaped" vs. "infiltrated"). APPLICATION: Time travel [stories](stories.md) are exceedingly difficult because they mess with our fixed perspective of time. In a time travel story, "What I'm doing right now will be before what I had done, which comes after what I will do next" can be a syntactically correct statement in the story's world. Nouns and verbs are the basis of all things. Without the noun, there is nothing to [identify or understand](understanding.md), but a noun without a verb is meaningless because it simply states a thing without a [purpose](purpose.md). We often "verb-ize" nouns for the sake of creating meaning, and almost any noun can be colloquially converted into a verb. Adjectives and adverbs expand on nouns and verbs. By using many descriptors, we can modify ideas as far as we want. In particular, they both increase specificity through adapting the [feelings](mind-feelings.md) their parent nouns and verbs had incited and mixing with other associated feelings tied to the word itself. APPLICATION: The breadth and range of descriptors like adjectives and adverbs gives us the unlimited ability to express ideas. But, words can weigh down a sentence. Descriptors can be poetry applied to writing, but often sabotages everyday language. We connect words to similar and opposing ideas to create synonyms and antonyms. Their power comes through association: mere awareness of related words can create [understanding](understanding.md), but can also [distort perceptions](image-distortion.md). APPLICATION: Synonyms and antonyms are useful, but they're also risky if we over-simplify the concepts. "Part" is the antonym of "whole", but also of "non-part", and "whole" and "non-part" are completely unrelated ideas. Conjunctions allow compounded ideas and elaborate expressions. They are frequently the mechanism for [half-truths](image-distortion.md) (e.g., "talked to him" versus "talked about him"). Since they're so small, we tend to casually express them in daily language without much thought, but they define the details of most [rules](people-rules.md) (especially in [legal domains](legal-doctrines.md)). APPLICATION: At their farthest use, words carry [legal](people-rules.md) power. In those cases, the difference between small words like "of" and "for" can change the *entire* [purpose](purpose.md) of a document or statement. ## The format of language By drawing from [feelings](mind-feelings.md), our choice of words will form [symbolic](symbols.md) comparisons, which crafts a [sensation](image.md) with words. Decent-[quality](values-quality.md) writing and speaking combines those words together (which represent ideas individually) to [create](creations.md) unique idea combinations that we call "sentences". APPLICATION: Words' [emotions](mind-feelings.md) make us associate them to [action](results.md): - Using elderly words makes people walk slower. - People speak faster with short words. - People access trivia better when thinking of [college professors](education.md). - Discussing [sports](fun-sports.md) makes people dumber. Because speaking or writing has an implied [purpose](purpose.md) for its existence, language *always* presumes an audience exists as well. There is an even cadence to language, whether spoken or written. The farthest end of it becomes "poetry", but it expresses through the rhythm interpreted by the audience. For example, the statement "there are many ways, many things, and many worlds" sounds more pleasant than "There's many ways, things, and worlds". One key difference between speaking and writing is through our interpretation of its permanence. We tend to know that writing has more [meaning](meaning.md) attached, so we can feel enough [fear](mind-feelings-fear.md) that we'll not be able to start writing. By contrast, we can typically speak without much effort, assuming it's not [public speaking](language-speaking.md). Underneath the surface, there are *many* aspects professional communicators obsess over: - [Logical](logic.md) flow - [Timing](datetime.md) and cadence - The messenger matching with the message and [branding](marketing.md) - [Usefulness](purpose.md) or relevance to the audience - The audience's reading or language comprehension level - Conversational style - Flow from one idea to the next - [Humor](humor.md) - Intelligence level, typically written as slightly smarter than the reader - The audience's interest - Tense (past, current, future) - The [points of view](image.md) involved - Editing (grammar, spelling, vocabulary) - Conveyed [emotions](mind-feelings.md) ## Changes to language We use modifier words to streamline everything, and most of them are simple improvisations: - Onomatopoeia are written words we use to describe audible sounds (e.g., "bang, pow"). - We use pronouns instead of proper nouns to take away emphasis or speed up [conversations](people-conversation.md). - We'll often make contractions to [efficiently](success-4_routine.md) use less letters and syllables. - Prefixes and suffixes are useful to easily assert a relationship with something else (e.g., antidisestablishmentarianism is anti-dis-**establish**-ment-arian-ism). - We'll sometimes use nouns as verbs to sound more [official](image.md) (e.g., monetize instead of "make something become money"). - We make words that create sweeping generalizations for people groups, both as demonyms for regions (e.g., "Germans") and ethnonyms for [identity](identity.md) (e.g., "Catholics"). - We'll condense the idea to a simple [feeling](mind-feelings.md) in the form of slang when we frequently express an idea but don't have a suitable word (e.g, "paper-pusher" instead of "bureaucrat" or "office worker"). - We'll remove precise modifiers if we use a word frequently enough, since they're already implied (e.g., "power" instead of "electrical power") APPLICATION: Most language starts simple, but we tend to complicate words as we add to them. There's value in contractions and pronouns, but elegant language keeps prefixes and suffixes to a relative minimum and avoids turning nouns into verbs whenever possible. Awful writers, on the other hand, destroy any [meaning](meaning.md) they were attempting to convey. kThe [purposes](purpose.md) we aim for determines which parts of our [understanding](understanding.md) we'll [choose](people-decisions.md) to omit when communicating, which reflects itself broadly in the DISC communication style: - [Dominance](power.md) will strip away *everything* for the sake of simplicity. - [Influence](power-influence.md) removes details about things. - [Steadiness](safety.md) removes details about people. - [Conscientiousness](morality.md) keeps *every* detail as much as possible. Language is constantly moving. While there's a "codified" standard in things like dictionaries and textbooks, language shifts with society's [trends](trends.md): - Meanings of words will be repurposed, then used dominantly for that new purpose (e.g., "gay" was a [feeling](mind-feelings.md) but is now a [sexual orientation](gender.md)). - [Feelings](mind-feelings.md) that the word evoked redirect themselves to specific things (e.g., "[technology](technology.md)" is now localized to specifically high-technology). - Figures of speech become outdated with technological development or new [trends](trends.md) (e.g., "pop in the movie", "dial up someone's phone"). - [Political](power.md) efforts (especially with [leftism](politics-leftism.md)) can redirect thoughts to associate or disassociate for the sake of [personal gain](morality-evil.md). APPLICATION: Words are constantly mutating and shifting, so we must mind which words we use with which [groups](groups-member.md). APPLICATION: When we use slang or add many prefixes and suffixes to something, we don't really [understand](understanding.md) it very thoroughly. Within only five years, a new dialect can emerge, and fifty years is enough time to create a distinctive dialect that could pass as another language entirely. APPLICATION: Any attempt at a universal language is impossible to maintain. Even if it were possible to implement, it would permute into a vast range of dialects within weeks of being implemented. FURTHER APPLICATION: The only way we could create a language-perfect [AI](computers-ai.md) is to have one that can accurately recognize its audience, *not* simply restate information relative to previous statements. This isn't confined to spoken language, and can apply to body language or timing as well. ## New words [Niches and specializations](jobs-specialization.md) will create their own jargon, for several reasons: - Niche groups spend a *lot* of time discussing specific ideas, so members will form a word or acronym around that idea to avoid saying a phrase every time. This saves *tons* of time for their [purposes](purpose.md). - Many specific things are similar to other things, so tradespeak lets everyone demarcate them without many adjectives. - As a side benefit, a person's knowledge of that jargon indicates their [standing in that group](groups-member.md), with more jargon implying more allegiance to the group's collective purposes. These specific words *don't* translate well across industries. For example, "depreciation" has at least three distinct meanings: [accounting](money-accounting.md) depreciation decreases the value of an asset over its expected life, [economics](economics.md) depreciation means something drops in [market value](image.md), and [legal](people-contracts.md) depreciation is when something deteriorates to [uselessness](purpose.md). ## Ordering of words The order of words matters heavily. Our minds are [story-based](stories.md), so the passive voice can rearrange the noun's location and remove/add emphasis to the verb before the noun: - "The assailant hid the body, then dug a grave for it and threw it in." - "The body was hidden until a grave was dug, then the assailant threw it in." Along with the voice, adding or removing words to a sentence can make a statement vague or authoritative: - "I don't mean to be so certain of what I'm saying here, but, if you could, I think it'd be a good idea for you to stop playing and start engaging in work-related actions." - "Stop playing and get to work." The order and number of words can very frequently demonstrate the true [purpose](purpose.md) of why people say something. ## Sticky words A word never exists in a vacuum, and it tends to "stick" to nearby words and evoke different degrees of [feeling](mind-feelings.md) based on its relationship to other words. By adding more words and swapping out nouns for pronouns, we can dramatically change a sentence's [story](stories.md): - One sentence... - "At a party, John was near a philanderer." - ...is far more condemning than... - "John was at a party, and happened to be nearby someone who was regarded as a philanderer." - ...which is yet far more condemning than... - "You know John, right? Well, anyway, something you may know already. He was nearby someone at a party who was regarded as a philanderer." - ...and can be completely [redirected](image-distortion.md)... - There's a philanderer, whom anyone with an ounce of human decency should despise, a person of distinctively bad taste. At a party, John was unfortunate enough to be nearby them. Most people [automatically](habits.md) sift through this with other people, so nobody tends to realize [how frequently](stories-storytellers.md) people "stick" things near other things. We tend to link words without meaning to similar words with meaning. People named Dennis or Denise are more likely to become dentists, people named Mary are more likely to get married, societies that have many words for "[love](people-love.md)" have many more ways to express it. APPLICATION: Words change how we think, so we must be careful about what we [believe](understanding-certainty.md) from others and *constantly* reconsider how we once saw things when we first used a specific word. Ideas also tend to persist even when [authority figures](groups-large.md) switch out words. Revising language (e.g., [leftism](politics-leftism.md)) only stalls everyone's [identification](identity.md) of the idea until the word associates with the old emphasis of that word: - At various times in the USA, the words "colored person", "black", "Negro", and "African American" have been used, but they all allude to the same [identifier](identity.md) of a dark-skinned person of seeming African-majority descent. - Homosexuals adopted the word "gay", which removed its old association with joyfulness and became slang until it was replaced with the catchall "LGBT" and later "LGBTQQIDAAPPO2SBNBGNCGGAPPO+", which all allude to the same broad identifier of "non-cisgender". After enough overuse and time, words will form into [habits](habits.md) for people. At that point, the words become placeholders for other things most people aren't aware of: - Nobody thinks of "Saint Anthony" if they visit San Antonio, TX or that "New York" is a [colonial connection](politics-systems.md) to "York" in the United Kingdom. - A laser is an acronym for "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation". ## Word connections Language doesn't exist in a vacuum. The words we use are "building blocks" for the [world around us](reality.md). It's why we dialogue with ourselves, even from an early age. Sometimes, we can create entirely new language, but it's usually easier for us to repurpose existing words. Further, we tend to use language to convey concepts on "levels" of depth: 1. Cliché conversation - generic "filler" information as part of a shared ritual with others. 2. Trivia - useless facts about ourselves and our environment. 3. Ideas/Judgments - the framework of how we perceive the world around us. 4. Feelings - the basis for how we approach what we know, and subsequently the methodology for our ideas/judgments. 5. Authenticity - complete emotional openness and honesty with others and ourselves, which requires an absence of [fear](mind-feelings-fear.md). APPLICATION: If a specific idea doesn't have a word, we tend not to think about it. If we run across one, we should [make](creations.md) a new word to more thoroughly [understand](understanding.md) it, and the easiest way is to convert a noun into a verb or use the same idea from a different domain. The [power](power.md) of language doesn't stop there. Language becomes the means on how we clarify [the unknown](unknown.md), so spoken/written statements dramatically increase the chances of us making more well-informed [decisions](people-decisions.md). APPLICATION: Words contain many ideas, so our choice of words has a *profound* impact on how we see [our environment](reality.md). For that reason, it's better to choose carefully, and aim for a simpler word that evokes more accurate [feelings](mind-feelings.md) (and therefore easier to [fix errors](https://adequate.life/fix/)) whenever [uncertain](understanding-certainty.md). Language generally states [reality](reality.md) itself ("constantive"), which means it can be [proven or disproven](understanding-certainty.md). However, in some situations, our language can be the results that *define* the [consequences](results.md) in reality ("performative"). For example, a minister saying "I now pronounce you husband and wife" is performative, while the statement "You are husband and wife" in almost any context is simply constantive. This has tremendous legal implications with [contracts](people-contracts.md). ## Language misuse Most people misuse language, either from [inexperience](maturity.md) or with [purposes](purpose.md) to gain [power](power.md). The most frequent misuse of language comes through barriers to shared [understanding](understanding.md). Various reasons will mean we don't [get the message across correctly](people-conversation.md), and the other person [concludes](logic.md) the wrong thing. Miscommunication is a major cause of [human conflict](people-conflicts.md), and differing languages are the strongest aspect of it. APPLICATION: Florid language is as dangerous to clearly getting a point across as technical jargon. Saying, "the world in which the great man inhabited, of which we all wish to aspire to, was one of remarkable prudence and authority in contrast to the drudgery of today's benign challenges" is as bad as "the neoliberal fashions of the time presented remarkable stigmas that generated a retrospective inverse correlation to today's fashions", and not as good as "in his time, things were different, so the decisions were more severe". When people abuse language, they are often either using a word with a stronger feeling than they have as an [emotional](mind-feelings.md) bludgeon, or mincing specific words to [imply](symbols.md) a more subdued [belief](understanding-certainty.md) than they really have. By changing words, leaders can [conceal the truth](image-distortion.md), at least for a time. They typically remove the emphasis of that word over time, rather than legitimately change anything with the redefinition. When we use our language to make excuses (e.g, "I can't do X because Y", "X caused me to Y"), we give [power](power.md) to others outside ourselves. Over time, we can often [identify](identity.md) with that helplessness and destroy any chance at [living well](goodlife.md). ## Language is persistent Communicating [images and videos](creations.md) is useful, but words we can quickly write and [unpack](understanding.md) in others' [imagination](imagination.md) will *always* be a key component of how we interact. APPLICATION: We will always have a text-based messaging component built into all [technology](technology.md) ([Zawinski's Law](lawsaxioms-tech.md)).