Home » Blogs » Cassie Anderson's blog » Language. La langue. Lingvo. Gengo.
Language is all around us. We think it, we learn it, we speak it, we read it, and we write it. Language is the basis of almost everything. All writing in English is only the arrangement and rearrangement of twenty-six letters. Just think about that. Inspiration comes from the things and people and places around us.
Creativity is surrounded by language. Language is a building block. Language is a way to craft things. Language is a way of communication. All around the world people are speaking to each other. They are speaking words of love. They are speaking words of inspiration. People around the world are speaking to children, and teens, and people who never felt like they mattered to inspire them and to move them forward in their lives. People speak to matter. And when people matter, they inspire. And when people don't matter, they still inspire.
Inspiration also comes from language. How many times have you found a word in your native tongue, or word in another language – to be beautiful? Even phrases count. Mi estas bela – "I am beautiful" – in Esperanto, is a beautiful phrase within itself even if you don't know that bela means beautiful. Personally I think the phrase in Esperanto is even more beautiful than English because the way it fluidly rolls off of my tongue. I could say it to myself all day. That's not the point of this blog though.
The point is sometimes there are words in other languages that we do not have in our native languages. Sometimes these words describe things beautifully, specifically, better, or all of the above. Some languages just flow better; take a look at French, they were so picky about it they made rules to change things just so it would be fluid.
For example, words that we don't have have been studied in native Alaskan languages – there could be over one hundred words for just snow and different kinds of snow. For example, piqayulak is the word for glacial ice from a river (source: Alaska Native Language Center). Mapsa snow that overhangs. Who would of thought of having a word for that specific occurrence? Alaskan Natives did.
Words are beautiful, and without them there wouldn't be anything to write about. Not just literally, because there would be no words, but metaphorically as well. Words are the coal in our fire of creativity. We will always have something to say, and maybe there's a word in another language that will be just what we want to speak. Is that not truly the nature of beauty?