My philosophy teacher used to have a special selection of profound quotes she’d repeat every so often to make a transition from a deep, depressing topic to something more cheerful and light. They’ve always reminded me a bit of the encouragements hanging around in Augustus’ house – empty words masking the unspoken dread, poignancy and fear. ‘Without pain, how could we know joy?’ ‘Modesty is for people who have no other qualities to show.’
Aware (Japanese)- the bitterness of a brief and fading moment of transcendent beauty
Koi No Yokan (Japanese)- the sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall in love.
One of her favourites was Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”. It’s basically a fancy way of saying language barrier. We’ve all experienced it in our travels and explorations – striving to convey a simple message to a lost tourist or attempting to understand desperate and quite random hand gestures. It seems that once our vocabulary fails us, the rest of the universe is rendered arcane and unconquerable.
Tartle (Scots)- the nearly onomatopoeic word for that panicky hesitation just before you have to introduce someone whose name you can’t quite remember.
Espirit d’escalier (French)- to come up with a perfect comeback when it’s no longer useful; literally, wit of the staircase
The language barrier, however, extends further than its definition. Besides impeding fruitful communication with foreigners, it can also hinder our self-expression. Whether we run out of the right words in the middle of a suspenseful story, or if they elude us at the start of a confession, the inability to fatefully reproduce our thoughts and feelings makes us feel misunderstood.
Goya (Urdu)- the transporting suspension of disbelief that can occur in good storytelling
Jayus (Indonesian)- an unfunny joke told so badly that you can’t help but laugh
It is true that our language marks the borders of our world in so many ways. But there are lexical gaps in every language – holes and errors in the texture of our vocabulary around which we skillfully maneuver. There is a striking range of experiences we all go through frequently but we can’t name. The lack of a single word or a crafty phrase to determine them does not diminish the power of the emotion or the awfulness of a happenstance.
Fernweh (German) – feeling homesick for a place you’ve never been to
Tatemae and Honne (Japanese) – what you pretend to think, and what you actually think
So maybe Ludwig Wittgenstein was not entirely right. We can experience the world without knowing all the adjectives, nouns and verbs to define it. The limits of our language only mean the limits of the world we can share with others.
I am a frail dandelion and one day the wind would scatter me away, but until then I’d read and write and aspire to greater heights. Of course, by that I mean, attain a Nobel prize in Biology, travel with the Doctor, pen a profound bestseller, win the Hunger Games, meet Ayn Rand, attend VidCon and escape from my paper town.
