Even more extraordinary November 2020

WORD is a single unit of language which has meaning and can be spoken or written, a definition given by the Cambridge International Dictionary of English. Have you ever thought about what defines a word?

Because “words matter,” famously said by “Notorious RBG” Ruth Bader Ginsburg who claimed she was greatly inspired by the Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov and his use of words and emphasized the importance of using and interpreting the legal language during her impressive career with astonishing achievements as a lawyer and judge.

From the shortest and most simple, yet magic and heavyweight, words like yes or sorry, to the daring and effective logos in advertising, hashtag words, fierce and powerful slogans in protests, movements, and famous speeches seem to take enormous place in our daily lives and become highly significant when they touch and may impact our lives, let’s say those used in politics or health issue debates. When thinking of wordsmiths, the first that come to mind are poets, book and songwriters, religious leaders, politicians. We, too, have seen words used in contemporary art, and fashion designers convey some message by putting words on the clothes. How many T-shirts and tote bags are there in your closet with the name of a band or with a slogan on them? Sometimes we say it’s just empty words, don’t mind them, I am only joking, actions speak louder than words. Yet, we tend to mind, react to, and believe what is said or written.

Another American person has once said, “everyone is entitled to their own opinion, not their own facts. Words have power, and words have consequences.” We see that they do indeed, and the public words used in November 2020 were loud, powerful, and with consequences. In some cases, people are asked to believe the word of science with little tangible evidence; in other cases, people choose to believe words before there is any evidence when required to support the credibility of the words. Often, we may interpret words how we need them to be interpreted to just support our truth. The same word or same word combination can be twisted and turned by different people and used to argue their side of the case. Do we always understand the real and correct meaning of it and what it’s intending?

The study of meaning in linguistics entails semantics and pragmatics. SEMANTIC MEANING is literal, and possible to check and verify whether the statement is true or false. It is a meaning of a word or a sentence on its own without referring to its context. PRAGMATING MEANING is the purpose of a statement and what it wants to achieve – inform, give an order, ask for help, apologize, promise, deceive. Using words for these and other purposes, we need to know the context, and it always involves I and you at least, if not explicitly, then implicitly. I am informing, ordering, asking, apologizing to, promising to, deceiving you. No words or sentences exist without pragmatics. It is enough to say it out loud, and it affects a listener in one or the other way. Something like a sound “hmm” has no clear semantic meaning in itself, but an obvious pragmatic one: you are doubting, being uncertain, and not convinced. Pragmatic meaning is present even if you do not make any sound, only point with a finger, and that gesture alone means something. It is never true or false but something you intend to tell and thus change the world. It sounds pretty darn powerful, doesn’t it?

“All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down” are the words of Friedrich Nietzsche. All we need nowadays is a smartphone and a Twitter account. There, with the help of 140 to 280 characters, it is words we usually form and impact the world.

I happen to know the importance of words and the weight they carry through my work as an interpreter. When interpreting or translating from one language to the other, the meaning is no philosophical matter. One seriously needs to know, or at worst guess the meaning of what is being said in one language before searching for the right words in the other. In most cases, an interpreter is required to give literal, word-for-word translation (metaphrase), while in other and certain situations, it suffices to give a short summary (paraphrase) in one language of what has been said in the other.

Words define objects or concepts and can be understood literally. They can also be played with by forming puns*, idioms**, or metaphors*** in terms of sound or meaning. I am particularly fond of puns and their staggering wittiness. They make me wonder whether I understand them correctly and what may be their linguistic or/and cultural meaning. One of the reasons I get hooked for years watching certain American pop TV series is the constant and inexhaustible use of sharp, witty puns. I have realized that my understanding of American English and American culture has improved over the years by discovering and unveiling the meanings of those verbal tricks. If watching the series with subtitles in other languages, a pun is not translated because it simply does not work in another language the same way it does in English, in this case.

Both idioms, metaphors, and, above all, puns are much discouraged from using in a conversation to be interpreted into another language. And even the speech without them is a big enough challenge for an interpreter to spontaneously dive deep into the brain and pick up the appropriate word. If not the exact translation, then at least the one closest in meaning. There are words, however, that are not clear how to translate correctly. In these cases, one needs to have an overall comprehensive understanding of not only the language and its tricky quirks but the culture too.

The meanings of words in one language can be slightly differently understood in others. Usage of international words might help both sides be sure of the meaning, and everyone’s equal and correct understanding. Yes, it will seem the international words are to be understood, used, and interpreted the same way in all languages. That would be their universal purpose. But looking at the ambiguities of some notions, I become more and more cautious using them boldly, especially the examples such as nationalism, chauvinism, liberalism, and their meaning depending on a cultural context and historical backdrop.

Even seemingly most universal things like colors, are not uncontested. These kinds of discussions we often have in our two-lingual home: Is this red? Is this orange? Hmm? And is an orange orange or yellow? It is usually much more orange than a lemon. Is it not? What would be then the right color word to choose in translation to a different language?

Words like homonyms**** across languages can have one meaning in one language and a completely opposite one in another: e.g., the verb “grine” in Danish means “laugh” while in Norwegian, the same verb means “to cry “/ “weep”; Dutch/Flemish verb “bluss-en” means “extinguish“, but in Norwegian, oddly enough, the verb “bluss-e” means “flare (up).” “Straks” in Dutch/Flemish means “later” while the same word “straks” means “immediately” or “soon” in Norwegian.

Notice how many times you have used Google Translate, typed a word in one language, and received a list of several translation options in your language, some of them on that list being a total opposite in meaning.

The worst are so-called false cognates or false friends, which sound similar across languages while their meaning is not the opposite but somewhat different. Cognates*****, in general, are helpful and can lighten interpreter or language student’s burden in memorizing a word’s meaning. However, these false ones turned into enemies may confuse and mislead in spontaneous situations. Here are some examples: the adverb “eventually” in English denotes “in the end“/”after some time“, while in German “eventuell” means “possibly“/”in certain circumstances“; the verb “rester” in French does not mean “rest” but “stay” and the verb “attendre” means “wait” not “attend” which actually corresponds to the French “assister.” Norwegians who visit Denmark may wonder why “frokost” is served that late in a day before realizing that in Denmark, it is served as “lunch” while in Norway as “breakfast.”

Examples are plenty, and in the meantime, I keep on learning new words, memorizing and deciphering their meaning(s) and what lurks behind them, and cannot wait to find out what word has made the cut becoming the Word of the Year to be announced by the American Dialect Society in January. Spread the word!

Finally, some numbers for a change: the Oxford English Dictionary contains 171,476 words in current use, there are around 1400 words in this article, and the word word appears more than 40 times.

*The pun, also called paronomasia, is an amusing use of a word or phrase which has several meanings or which sounds like another word, for an intended humurous or rhetorical effect. 

** Idiom – a group of words in a fixed order having a particular meaning, different from the meanings of each word understood on its own. It tipically presents a figurative, i.e. non-literal meaning. E.g., to “have bitten off more than you can chew” means you have tried to do something that is too difficult for you; “spread the word” means not just to tell one person, but to tell many people.

***Metaphor- an expression which describes an object in a literary way by referring to something that possesses similar characteristics to the object you are trying to describe. It can act as a symbol which represents the object you are describing. E.g., “the city is a jungle”

****Homonyms – two or more words (in one language) having the same spelling or pronunciation but different meanings and origins.

*****Cognates are words that have a common etymological origin. Cognates are often inherited from a shared parent language, but they may also involve borrowings from some other language.

Sources: lectures by Prof. Dr. Marc van Oostendorp (Meertens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences); Cambridge International Dictionary of English, 1997; Wikipedia