Words

You know, words are fantastic.

Even before humans arrive in this world, they can hear their mothers speaking,

the sound and rhythms of the language that she uses,

so that once they arrive they already have a start on learning how to speak in the same way.

They call it their mother tongue,

because their tongues are what they use to speak words in their shared language.

But of course it takes quite a long time before they learn how to speak using words,

and they first learn to speak using all sorts of different noises,

like laughing, or crying, or shouting,

or they learn noises like animals make, like cows going 'moo', and cats going 'meow', and dogs going 'woof'.

And they learn to make noises like the world they hear around them,

like the swish of the wind,

or the wail of a police car or ambulance.

But in the end they learn how to use words,

and then the world changes,

because then they can say things that they are thinking.

And they think with those words.

They hear them in their heads all the time,

even when they aren't speaking. they use them to understand the world.

But the world around them is more complicated than all the words that they can learn,

and when they are trying to talk about it all that they can do is try their best.

And their best can never be good enough to describe the world exactly.

Words don't work that way,

their meanings shift and change

in the way that the world and our understanding of it shifts and changes.

If they want to talk in ways that are fixed,

that they all understand the same way,

they need to use numbers.

But numbers can only describe a very small part of what they know.

Words have deeper and wider meanings.

they can use words to talk about numbers, but it's very hard to use numbers to talk about words.

So they can never be quite sure if what they mean by a word

is the same meaning that is understood by a person listening to it.

In fact, they don't always mean the same thing when they use a word.

When they call something 'hot' do they mean hot like a fire?

or hot like a hot drink?

or hot like a sunny day?

or even hot like hot-tempered?

And think of how many different colours there are in the world that they end up calling blue or green,

and how they blur into each other until they can't really tell which is which.

But it is the way that words stretch

and twist and change their meanings

that makes them so useful and important in our understanding of the world.

Which is more important?

How do they make letters into words?