Wordle Me This

Witches cast spells.

In English, we spell using grammar.

Grammar originally referred to spells and magic. (click the word grammar if you would like to see more).

Woah, kinda weird right?

What if I were to tell you that our words are powerful? Cliche, right? It’s a sentiment that has been expressed time and time again. Be careful what you tell yourself. Be careful what you put out into the universe. Knock on wood. These are all phrases that have been repeated for a long time- even before our therapists started spouting them.

Though what we’re taught in school about the English language doesn’t typically go beyond its rules and regulations, when one looks deeper they find a whole trove of interesting knowledge. Especially when you compare English to other languages. We’re all aware that certain languages have words for concepts or ideas that don’t translate. But when you start to look at the purpose of each language, something becomes clear about English.

That is, it’s a very blame orientated language.

Everyone knows the stereotype of America. That we’re rude, brash, and we talk really loud with harsh words and even harsher accents. I don’t personally believe we’re as terrible as that, but we are taught to communicate in a very specific way. Our language revolves around saying things like, “You made me feel that way!” or, “I’m sorry I did that,” or even, “You did this and that upset me. You owe me. You should do something different next time.” And our other words support this type of communication. Take “I understand” for example. A very weird thing to say if you think about it. You put yourself beneath someone. You stand under them, giving them power.

Now, I’m sure this can all seem fairly normal. None of these phrases are anything out of the ordinary, but I’m going to give you a scenario to explain what I mean and then break it down.

Ken and Sarah are roommates. Ken loves to cook and Sarah loves to work. Since Sarah is busy a lot, Ken cooks and then cleans the dishes when he’s done. Sarah does other things to support their shared house, but hates cooking and dishes. One night, Ken is particularly tired and doesn’t feel like doing the dishes. They get left in the sink. This is their conversation the next day:

Ken: “We need to talk. You hurt my feelings yesterday when you didn’t wash the dishes.”

Sarah: “What do you mean? I’m sorry I hurt your feelings, but I don’t get why that’s upsetting to you.”

Ken: “Well, I always do the dishes and you don’t. You think you’re entitled to my energy and sometimes I get angry about it. But it’s okay, I forgive you.”

Sarah: “I understand, but I’m hurt you feel this way because I do a lot of other cleaning.”

And the argument can go on. This seems like a regular disagreement and at first glance, it doesn’t sound like anything too unusual. But when you analyze it, the word “you” is used 9 times. That means 9 times in 8 sentences, the conversational topic is redirected onto the other person. Ken blames Sarah repeatedly for hurting his feelings despite it being his emotions (no one can force anyone to feel anything!). Ken also takes it upon himself to forgive Sarah of her “mistakes” as if he’s playing a judge, weighing Sarah’s perceived rights and wrongs in his eyes. Sarah takes responsibility and puts herself underneath Ken, saying that she understands. She also apologizes for hurting his feelings, yet it’s an impossibility to hurt someone’s feelings since feelings are not tangible (here it would be helpful to have more words that describe more emotions, wouldn’t it?). It also puts all the blame on her for something no one can control. However, she then blames him for feeling.

What a strange thing! We’re taught to tell other people how they messed up our own inner worlds instead of taking responsibility for our feelings and communicating better. Then we take power over the other, seizing it from the air! This power doesn’t exist anywhere except in our blame orientated language where we constantly tell people what to do and how to behave.

So, this exemplifies my point that English forces us to speak in certain ways that may differ from other languages, but how does it relate to magic?

Now, there are many other things that can be said about English, like how we take possession of so many things, describing things are ‘ours’ and even ‘my leg’ or other body parts (in Spanish this is not the case) or how we have many words for material matters but hardly any to describe our emotions. (Image if we had as many words that express the material as we had to describe our emotional states, of which are so vast! Old Native American languages had more words geared towards expressing emotions). But this is not the point I’m trying to get at.

What we say is powerful. The people who created the English language did so with this in mind. Otherwise we wouldn’t have spelling, grammar, and a whole host of other words. And though we can only debate what their true intentions were, I wonder how pure it was. After all, the creators of English, understanding that words are powerful, crafted a language based on blame and materialistic things. Why? It’s a question I have no answer for yet.

Returning to the idea that our words are powerful, these are some other points worth pondering:

1. Our greeting to one another is “hell-o”. We curse each other the second we meet (as in, we say a curse word at one another every time we greet).
2. Our words have double meanings. When we say something about our work week, it also sounds the same if we are to use the word “weak.” Or when we talk about how we earn a living, earn can be replaced with “urn.”
3. We combine words together that have darker meanings. For example, we earn a living working for the weekend. We urn a living working for the weak end of the deal. Or you can use the example of “I understand.” And of course there are many other examples of this if you think about the words we use everyday! It’s as if we swap higher frequency, brighter meaning words, for much darker meaning, lower frequency words. Remember, each word has its own frequency and affect on the world around it, which has been proved many scientific studies.

It appears that someone somewhere along the line knew how powerful what we say can be. Even thinking about it on a strictly scientific level, we know that noises create sound waves with specific frequencies, which can affect objects around it. That means every single noise or sound has its own affect on the world around it, whether it’s bad or good. I personally notice a difference when I talk to myself positively versus negatively since words like ‘crap’ don’t have a healing frequency like the word ‘love.’ I also see how my positivity or negativity manifests in the greater world around me.

Even what we write matters, but that’s a whole different ball game. I’ll give you one example though. The word ‘test’. If you look at it, the letters ‘e’ and ‘s’ get trapped between the two ‘t’s. It’s an interesting word to look at, isn’t it? Whether or not you think it matters, it still is fascinating that the word test, designed to assess your skills and trap you if you fail and end up in the bottom tier, also has letters that are trapped. But this is just a side note and could be a whole different blog.

Of course, ultimately, these are just my ponderings. This is what this blog is for. Whether or not you think any of what I’ve said above is valid is up to you. My goal is to think critically about the things we usually don’t give much thought to and to question things that we readily accept. Because there’s no such thing as truth except that there is no truth, I don’t fully believe any which way. I just think about it. I also wonder about other languages and how they’re orientated, but I don’t know enough to speak on that.

If any of this information intrigues you, please look into it! And let me know your thoughts! If nothing else, it certainly is fascinating. After all, magic is all around us. We need only to look inside to find perhaps all of us are wizards to some extent.