Minding one’s language
A language is a mentality. Perhaps not on a personal level, but because of the embedded attitudes that can be found in regularly used phrases, or ways of saying things.
In an ideal world, I would find a way to own my usage of the language of my forebears, to make it work for me in expressing my feelings and thoughts with precision.
One illustrious wordsmith – Amos Tutuola, found global recognition due to the way he functioned in the opaque space that lies in between Yoruba and English mentalities, in my opinion. Sometimes literary gold emerges from ideas being “lost in translation”.
It’s interesting that so much of the dominant popular music of this era (as in Grime/ Hip hop) is probably more reliant on verbal eloquence than it is on musical ambition.
Is it really true that “actions speak louder than words”? How does a mind analyse the meaning of actions without using words for descriptive purposes?
