“Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know.”
— Albert Camus, The Stranger, 1942
I have always been fascinated by the fact that syntactic structures can dramatically alter the meaning of two sentences which contain the exact same words; that two sentences translated with complete accuracy can evoke very different emotions in different languages; and by the power of oratory. That is why I try to express my creativity by stringing the words –chosen from an endless sea– one after the other, in many different ways.
People are born without language. Yet self-expression emerges from day one by simply asking for breast milk or declaring discomfort. People then grow and start using words to ask for, accept, or deny what they desire or require. Over time, words turn into sentences and sentences turn into paragraphs. These built-up piles of sentences are frequently called eloquent self-expression, but I must disagree. Eloquence lies where sincerity is felt. And I have been in many situations where I understood a complete stranger -and most of the time a foreigner- better than a native speaker of my mother tongue.
People acquire their mother tongues. Any other languages which the person has not been raised by, are learned. I see these additional languages as keys to doors opening to wider chambers because each new language creates a possibility for us to, at least, attempt to utter what is presumed to be inexpressible. Language is said to be the prison of the mind, but is it? I have felt many emotions that I could not –and still cannot– put into words. I have dreamed of fairy-tale-like scenarios whose beauty cannot be written down.
We must, however, consider the line between the “inexpressible”, the "indescribable", and the “untranslateable”. Self-expression does not occur only through talking or writing. It consists of many more elements such as mimics, gestures, physical reactions, or morphemes. Something indescribable can be expressed, and something untranslatable can be described. So, if we were to place sentiments, desires, or illusions into one of these three groups, labeling one as inexpressible would mean an obscure void –an inevitable nothingness in the literal sense. That said, obscure voids can transpire between languages. In order to ensure clarity, I would like to proceed with an example. In Inuktitut, the word “qanik” is used to portray not only the visual but the whole experience of newly-falling snow, which places this word in the "untranslatable" cluster. Returning to the haunting opening sentence of Albert Camus’ novel The Stranger, the word “maman” can easily be translated to English as “mother” or “mummy”. However, none of these words would convey the connotation which “maman” holds in French. Therein lies the obscurity.
Living in a culture and experiencing its constituting components allows one to associate facial expressions, intonations, stresses, and innumerable other cues with the message conveyed. Nonetheless, the absence of words is also a crucial component of language, much like the concept of negative space in art and architecture. While I was an exchange student in France, my host mother preferred to use the absence of words to define a situation instead of providing me with direct information, while my cultural knowledge and interpretation skills were inadequate to sort out the empty parts of this “space”. Mastery of a language is achieved only once we decipher its communication as a whole. As I spent more time in France, my French certainly improved. I began to internalise the nuances of specific words and phrases within their own linguistic and cultural contexts, as I was no longer translating conversations incessantly in my head.
Each revelation felt like unlocking a new facet of the rich tapestry of human communication. Even though I will not be able to learn all the words with sub-meanings in every distinct language as a transient human-being, I am looking forward to improving myself in the art of noticing new "mamans", and in the ingenuity of internalizing new languages and communication styles through understanding their cultures.
Experimenting with language as a means of persuasively expressing oneself is addictive. Though, simplicity, rather than intricacy, can be the key to beautiful writing. Elaborate vocabulary and structures are literary fallacies that readers tend to think they want but seldom need. When my syntactic structures got simpler and my phrases shorter, my words grew sharper. I strove for sheer simplicity in my written work, yet never forgot that simplicity does not mean ease. I learned that subtexts are often more colourful than concrete words. Readers’ imaginations wander beyond what they are offered. This is where creativity emerges: in intuition, possibilities, and dreams. This is when unadorned writing turns into an art form: the inexpressible is expressed in one language or another, not with the intention of being understood, but rather to be felt.