I love words. You would never guess, would you? I enjoy the way certain words look. There is just something satisfying about the shape of them on the page. It works better with handwriting them, a bit like doodling the name of your first crush on your exercise books. I know it sounds daft, but some just look good, like strength, manure and forward.

I love the way words sound. Some smooth and silky like smooth and silky, some pointy and sharp, like picket and kick, some just fun, like plinth and sprocket and unguent.

I love the way they fit together, how combinations of words can be stimulating, comforting, ridiculous, humorous, provocative. I love how changing one word can make a whole new meaning for what you say.

When I worked with deaf and hard of hearing people, I was astonished by the power and beauty of sign language, the subtlety and humour that could be expressed without words as we would normally think of them. As part of the job, I read around the subject of language a little, and was stopped in my tracks by the assertion that without language, thought is impossible.

Actually, as I type that sentence, I am stopped in my tracks again. The concept of life without language is huge. I cannot imagine living without words running through my head. If you have no framework within which to make sense of what you are experiencing, life must surely be a shapeless jumble with no concept of time or reason. If you have no means of expressing yourself to yourself or to the world, what is there?

See the forthcoming blog entry on inappropriate placement of pictures!

Living in a culture that is not as comfortable to me as my oldest slippers, I am painfully aware that I do not have the words to say what I want to say. Subtlety is quite beyond me as I struggle to find the closest intelligible approximation to what I really mean. I speak Spanish like a young toddler. I have a few nouns, a few verbs, a few adjectives with which to construct ideas and questions. I put them together precariously, and wait anxiously to see whether the sentence I have struggled to build will hold together and express anything meaningful to the person with whom I am trying to hold a conversation.

Fortunately, for the most part, I manage to muddle through, and people are on the whole very patient. There is, however, a strange vulnerability, which holds me back from ever truly relaxing when I am not communicating in my first language. I am a different person in Spanish. I am not a chatterbox. I am even less comfortable in the company of people I don’t know well. I function, but I am unable to do all the twiddly, fun things, to make a quip, share a silly thought, or to oil the wheels of interaction with appropriate small talk. I am stilted.

I think I am probably a little unusual in that I remember learning English. Actually, I remember speaking before I spoke English. The frustration of expressing a thought quite clearly, but not being understood made a lasting impression upon me. Maybe that is why I have been hoovering up words ever since. I remember reading everything I could lay my eyes on, including the toilet roll packaging, as books were not allowed in the bathroom. I used to read books voraciously, trying to work out the meaning of new words from their context. Using a dictionary was a last resort, an interruption, an admission of defeat.

I thought I would try to use the same method to learn Spanish. Obviously, I am rather older than I was when I learned English, but I figured that if it worked for me once, it might well work again.

So far, I am fairly confident with the language of packaging. I am not sure how often I shall need to use ‘modo de empleo’ or ‘abre facil’ in daily conversation, but it is a start. I am cautious about using the language I have learned from advertising hoardings. I have a suspicion that I would appear ridiculously hyperbolic, announcing the ordinary in an extraordinary way, a kind of Brian Blessed or Tom Baker, or even worse, a Cillit Bang woman.

I shall have to take things very cautiously.

Meanwhile, back in the comfort of the blogosphere, I shall enjoy the words I know. I shall foist them upon those who read my outpourings with gay abandon. I even have a hatchling plan to dig out words that I rarely use and expose them to the light of day. Any words that have remained unused for over a year will be despatched to the charity shop, where hopefully they will be snapped up by someone who will take them home, dust them off, and enjoy using them.