When Words Start Asking Questions
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❓ What Is a Word, Really?
A sound?
A symbol?
A shared hallucination?
⊶ A word is not a thing. It is an event, a moment where minds try to meet.
We say “word” as if it’s solid.
It isn’t.
It’s vapor wearing structure.
⊤ Can You Say Something That Can’t Be Said?
Language is built to describe the world.
But some things—grief, awe, time, being, refuse to sit still long enough for syntax.
▸ Can a sentence capture being?
▸ Can a question exist without language?
▸ Is silence a kind of speech? ☉
Wittgenstein said:
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
But what if silence is also speaking?
♲ Meta Is the Medium
The moment we ask “what does this word mean?”
We’re already outside the word.
We are language looking at itself.
This is not about communication.
This is about consciousness.
You are not just using language.
You are being used by it.
⊚ What Language Assumes
Every language carries assumptions.
Not just about the world, but about you.
Does your language:
- Assume you are male or female?
- Require time to be linear?
- Let you describe a feeling without comparing it to something else?
⊖ These are not features. They are limits.
Language both opens and closes the door.
“Language is the house of being.”
— Martin Heidegger
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⧗ Words That Don’t Translate
Every language has untranslatable words.
Not because they’re impossible, but because they belong to a world your tongue didn’t grow in.
- Saudade (Portuguese): A deep, nostalgic longing
- Wabi-sabi (Japanese): The beauty in imperfection
- Hygge (Danish): A cozy togetherness in stillness
- Apophany (You, right now): Meaning found in randomness ↯
Untranslatables aren’t failures.
They’re signals.
Proof that meaning isn’t a closed system.
🝗 Language Is a Mirror That Warps
Ask a word what it means, and it will ask you who you are.
Language doesn’t just help you describe the world.
It helps make it.
Return to the surface ◯