WORDS AND THEIR MEANING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23109, 6 August 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

WORDS AND THEIR MEANING

By KOTARE

Individual Experience

WORDS have been in tha news this last week. An American has diagnosed our most serious trouble and the most fruitful cause of a multitude of other troubles as - the inability of men to agree on the exact meaning of the words they use. We come so easily under the spell of words to which we attach our own local, or individual meaning; and then we argue and act as if the same word meant the same ' thing to everybody everywhere. Get men to mean exactly the same things when they say the same things, and you have gone a long way toward eliminating the misunderstandings that cause most of the bitterness among the children of men.

An economist of eminence in our own city has declared that it is highly displeasing to his sense of efficiency to find bo much valuable time in education frittered away in teaching and learning to spell our incredible English words. What a happy world if words were spelt as they are pronounced! But, alas, the light-hearted schoolboy finds that while everywhere else he is encouraged to develop orginality, if he endeavours to apply it to the spellinglesson he is sternly ordered back to conventional paths. He is shackled by . mere custom, his generous soaring spirit harnessed heavily to routine and usage.. In a rationale-planned world these things would not be. Passion for Order One admits the expenditure of time without agreeing that it-is wholely irksome to the child or wholly useless to him. Discipline can be meaningless, but there has been more than enough of the idea that education should be entirely without tears.- A language is a kittle thing to meddle with. It is the garment a people weaves for its own soul, and it expresses even in its eccentricities of form something essential in the national cliaracter. I suppose it_is my own particular prejudice,, but I hate the idea of a care-fully-planned universe. I would hate-a world where all the bends were- taken out of the roads and where all tho rivers were canals running straight in concrete beds. But to return to the - meanings of words. One has to admit that in spite of authoritative dictionaries, it is not possible to eliminate the. personal element in the value attached by different people to familiar words. What we can do about it is another matter altogether; or whether it is worth while trying to do anything. We all of us have our own experience,- and it is experience that colours for us all the words of our everyday speech. The word "father?' may sum up for one person all that is kindest and most helpful in his conception of living. Ho has had a father who has charged th* word with a wide intellectual and emotional content that must always be for him the chief factor in his interpretation of it.

Unfortunate Associations But here is someone who'has had no positive experience to attach any emotional value to the word. A father has been for him simply something that has meant much to 'others, but has never meant anything to him. His use of the word must always be indifferent unless his deprivation has made him weave a fanciful idealised pattern around the word to compensate for what he has felt he has missed through the hard decree of fate. Or a third man ha! had the misfortune to associate the word with cruelty and meanness and selfishness in the home. And for all time the word is coloured for him by his early associa-

tions. In a perfectly-planned world each word would, of course, mean exactly one thing, with no shading off into other words and no blurred edges. It would be a very precise and orderly world. But it would be terribly dull. A world with its language dutifully disciplined to march the goose-step would be a fitting ornament to a state regimented into the uniformity of the complete communist ideal. But it will be a sad world for simple folk built after my eccentric fashion. - Instead of tampering with language and indulging in the modern mania for svstematic planning, it would be much more to the point to accept the different meanings as part of the natural order and to adapt ourselves to a world in which they inevitably exist. It is clear that "democracy" must have widely differing connotations. Democracy must mean to the German something quite different from its obvious meaning here in New Zealand. > German Democracy The apperceptive mass to which the word has to relate itself in each caso is as different as chalk from cheese. Democracy is something our fathera fought for, shed their blood grew out of the stresses and conflicts of centuries. In Germany it was something alien, something stuck on from the outside. ; And the word had gathered' associations of a highly emotional and explosive character. It had been associated with the French Revolution and the consequent humiliation of the German States. It was linked in the Great War with the ideals of the Allies. It was under democratic rule, as Germany understood it, that she took her Gadarene stampede into the abyss after the war. So a word of pride and hope for us conjures up for the German memories of utter disaster and national humiliation. Our vocabulary is cluttered with words similarly coloured for different individuals by "their special associationsPhilip Jordan in his vivid--"There ;Js No Return" describes a correspondent working with him on the Spanish VVf£fj| for whom the most bitter terms orabuse were "romantic" and journalist." Call a man romantic or label him journalist and you had damned him for all time. , We all tend to assign a magic power to some words Some people think that vou have said the final condemnation when you have called of mind "suburban," or "Puritan or "conservative." Some think the ultimate praise is to attach, the label 'in^aH 1 cases the word is meaningless unless vou forget the dictionary nieaninc and attach the one determined by personal prejudice. There are people m New Zealand that think the blessed Tic?"" Mere* "to WZS«S'. everything, though nobody k »°^ o ££ about it. '