Words

 I love words. Long words, short words, bad words, curse words. Words that are difficult to pronounce, words that I sometimes forget their meanings. Perhaps, I love words because they are used to tell stories and I love stories. Perhaps, I love words because I love music, and people make music with words, but then, I've loved a lot of music that had no words in them. I love how words help us express emotions. Interestingly, when we run out of words, we give in to our primal urges like running, fighting, kissing, crying, shaking, etc.

Certain words just sound right. Every time I hear a Brazilian express shock and/or surprise by exclaiming ''Nossa!!!'', I smile and have a little orgasm in my ears. The first time I heard a Mozambican end a rhetorical question with ''Nei?'' instead of ''no?'', it was love at first sound. It just felt right, like there couldn't possibly be any other better word to use in its place.

I love multipurpose words and phrases; them ones that express a lot different things depending on context. I imagine them as very hardworking and muscular, you know, because of all the heavy-lifting they do in our sentences daily. We all know these words, words like ''omo'' and ''mad oh'', in Nigerian Pidgin. ''Nna eh'', in Igbo Language, and ''Mehn'' in American English. Sometimes these words even intertwine across languages, like the union of ''Nna mehn'' between the above Igbo and American English words.

Sometimes I feel sorry for the ones we call curse words. The Fucks, Merdes, Putas, Caralhos, and sheisses of this world. These beautiful words have done absolutely nothing wrong to us. All they have ever done is exist and we routinely condemn and confine them to usage behind closed doors, sexual encounters, toe stubs, outside office hours and unofficial emails. I suppose it could be argued that we reserve them for the most eventful moments of our lives. Good and bad.

My least favourite kinds of words are words that are left unsaid. They become graves for all the emotions, ideas and/or thoughts that we fail to express. Perhaps, the main reason they are my least favourites is because they help humans hide who they truly are. Now, I will admit that I know that in certain contexts, certain things are better left unsaid. Yet, I can't help but think that behind every unsaid word, lies some actions and/or inactions who are, usually, the real villains of these situations. So, technically, unsaid words aren't the problems; its not them it's us.

Some words just sound funny to me, like krankenhaus, krankenwaggen and krankenschwester, the German words for hospital, ambulance and female nurse, respectively. Shout out to words that exist, in my opinion, to give you time to think before talking. Words like ''donc'', ''pues'', ''eerrrr''. You can even put them together to get optimal thinking time, like ''donc...eerrrr...''. If you throw in a few head shakes and the right hand gestures, you could take a trip around the world and come back to people patiently waiting for you to conclude your sentence. I guess I love hand gestures and non-verbal communication too. Unfortunately, I'm not very good at using and understanding them. I suppose that's why I like words better; words are simply clear.

What do you think a world without words would be like?