A colleague of mine, Tom Johnson, has convinced me of the virtues of blogging, so you have him to thank for this latest expansion to the vastness of the blogosphere. It has been one of those things that I couldn’t put out of my head once he started suggesting it to me.

I asked, “What do I blog about?” The fact that my wife and I just sold our horse, or that our black Lab hops like a rabbit when we bring the food or the leash? You see that kind of thing out there all the time.

A blogger’s subject should be what he or she is passionate about, my friend says.  I can’t say I’m passionate about the horse or the dog. The answer’s pretty easy. I’m passionate about writing.

But a blog about writing? Isn’t that something akin to using a word to define itself? Or running your sprinklers while it’s raining? It smacks of redundancy.

So here’s the deal. This thing is about the written word in general, from both creative and technical writing topics to my thoughts on books I’m reading or have read. It is not an attempt to become a philosopher, though obviously my personal views will be apparent. And since it’s a blog, it’s by definition not a lecture.

The Language Miracle

For my inaugural post, I thought I’d share a few of my thoughts on the amazing nature of language itself. I had a university professor who claimed that language is the only thing that separates humans from the beasts. I disagree that it’s the only thing, but it is certainly a powerful thing. The very mechanics of language are fascinating to me.

Just think about the fact that I can make a few sounds with my mouth, and those sounds, arranged in a certain order, travel through the air and vibrate my wife’s eardrums, which send signals to her brain. Based on our shared knowledge of sound arrangements—in another word, language—her brain can interpret them so that she understands what I’m saying (well, most of the time…). Then she can start the process again as she makes more sounds and my brain interprets them. Those sound combinations represent ideas and concepts. We understand them even when they are delivered at a breathless rate.

To me, language is a miracle. A miracle that most of us who use it take for granted.

Let’s take it a step farther. Not only do we communicate ideas by sound, but marks on a page (or screen) also correspond to sounds that, when ordered in certain combinations, again hold meaning in our brains. Various arrangements of slants and curves that really are quite arbitrary have agreed-upon meaning. Being able to read and write is an extension of the language miracle.

The profound power that speaking and writing have is a topic for a blogosphere of its own, but it is at least worth mentioning. People who have a command of written or spoken word hold great influence over others’ emotions or thoughts. I can tell you about emotion. Louis Sachar’s There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom made me cry more than once when I read it as a kid.

The miracle of language is one reason I enjoy writing; hence this blog. It’s an excuse to write. So when the language runoff descends from the slopes of Gryphon Mountain, be sure to wear your galoshes.