Language

Speaking a foreign language constantly is an experience that most Americans manage to avoid. I have never worried deeply about the grammatical niceties in German, but I do find myself troubled now and again about the problem of choosing the right word. It isn't all that hard to communicate on basic things. Phrases like "I want" or "how much" roll easily off the tongue. But I spent today, like many days, dealing with the kind of sensitive administrative issues that directors everywhere naturally end up facing, and picking just the right words to calm rather than complicate a situation is non-trivial.

One of Joan's friends once said that in English she could be clever and in German only serious. Serious gets one a long way in politically complex situations, but a reasonable measure of subtlety helps even more and that is a level of linguistic mastery that escapes me still.

Or at least that is my feeling. I am slowly coming to believe, however, that there are non-verbal ways to express subtley of meaning. The tone in which one speaks, the facial expression, the body language generally all contribute to the meaning of words in ways that every actor knows, and even a slightly wrong word spoken in the right way can be highly effective. Such non-verbal signals do not work in print, of course. There the right word still matters. My only comfort in print is that I can check a dictionary.