Considerations on spoken and written language (part one)
Find out how your speaking influences your writing style!
When did someone correct your spoken words lately?
Good question to start off this substack. Today I am not going to share my personal experience. While traveling on a train this summer I witnessed an unexpected encounter between a mother and her son. Here’s what happened..
After obtaining a chronic back injury I am accustomed to lying down anywhere when I need to. Today it is in a train, in the corner between the luggage rack. Ignoring the looks of people, I am reading The Summer Book by Tove Jansson. Then the train makes an unexpected stop. I take my headphone of to hear what is going on. For a moment the travelers go silent expecting for announcement to come. False alarm and people start talking again.
By now my attention is drawn to a woman sitting with a girl around six and a boy around eight years old. The woman is occupied with her smartphone and the two children are bored. I guess they are siblings as the big brother starts a typical ‘nagging my little sister’ action. He succeeds as she goes into a whining mode. Their mother decides to ignore the whining, instead intervenes:
‘Why don’t we send dad a message?’
The whining immediately stops and she gets their full attention. The siblings start thinking loud about the message.
‘Don’t forget to feed Muki!’ begins the younger girl.
‘Or!’ continues the girl, ‘The train goes really fast!’
The woman just smiles and lets the examples flow out of the children.
Then the boy stands up. With a big smile on his face he starts dictating slowly:
‘Liebe papa,
Ich freue mich um mit meiner Freunden zu spielen. Gleichzeitig werde ich dich vermissen.’
(Dear father, I am looking forward to playing with my friends. At the same time I will miss you.)
Surprised and touched how he managed to capture longing and missing in one phrase, I wait for his mother to respond.
So does the boy as he is still standing and looks at his mother with anticipation. A short response follows:
‘The sentence is too long!’
Witnessing an adult who just chrushed the pure writing style of her son, I stand up and want to shout out ‘What?!’
This boy got it!! And the mother did not. Dictating those sentences it was clear he was not using spoken language. In spoken language this boy would not use words like that. He understood the concept that when you write something you change the language into something else. You have to take some time and consider using different words and expressions to convey your message.
On seeing this I realized that spoken and written language and being corrected somehow intertwine. Time to dive into this topic a bit more. Evenmore so, this is actually the third pillar in my quest to find back my writing style!
What is the third pillar?
You can read all about it next time!
Do you want to find out what the first two pillars are?
Earlier this year I encountered five pillars that determined my journey on finding back my writing style. It all started with the affirmation:
You are the main character of your life!
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