Signs

Last semester, a friend of mine told me she learned this ridiculous thing in class that day.  She started talking to me about how she feels that everything is simply blank.  Not that she believes nothing has meaning, but rather that things are simply things, and words are simple words.  Without that self created meaning, they would all be empty and meaningless.

Her philosophical rant confused me to say the least.  I clearly understood that yes, language is created, thus someone or a group of someones gave meaning to what we are saying at one point or another, but I her rambling left me confused.  Then she grabbed her pen and told me to pronounce Ghoti, as we did in class. When I pronounced it as she had thought I would, she started laughing and got so excited.  Then she went through the steps as we did, taking the gh noise from tough, the o sound from women and the ti sound from nation.  In the end, we get a words that sounds like fish.  Right then and there, it all made sense and immediately, I, like her, started questioning everything.  The meanings, pronunciations, existence of what surrounded us.  Everything is created. Nothing has simply been given to any of us.

While this concept can be puzzling, I find it more complex when considering learning alternate languages.  We "inherently" know that meaning behind our world, our culture, out words, out possessions, but when considering another society and trying to blend it, recognizing that all that surrounds them too has been created, the concept becomes more complex.

What are we really learning?  What have we really created?  What can we change?  I guess this shows us that we can change anything and everything.  Meanings can change from day to day.  An object that signified something positive the day before may signify the opposite the day after, considering life's course.  This just seems like so much power for us, as a society to possess.  We have the power to define anything.