What is one thing you can’t live without?

For today’s WordPress special, I thought of posting about ideas. However, words are more intrinsic. Where would we be without them? Even the deaf and mute need words to function. Sign language is technically still words. Together with food, water, and oxygen, lexicon is essential to the human condition. Language, accents, and locutions may vary but the meta narrative remains. Let us count the ways.

The mundane

Words are necessary for everyday tasks. It’s a blanket or wholesale need. Buying your cuppa in the morning or for snacking. Doing groceries. You couldn’t grab your Brussel sprouts, sourdough, and deli ham without labels and vocab. Nor drive if you can’t read. You’re unable to decipher traffic lights, school zones, speed limits, and road signs. How can you fathom your odometer, GPS, and fuel capacity? Or refuel at a gas station? You’ll probably run out of unleaded after a few kilometres.

Likewise, without basic English, you can’t take the metro. Firstly, you wouldn’t realise your stop and will be lost. From there, it gets more complicated. How will you read the boards? You won’t be able to ask staff, if there are any, since you can’t communicate. Ditto with fellow passengers. How will you know where to alight? Decrypt announcements or make your way back? Where to tap on and off in Sydney’s hectic transport system?

It’s not just staples, but the rest of your morning routine. Using devices. You simply can’t handle a phone, tablet, or laptop without a hint of language. It doesn’t have to be English. Minus the right language skills, you’ll never operate them. How can you make a call? Hit up a text or email? Browse your inbox? Know which buttons to tap or apps to download? How to read the news or check the weather? These require a level of competency. We take our aptitude for granted. Doing otherwise reverts us to the Stone Age and dinosaur technology.

Onwards

You won’t stream telly shows and movies. Every line and scene is an enigma. It would be like staring at hieroglyphics or making out Latin. Everything is beyond your powers. You won’t understand the words that are coming out of their mouths. Like Chris Tucker in Rush Hour: a brother from another planet. Remember that scene where an Asian guy belts out ‘Don’t stop till you get enough?’

According to Tucker, he was ‘ruining a classic’. 

When it was his turn to croon, Jackie Chan apologised, saying his partner was ‘very drunk.’

Books

If you’re an author like me, words become even more pertinent. They are the building blocks of manuscripts and ideas. As Descartes once said, ‘I think therefore I am.’

Without the basics, you won’t go so far as to say ‘This is not a pipe’.

You couldn’t start phrases, sentences, paragraphs, sections, chapters, and book-length manuscripts. You can’t jot down and organise ideas. For starters, those concepts couldn’t be chronicled. They will not be processed and saved – on a notes app or notebook – without words. They’re shapeless mumbo jumbo in your mind. Language crystallises them and gives meaning. A crash course in the King’s speech will go a long way. You cannot hunt down typos and inconsistencies without a working knowledge of English. Like a kite that you couldn’t get off the ground. Or a carriage missing a horse. A tennis server bereft of a racquet. A doctor without a license. A farmer minus crops.

Just like the driver, you wouldn’t be able to start. How can you dream bigger when weapons are figuratively out of reach? You can have all the world’s equipment. Without syllables and language, your ambitions are stunted and your spirit, botched. As they say, ‘Reading maketh a full man.’

Books and art fuel ideas, in line with pop culture. If words permanently escape you, then ditto perusing prose. You’ll miss out on Shakespeare, Sun Tzu, Aristotle, and other classics. Hemingway, Chatwin, and Picasso’s paintings would be out of reach. Crichton and Picoult’s novels lie forgotten. All genres and literary forms vanish like ghosts.

Beyond the ordinary

Going further, just like telly shows, you can’t go to the cinemas. How will you know what’s playing? How to purchase those tickets? Whereabouts to sit? You would gawk at pictures yet miss every line of dialogue. No matter if it’s foreign or local. The subtitles won’t help. You might comprehend scenes but ultimately, they’ll be nonsensical.

With shopping online and in store, the same applies. You might like clothes, shoes, and backpacks. Without an anchor, you’re lost at sea. How will you make the selection? Add them to the cart? Checkout? It’s reminiscent of that Cobra Kai scene. Johnny buys a laptop but doesn’t know how to turn it on. Like a novice laptop user, there is a steep learning curve for a bankrupt communicator.

Dining out might be one of few activities you could do. If the menu has pictures, you can point at them like a Neanderthal and have them prep it for you. Minus the vocab, you’re missing out on a lot. You’re like a frustrated director with minimal creative control. Life becomes harder without language.

Jetsetting

Moving ahead, the lack of it upends your travel plans. Of course, you’ll see bright photos of beaches, museums, old buildings, and snow-capped peaks. Fancy Patagonia, Iceland, Alaska, and the big apple. Words bridge that want. Those dollar signs are meaningless; attractions, pointless. Words aren’t just the basics of speech; they convey education and messages. Thus, from our childhood to old age, learning never stops. We grasp lessons like a sponge. We are versed in theories, sewing, and equations from our youth, adulthood, and beyond.

They make us human and Earth’s apex species. Until proven otherwise, our existence on this planet is unique. No other extraterrestrial in the universe could reason and function like our race. Great minds and wunderkinds alike have exhibited their talents through language of some form.

In the Bible, humankind built the Tower of Babylon to reach the heavens. Irate, Yahweh toppled the skyscraper and scattered man. He gave them varying tongues so they could not understand each other and plot against Him. Regardless, differences only accentuate our commonality. We need speech and letters to make us adept. Whether in London, Sydney, or New Delhi, language skills unite us.

We use this everyday. We see pets and visit zoos. Eat meals. Sunbathe on beaches. Cheer on astronauts. Tune in to live sports, even show up at matches. Do groceries and dine out. Stream and rock up at the cinemas. Drive cars. In my case, writing a memoir, a novel, blog posts, stories, and poetry. Words are so underrated. They deserve, as always, to be our monuments.