The Power of Words: From Black Beauty to Noah’s Ark
The dappling sun before a spring rain. Freising, Germany.
I’m drawn to the written word.
As an illiterate kindergartner, I’d carry around Black Beauty and skim the pages as if I understood the meaning of combined characters. I even pretended to read in the dark car on the way home from wherever. I thought I had everyone fooled—clever girl!
Among the first words I learned to string together were “I WANT A CAT”—largely scribbled on notes I hid on my mom’s jewelry tray, above the kitchen sink, and taped to bookshelves. These little notes were my subtle hints to my birthday wishlist, a key tool to getting what I wanted: Sweety, a moody tortoiseshell kitty as the newest Bliss family member. From then on, I learned how powerful written communication could be (and how my love for pets and animals also prevailed—though not crustaceans; they freak me out, only earning my invisible support).
Words are indeed nice—and they would mean nothing without their counterparts: punctuation and grammar.
Since learning proper grammar and punctuation, I can’t resist a well-applied em dash, comma, colon, ellipsis, and my personal favorite, the little-understood semicolon. (Yes, I’m doing the drooly face emoji in my head.) These punctuative tools set the tone, ya know? Like, don’t you feel like you’re listening to me right now? If so, mission accomplished. If not, how can I improve? (This is a legit request—pointing out and correcting my language mistakes is how I learn, and trust me, it’s my “bread and butter.”)
The German Language: A Tiger in My Linguistic Journey
If syntax is the untamed tiger, then the German language is the benevolent handler. Notoriously, one of the most captivating aspects of German is its love for the mystical compound words. I memorized and mastered the word “Rhabarberbarbarabarbararenbartbarbierbierbar” (yes, all one word), and I have to say, it was immensely satisfying.
I learned German as a young adult living in Munich post-college. Before moving there, I halfheartedly started a Duolingo course thinking, “They all speak English anyway.” My scholarship was to last less than a year, and I could just pick up some cute phrases. Well, Germans do have impressive English skills, and I grossly underestimated how much I love to eavesdrop. Living in a foreign country without speaking the language was like staring at Black Beauty’s pages as a child—words everywhere, meaning nowhere.
So, my inherent curiosity motivated my six-year residence in Munich. Within a year, I was listening to, reading, and speaking German. Working in a restaurant helped a lot. I’d explain to patrons how, at 24 years old, I found myself coming of age in a foreign country. (Other tools: German rap, a German boyfriend, the Netflix series Dark; and insisting, “nur Deutsch!” in conversation. I grasped German colloquialism so well that, during my B2 language spoken test, I improperly used the slang word for “to sleep”—quickly corrected by my examiner…typisch Deutsch.)
With time, repetition, persistence, and the linguistic hybrid “Denglisch,” I finally learned to pronounce the “Ö” in words like “Österreich” and “Frösche.” My greatest life accomplishment thus far is losing track of how often native German speakers ask if one of my parents is German or simply comment on how insanely German my accent is. Richtig geil.
German: A Playful Language
German, despite its reputation for being harsh, is actually my favorite language for poetry. It’s weird to me that even the Dutch think it’s difficult to appreciate... But honestly, it’s a very playful language in terms of its grammatical flexibility. Conjugating verbs at the end of a sentence is like playing a joke on the rest of human language. Sometimes, even in English, I now think of how absurdly yet sensically I can write or say anything. Regardless, German language rules are comprehensive and universally applicable across the language, which is satisfying.
Communicating with Animals: Beyond Human-Centered Narratives
Here’s a fun fact: I speak to my Romanian dog, Junie, purely in German, and it’s far more effective than if I were to tell her something in English. Also, just the other day, I caught her checking out her reflection in a mirror. LOL.
It’s no wonder to me that animals communicate amongst themselves. This resonates with my rejection of the biases “anthropectomy” and “anthropodenial”—concepts steeped in human-centered thinking that dangerously emphasize the differences between us and animals. My rejection of these tendencies and skepticism of anthropomorphism drive me to “speak their language,” to get on their level to understand them, just like I did with German. This is largely why I studied behavioral ecology—until recently, I believed studying animal behavior was the only and best way to decode non-human communication.
The Fallacy of Human Superiority
A modern fallacy is the assumption that we humans have transcended our base instincts while animals have not. Are the errors of anthro-centric hubris problems or starting points for better understanding? I believe the latter.
To me, it’s obvious that other species communicate, reason, emote, and have personalities. Humans didn’t evolve in a vacuum. We weren’t just dropped onto Earth like rooks on a chessboard. Living beings across all taxonomic kingdoms are made of the same “stuff.” So, why do we separate and differentiate ourselves from other species, rather than celebrate and respect our similarities?
We visualize the food chain as linear, but all ecological processes are cyclical. Humanity assumes we sit atop a hierarchy, superior and separate from other creatures when, in my mind, we exist somewhere along a continuum of existence and sentience.
Once we recognize this, I think we will become more human.
I can’t wait until we realize that our technologies and societal constructs are sand castles surrounded by lines etched in the sand, while our man-made existential crises—climate change and biodiversity loss—are like the tides that slowly encroach the shore.
Are we going to watch the waves draw closer, or will we heed nature’s call, as Noah did, and build the ark before the flood?
