“Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.”
– Anton Ego, Ratatouille (2007)
I’ve always maintained that the making of art belongs to everybody. By being both sentient and sapient, we humans have given ourselves the capacity to make art. Of course, there are those whose names are forever recorded in history books, textbooks, and Wikipedia, but there are also the unknown amateurs: only known to very few people. Ask a stone-age human, however, and they’d tell you that fame is not the primary reason why humans make art. Art, like language, exists first as a way to express. By expressing, we make art.
A few days back, I saw a screenshot of a Tumblr post expressing how synonyms may have similar meanings, but they are not truly exactly the same. Different words were made to express different things. That’s how languages function. Having been an editor for a university student paper, it dawned on me that new or amateur writers don’t know or are not even aware of the subtle differences between synonymous words. It is often joked about how writers lacking in skill bury their faces and writing in a thesaurus. However, in Filipino culture, there is this wrong assumption that writing with “fancy” words equals “highbrow” literature. This is perpetuated by the education system that makes us Filipinos study Chaucer and Shakespeare when we are not at all related to the English. The Americanization of the Philippine education system, too slow to modernize, is to blame for this. As a result, new writers often write with a “wide” vocabulary, but their works have very little depth.
The post I saw illustrated one of the reasons why I am very specific about the words I use in my writing, whether they be in English or Bisaya. I’m not that good a writer just yet, but when aspiring writers ask me for advice, I always tell them two things:
- Master the grammar of the language you’d be writing in.
- Expand and deepen your vocabulary.
1 is a given. Most people misunderstand 2. Or, maybe they don’t get it fully just yet. During my brief stint as a feature writer for Silliman University’s collegiate student paper, I had a mantra: “Treat your readers as if they are smart, but know that they aren’t.” Somewhat judgmental. Actually, VERY judgmental. That’s why I only say the first part of the phrase, before the “but,” out loud. What this meant was using simple words and sentence constructions to explain complex events or concepts without dumbing them down. You sacrifice brevity for clarity. BUT, ask any reader, be they journalism professors or the common students who have too much on their plates, and they’d “feel” that a text is much shorter if they actually understand the content.
Of course, there’d be editing and cutting down the word count and whatever else to save space on the page. Therein lies, in my opinion, the true art of writing. Your readers are smart. I’m not lying about that in this part. What they lack in vocabulary, they make up for with worldly experience, and being that they are humans, those experiences are often associated with language: words, phrases, sentences, conversations. By tapping into human experience, a writer can DEEPEN their vocabulary. Simple words used in different contexts may mean things that are worlds apart. Take these three (Negrense Cebuano/Bisaya) words, for example:
Gapahayahay
Gapahuway
Gapahulay
All of them mean to relax, to take a rest, and to have no load on your shoulders at the moment. BUT, each of them means different scenarios.
“Gapahayahay” implies not having a single care in the world, while also (maybe) not acknowledging the responsibilities given to you. This state of being is mostly self-imposed.
“Gapahuway” is neutral in a sense, ‘to rest’ in the basic meaning.
“Gapahulay” on the other hand is ‘to have an undeserved rest,’ with the change of the ‘w‘ from “gapahuway” to an ‘l‘ serving as a sign of sarcasm. This is usually used by other people to describe people who are lazing around.
(Caveat: the words mentioned also exist in other Filipino languages, but would most likely have different contextual meanings depending on region, culture, and/or language.)
By tuning in to your personal experiences, as well as the experiences of others, you can deepen your vocabulary, and express complex things using only simple words. Using context instead of direct, dictionary meaning, you can have both brevity and depth without needing a thesaurus or a style guide always by your side. After all,
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
and
“You’re not worth my time.”
occupy around the same amount of printing space, and are about as simple as each other—but the latter says so much more.
Of course, deep, rarely-used words have their place. You can’t avoid jargon in a technical paper. You can’t accurately describe the flavor profile of a dish if you only know bitter, sweet, salty, and sour. It is always important to expand one’s vocabulary. Human vocabulary, however, is not just a mental thesaurus, it is also a history book. As much as we learn new words, we also need to experience different things. Only then can we write deeply.
