I’ve decided that English is an awful language. In a past life I was a linguistic genius of sorts. At some point I’ve been fluent to varying degrees in English, French, Spanish, Italian, German and sign language (2 varieties). I’ve also had a working knowledge of Russian, Latin, Ukrainian and Hebrew. At some point.

I say that not to brag (or sound like a dumbass for forgetting all these languages), but to say that it’s not because I think other languages are necessarily better than English.

I’ve simply realized that for whatever reason, English isn’t incredibly good at expressing “true emotion”.

I realized this twice in one night, which is why Shannon’s been encouraging me to write this.

First, I was telling her about how much I “really, really enjoyed meeting Neville Hobson.” (yes, I reallly, really enjoyed meeting others as well)

It was while saying that that I realized how “not how I really felt” that “really, really” was.

(ps: yes, today is “rambling day”)

I realized that English simply isn’t actually very good at communicating the level of respect I have for several people I met this week, including Neville.

I think it’s because we use the “extremes” our language allows so readily in conversation. The fact that I had to say “really” twice to try and get my point across was sad.

Initially I didn’t think there were really any languages that made good use of respectful terms, but obviously there are.

Spanish, for example has a whole suite of them. German is very similar.

What’s my point?

Well, I wish I had words to express how much meeting many people this week meant. And I wish I had to words to tell my wife how much I truly love her.