![]() ![]() A language is a reflection of society’s desire to communicate ideas, and to suggest that words aren’t ‘real’ is to deny that languages evolve with society. Who am I to gatekeep a language? Or you? Language transcends any one individual’s perception of itself. ![]() So where do you draw the line? When is a word not a word? When you don’t know what it means? When it’s not in the dictionary? It’s not a question easy to answer, but it’s a question worth asking, and those are the best kind. For example, I don’t know what ‘pulchritudinous’ means, but that doesn’t preclude it from being a word. ![]() So if you know what I mean when I say ‘sonder’, that makes it a meaningful word.Īnd you might say here, “Aha! But I don’t know what you mean!”īut there are lots of words that you don’t know. The person on one end intends to communicate a particular idea, and the person on the other end must comprehend the idea that’s being communicated. What is a word? This isn’t a linguist’s definition, but by common understanding, a word is basically a distinct and meaningful unit of language. Feel free to disagree, but also, allow me to explain myself. Well, I hate to break it to you, but ‘lit af’ is a real word, and so is ‘sonder’. Voice one: Uh … by the authorities ! Just like ‘lit af’ isn’t a real word! Voice one: That’s not a real word, that’s made up! I’m pretty sure that, when you heard the word ‘sonder’, some of you instantly had this mental exchange: The other reason is equally abstract, and hard to explain in a direct way, so I’ll present it to you by means of a dialogue. That’s one half of the answer to the question of why my blog is called sonder – because I would like for my writing to inspire your sonder, to fuel your desire for more. We invent words like sonder because the words we already have aren’t enough. We build monuments and engineer marvels, we delve into the world around us, because the now isn’t enough for us. We’re never satisfied with what we have, and everything we do or have ever done is based on this desire to have more. It’s not envy, but wonder – an ingrained desire to experience more than one is capable of, to live a multitude of lives at once. To me, sonder is rooted in the human condition. Who is their favourite musician? How did their parents meet? Have they ever experienced sonder themselves? I like to people-watch a lot, and I invariably find myself wondering what the person I’m looking at is like. A good friend of mine once described it as ‘a trip down someone else’s memory lane’, and I think that’s a nice way to put it. He describes it as “a compendium of invented words”, its purpose “to give a name to emotions we all might experience but don’t yet have a word for”.Įven if you’ve never heard the word ‘sonder’ before this, I think you probably understand the feeling it’s conveying. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own-populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness-an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.Ī guy named John Koenig made this cool project called the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. ‘Sonder’ is defined in a dictionary much cooler than the Oxford or Mirriam-Webster. So why is this blog named ‘sonder’? The answer is twofold. This probably isn’t the blog for you.) Screenshot mine, from Oxford Dictionary. (I apologise to any Sonderklasse enthusiasts who I may have misled and/or alienated. ![]() The Oxford Dictionary has, but the word ‘sonder’ by their definition hardly seems impressive enough to warrant titling a blog after it. Neither has Merriam-Webster, America’s self-proclaimed most trusted online dictionary. If you’ve never heard the word ‘sonder’ before, don’t fret. ![]()
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