The Mind Creative MARCH 2015 | Page 20

Words also produce trillions of hours of conversations and the most eloquent of speeches, which can mesmerize audiences, with the potential ability to drive them into a burst of constructive effort, a fit of destructive activity or a bout of murderous frenzy. But every language comes with a heavy baggage of bizarre elements. Mention that to native speakers and they will be surprised. Take the script of Urdu, Arabic or Chinese, the spelling of English, or the grammar of French or Russian. Alphabets form words, but most words written in Urdu are completely unrecognizable from the alphabets which constitute those words. Russians consider it absolutely nat \