The Words We Share
As I’ve been relearning Mandarin Chinese, I’ve often stumbled with the tones. The same syllable, pronounced with a different pitch contour, could mean entirely different things. For example, "Ma" with a flat high tone (媽, mā) means "mother” while falling then rising (馬, mǎ) gives you "horse." And a sharp falling tone (骂, mà) means "to scold." Similar sounds but different meanings. What made it harder was that I could hear myself saying the right syllable. To my English-trained ear, I was being perfectly clear. But without the correct tone, I could end up saying something unintended.
English speakers love to point out how confusing this must be for language learners, claiming Chinese is so hard to learn but we forget that English has a similar challenge. English is filled with words that have dozens, sometimes even hundreds, of different meanings. The word "run" has nearly 650 different meanings: a candidate runs for office, a stocking runs, we can go for a run. We seemingly never run out of new definitions, and so on. The sheer volume of potential meanings doesn't confuse us because we've learned to read the contextual clues that tell us which "run" is being used.
But we do this with more than just words.
We often use the same language for ideas like justice, freedom, responsibility, and safety, but we're often speaking entirely different dialects. Like other homographs in English, these words carry dozens of possible meanings depending on who's using them and in what context. And just like with "run," most of us don't realize how many meanings exist until we're mid-conversation with someone who's using the same word to mean something completely different.
The problem isn't just that these words have multiple meanings. It's that we've lost the ability (or the willingness) to recognize when we need more context to understand what someone actually means.
In some ways, we've designed systems that make this worse. Social media, for instance, strips out many of the structural cues that would normally signal ambiguity. In face-to-face conversation, hesitation, questioning tone, and body language all flag that something requires clarification. But online, everything arrives with the same typographic certainty. A carefully considered statement and a knee-jerk reaction look identical. The medium doesn't just fail to provide context—it actively obscures the need for it.
But we can't blame the tools entirely. The truth is harder: we've stopped proactively listening, even when the signals are right in front of us. We've trained ourselves to interpret first and listen second, if at all.
And we're making it worse in other ways too. I recently learned about a linguistic trend where people increasingly use "myself" instead of "I," even when it's grammatically incorrect: "Melissa and myself went to the store." “Myself" takes up more space, adds weight, creates a buffer between the speaker and criticism. It seems we're shifting our language patterns toward self-protection and emphasis, which ironically makes us harder to understand. We're guarding against being misunderstood by speaking in ways that make misunderstanding more likely.
There's also a perceived cost to seeking clarification that keeps us locked in these patterns. Asking "what do you mean by that?" can feel like admitting weakness or, worse, giving ground to the other side. In charged conversations (politics, values, identity), the act of asking for context gets coded as taking a position. We've somehow created a culture where knowing the "right" interpretation is a proxy for being on the "right" team.
We also feel a relentless sense of urgency. Pausing to clarify feels like loss of momentum, of the upper hand, or of time. There's a scarcity mindset at play, as if understanding were zero-sum, as if giving someone space to explain what they actually mean costs us something. But rushing past ambiguity just means we're building conversations, relationships, and entire movements on sand.
The irony is that clarification costs nothing. Like an apology, it's an act of grace we can extend freely. But we've convinced ourselves it costs too much.
So what do we do?
We start by asking questions—of others and of ourselves. When we feel certain we know what someone means, that's often the moment to pause. Our confidence might be drawing on our context, not theirs. We need to look for the contextual clues in other people's words, especially those we don't normally engage with. Listen for the tone, the hesitation, the choice of words. Notice when someone is using familiar language to express an unfamiliar idea.
And we need to give people room to clarify without treating it as a concession. If someone says "freedom" and we're not sure which of the dozen possible meanings they're invoking, we ask. If someone talks about "justice" and we suspect they mean something different than we do, we check. This isn't weakness. It's the only way to find solid ground.
We might be using the same words, but we often mean different things. Our world runs on shared understanding—not shared vocabulary, but actual comprehension of what we mean when we speak. And that only happens when we're willing to slow down, ask questions, and listen for the tone beneath the words.
The same syllable can mean mother, horse, or scold. The meaning isn't in the sound itself. It never was. It's in the context we're willing to learn.
