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Showing posts with the label gaslighting

When Words Are Missing: Why Vocabulary is Power in Kenya

"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." — Ludwig Wittgenstein In Kenya, we speak English and Kiswahili. Many of us have additional languages in our pockets — Sheng, mother tongues, workplace lingo, church expressions. But for all our speaking, many of us remain language-poor in the most crucial sense: we lack the words to describe our own lives. We grow up learning to speak but not always to name. And when you cannot name something, you cannot confront it. You live it, but you cannot explain it—not to yourself, not to others. This is not just a linguistic failure. It is a social, emotional, and even political danger. We do not lack opinions. We lack precision . We don’t lack feelings. We lack language to name them accurately. And when we don’t know the right word for what is happening, we misinterpret it, mislabel it, or worst of all — normalize it. Why Having the Right Word Matters Language is not just about grammar or vocabulary. It is about being seen a...