While most of the world speaks either Mandarin or English – and I’ll focus of English merely because I can barely say thank you in Mandarin – when it comes down to differentiation, the English language is a bit more tricky than just the common UK/US standard (and of course about 86 other distinct dialects spoken around the globe).

Now while an American and an Australian can communicate with each other just fine, language isn’t just about communication, but also about understanding. And here’s the beauty of any language; I speak differently with my girlfriend than I do with my boss, and I might speak differently to people I have known since my childhood than I would with someone I have just met on the metro. While this is surely no shocker, for me, the interesting thing about any language is how different groups, or one could say different subcultures, have their own language.

I used to work for a giant camera Company and while I was there, most of my colleges (no surprise) were enormous camera enthusiasts. When I started out, I had no idea about crop and full frame sensors or about chromatic aberrations on lenses and when I went out with them for a drink after work, even though we spoke the same language (Slovene) I had no idea what they were talking about. And obviously none of them were exchanging aperture values and sensor dimensions in order to recite facts found on google or in camera manuals, they were talking in their natural language to impose dominance, to intrigue the other listener and to bond over mutual ideas of how the other big camera company (our competition) was obviously the inferior one compared to our supreme technology.

Here’s the fantastic thing. Every small tribe has their own language, if you know how to talk the talk and walk the walk of a stock trader, you can visit a bar near a Charles Schwab HQ after hours and go up to any group of celebrating trades and just completely assimilate yourself in it. Just by speaking their language. But you won’t get far by speaking English, because they don’t just speak plain English, they have their own special dialect and they speak trader English. They might not even speak plain trader English (because that’s for the poor schmucks at all the unsuccessful broker firms), they speak Schwab trader English.

And the same is with us artists, we may all be interested or guided by our impulses to create and innovate, but there are so many different languages being spoken in our community. Sure English is probably the gold standard in Europe and America (or maybe not) but the variations between Classical Academic Painter English, Conceptual Feminist English and Modernist Abstract Expressionist English are so abundant and so distinct, that one could easily presume that neither of them would really get what the other is talking about. They might hear the words, and they might even understand their intentions, but their true aspirations, the basic emotions that guide them on their path are extremely hard to understand. For example, before I started working with photographers, I had no idea that stating pixel density on a silicon chip could be intended to create and strengthen a bond amongst a group of people.