Lately, I have found myself in some clunky and awkward conversations because of language.

Mind you, it wasn’t that there was anything inherently awkward about the situation or conversation itself, we just didn’t have the right words on hand.

Example: we now understand that gender is a lot more than just “boy or girl.” Good on us and about time. What we don’t understand is how to incorporate that into our language. Pronouns are not keeping up. The best we have so far is the plural “they,” which is a struggle for brains shaped in classical grammar.

Of course, everyone should get to define who they are and if “they” is the pronoun that fits, “they” is the pronoun I’ll use. But the language of Shakespeare can do better.

Similarly, adoption. There is a strong push out there to move away from that word, and I can see why. The word somehow connotes “lesser than” a natural-born child. See what just happened there? Whole universes of meaning and subtext live in those words. At the same time, there is also often a yearning to honor the truth of how a family came to be, to tell their creation story. It becomes even more complex and important if the birth family (again, words) remains involved.

And now my own personal bugaboo: romantic relationships. How is it in this day of progress and enlightenment we have no better words for the person with whom we are committed to sharing a life and a mortgage than the paltry ones on hand? Even if the arrangement is a standard-issue legal one with clearly understood labels, there are all sorts of gender pitfalls that make it tricky.

Step outside those terms and it gets worse. One is left with words that might indicate a business arrangement (“partner”) or the substandard “boyfriend/ girlfriend,” which really has no place outside of high school hallways. And frankly, even there it is suspect.

What we call things might seem like a finicky point. After all, the same Shakespeare I cited earlier wrote “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” However, turns out, it really does matter. A lot. Linguistic and brain experts know that what we call a thing defines that thing – and how we experience it. For a deep(er) dive into the subject, check out the NPR program “The Hidden Brain” with Shankar Vedantam and the fantastic piece “Lost in Translation: The Power of Language to Shape How We View the World.”

There are entire cultures out there that fundamentally experience the world differently because of the way language has shaped comprehension. For example, in one indigenous Australian language, there is no equivalent to a simple “hello” because greetings are based in direction and purpose. Isn’t that amazing?

Languages that assign gender to things, such as French or Spanish, not only cause American high school students heaps of frustration as they struggle to memorize, but this one trait fundamentally changes the way those objects are understood and perceived, particularly to someone who grew up with that as their language construct.

There is so much about this big, beautiful and changing world that we don’t fully comprehend. Crafting new words to help our language shift alongside our growing understanding and curiosity is a meaningful and necessary next step. We have big ideas to express, and big problems to tackle. Let’s craft us some words.

Brunswick resident Heather D. Martin wants to know what’s on your mind; email her at heather@heatherdmartin.com.