A Word on the Words: Communication is key and language skills play an important role

I was in a cafe, a modern and tech-savvy place which had phone charging docks on all tables. An older man and young teenage girl were seated close by.

Neither was sure what the charger was. This was understandable. It was an oddly- designed gizmo with a profusion of wires, USB ports and plug-in points.

The child asked her grandfather (I assumed their relationship) what it was. He reckoned it as: “some kind of transformer”. He meant, of course, a device to increase or decrease alternating voltages in electric applications.

But she thought a transformer was a toy car or lorry that can be twisted into the shape of a robot – several films have been made in the past few years, telling of the unlikely adventures of such machines.

Their problem was one of communication, but also of assuming that another person would automatically know what you are talking about.

The lass had obviously never heard of Faraday’s Law Of Induction, while the man was blithely unaware of the struggles between Autobots and Decepticons.

The cure is to communicate. That’s why it is important we have vocabularies and language skills good enough to explain and understand properly.

The cafe man and girl who couldn’t communicate were able to talk and laugh at themselves. Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un don’t understand each other either, but aren’t laughing about it.