ELT in Brazil

You might’ve heard me talking about language and saying that most language is implicit.

Here’s a fun reflection that I believe supports this idea:

Suddenly is a word you know, and you know how to use it. If you think about it, you might be able to access your mental representation for it. In my mind, I kinda see it like a wooosh, a fast movement from one place to another, or something like that.

I can use suddenly confidently in a sentence: Suddenly, all the lights went out, and we couldn’t see anything.
Hmm… There’s no woosh movement here, but I get the meaning.

Now, what about out of a sudden? Easy to use too, pretty much interchangeable with suddenly: He appeared out of a sudden.

The thing is, that’s not an adverb anymore; it kinda looks like a noun as it’s preceded by an article: a sudden. What is “a sudden“? Have I ever seen a sudden? Can a sudden be pictured? Or touched? Or is it an abstract noun like justice or faith? How come things come out of it? Hmmm…

What about all of a sudden? The noun problem remains, but now it seems that “a sudden” can be subdivided into parts—and in this case, we’re taking ALL of it!

This is obviously tongue-in-cheek, but I think it makes an interesting point.

Language is largely implicit. We have an implicit mental representation of it, and we know how and when to use it appropriately when needed.

This makes me wonder, however, what we mean when we say we “know” something. There are at least two types of knowing: explicit and implicit—and they don’t necessarily coexist.