252 To Talk; To Say

Do you like talking, or do you prefer to listen to others talk?

Susan Bird is a TED resident speaker and the host of Conversation360 Podcast. She has a strong belief that while talk is a one-way experience, conversation is very much two-way, and takes learning and practice to be able to know when to talk and when to listen. In fact, she goes even further by suggesting that conversations are creative exchanges and therefore have the power to bring about new ideas, plans, projects and even products, if both parties enter into it with the intention of being changed through it!

In Chinese, the verb “to talk” is 說/说. If you add 話/话, the word for “word” then 說話/说话 means “to speak words.”