The Language of Inner Position

Author’s Column by Tymur Levitin
Levitin Language School / Start Language School by Tymur Levitin
Language. Identity. Choice. Meaning.

In language learning, people often confuse opinion with position.

An opinion is external.
It reacts.
It adapts.
It defends itself.

A position is internal.
It does not argue.
It does not explain itself.
It does not rush.

That difference changes everything — including the way a person speaks.

When someone has no inner position, their speech is noisy.
They over-explain.
They repeat.
They fill silence with words.

When someone has an inner position, the opposite happens.
Speech becomes shorter.
Pauses become meaningful.
Silence starts working for them.

This is not rhetoric.
This is linguistics, psychology, and lived classroom reality.

I have seen it across languages — English, German, Ukrainian, Spanish, Polish — and across cultures.
The problem is almost never vocabulary.
And very rarely grammar.

The real issue is from where the person is speaking.

Language does not begin with words.
It begins with stance.

That is why fluency without inner position often sounds insecure.
And why even simple sentences, spoken from a stable inner position, sound confident and natural.

This idea runs through many of my published articles — whether we speak about
why accuracy is not the enemy of speaking,
why understanding comes before fluency,
or why certain grammatically correct phrases are never used by native speakers.

They all point to the same thing:

Language reflects the inner structure of the speaker.

That is also why, in Levitin Language School and Start Language School by Tymur Levitin, we do not train students to perform language.
We train them to inhabit it.

Not to memorize reactions.
But to build position.

Because once the position is there,
words follow.
Grammar aligns.
And speech stops apologizing for itself.