LOOKING FOR WORDS

LOOKING FOR WORDS

  I was born in Canada, Calgary, AB to be exact.  My parents were also Canadian born.  My dad’s parents were from England and my mom’s dad was from Holland and her mom was from France.  The only language we grew up with was English.

  English and French being the 2 official languages of Canada, French classes were a required course in school in the 1960’s.  I never did excel because I was afraid that I would embarrass myself by mispronouncing words and end up swearing or something.  I don’t remember much and have never had the need to use French.  Well, there was that time Ket and I were trying to chat up the cute guy on the train from Toronto to Quebec City, only to discover that he spoke English too as we were leaving the train.  We had talked quite a bit about the guy believing him when he said “no Anglais, Parle vous Francias?”

  That reminds me of walking to school with Donalee one day talking about the advantages of being a male when riding horses, not noticing the group of boys walking behind us.  Embarrassing moments, now there’s a topic to write about.  But, I digress.

  We were taught Parisian French in school, which didn’t make sense to me.  Shouldn’t we have learnt French Canadian so we could communicate with our fellow countrymen? 

  English, where did it come from?  What’s its origin?  Did you ever wonder ‘why salt is called salt and not pepper’?  And vice versa.  I did in my teenage years.

  English, a language I just accepted even when questions arouse.  A language I took for granted.        

  By the 3^rd page of ‘A’s in the dictionary, I decided that this wasn’t going to be the best way to find the words I was looking for.  Thinking that somewhere, someone else has already done the work, it must be on the internet.  What do I search for!  I remember that there is a word, a proper term for this group of words.  That much I remember from my school days.

  So I google “same word different meaning” and get 234,000,000 results in .24 seconds.  Now where do I start, is there an end!

  I rediscover that there are different categories.  Heteronyms – different sound, same spelling like ‘a tear in my coat caused me to tear up’.  Homonyms – same sound and spelling like ‘the actor took a bow on the bow of the ship’.

  It is not only the words we take for granted, but also the mystery of our brain that deciphers the words.  How does that work!  We can even decipher words when the letters are all jumbled up as long as the 1^st and last letters are right.

  And don’t even get me started on text messaging – a whole new language evolving where the letters ‘c’ and ‘u’ mean ‘see you’ and ‘lol’ means ‘laughing out loud’ and well, that’s a topic for another story. 

  We know a lot about the human brain.  Scientists have it mapped and labeled.  As much as we understand, there is still more to discover.  What is it that makes some of us jumble up our letters and numbers, or stutter!  With so many life memories to remember, where is the room to store all that information in the filing cabinets of our brain!  Why are some memories locked away unable to be retrieved!  How does a word, phrase, event, date or emotion trigger a flood of past memories.  Where is the connection!

  Our brain knows instantly without conscious effort whether the word is ‘read’ or ‘read’, ‘lead’ or ‘lead’, ‘bow’ or ‘bow’, ‘bass’ or ‘bass’, ‘dove’ or ‘dove’, ‘live’ or ‘live’, ‘polish’ or ‘Polish’, ‘tear’ or ‘tear’, ‘wind’ or ‘wind’, ‘wound’ or ‘wound’, ‘ and so on.

  And if I couldn’t master French as a second language, how did I ever learn a strange, complex, and illogical language like English!  I wonder how to explain what the right answer is when someone asks me what the meaning of a word is! 

 Writers search for just the right word combinations.  Words that will paint the masterpiece they intend.  Those magical words that will transport the reader to discovering the treasures that they are working to display.

  So many more questions to explore.  Do people that can sing also have a better ear for languages!  And abbreviations, yet another topic to write about.

  I went back to the first 3 pages of the dictionary again to count the words.  Out of the 110 “A” words, I counted maybe 16 that I have used over the last few years and over half that I don’t even know, never heard of before.

  English, a language that lets us function in our daily lives when only using a small portion of the words that exist. 

   

  And if we had only known that these days, it would have been more of an advantage to have learnt Chinese instead of French.

BY Lynn Keeling

Feb 2009