Line of the Week

Ah, the wonders of vocabulary.

I like the word "indolence." It makes my laziness seem classy. --Bern Williams

On the Amazon

Yesterday’s rummaging through the old cassette tapes I had yoinked from my dad proved quite fruitful: a Don McLean tape!

Yes, the ‘American Pie’ guy.

I’m a big fan. Like his music his taken over my ipod big fan. Like I may know all the lyrics to ‘American Pie’ big fan.

I think I squealed a little when I popped it into my stereo and found that the tape contained songs that I had never heard before, including a hysterical little ditty called “On the Amazon.”

Unfortunately, because the song is a tad out-of-date and one of McLean’s lesser known works, I was unable to find it on YouTube for your viewing pleasure (unless you count the one amateur version sung in some Slavic dialect). I did however, find the lyrics.

Through some rather Seussian humor, “On the Amazon” is a deft poke at the total misconception people have over certain terms (read: hypodermic, kodachromes, pax vobiscum, et al). These scientific-sounding words that often trip one up in the meaning department are re-cast by McLean as the frightening denizens of the exotic Amazon. If you have no idea what a duodenum is, than it sounds perfectly reasonable for it to be lurking in the trees, no?

So beware those apostrophes and that darn laryngitis! For, though they’re not as exotic as they sound, the former can be quite the tricky little bugger, and always, always avoid the latter.

Word Play

“Kate, do you know where Scrabble is?”

Not exactly what I was expecting when I flipped open my phone.

“Uh, no Ma. Is it in the closet under the stairs?”

“No! I looked there.”

“Under your bed?”

“No.”

This whole frantic interrogation was brought on by a similarly frantic phone call from my grandmother to my mother when she discovered that her Scrabble game was missing.

This is possibly the worst crisis that has ever occurred in either of our households.

My grandmother, my mother, and I are the most cut-throat, competitive, rabid Scrabble players in the history of Parker Brothers gamedom.

Every year, when my family visits my grandparents in Wisconsin, there is a violent, cross-generational clash of vocabularies and triple word scores around the worn kitchen table. Just the clicking of the little wooden tiles being jostled in their cloth bag is enough to send my brothers, father and grandfather into basement hibernation. They know what comes next: at least three hours worth of squabbling over points and spelling, disjointed bits of small talk, and the occasional stream of profanity.

Sometimes I win. Sometimes not. It really doesn’t matter though. It’s all in the struggle.

I’ve been beefing up my Scrabble word arsenal for the last couple of months (minding my ‘Q’s especially) in order to prepare myself for zero hour: spring break 2008, when my mother and I sojourn to the frozen wastes of Wisconsin to do battle again.

Which brings us back to our initial problem. Grandma’s ancient, stained-tile Scrabble is missing.

And apparently so is mine.

Now before you start hypothesizing about word-junkie aliens who’ve been quietly stealing Scrabble games across the country, remember the male contingent of my family and their utter loathing of the word game. Which leads me to believe that either one or both of the games is stuffed within the frightening clutter of the garage work bench, or in a duct in the attic, far from any place we would normally look.

Lord, what fools these mortals be.

If they don’t turn up, it’s nothing that a short trip down to the Wal-Mart game-aisle won’t fix, and we’ll be back at it again: making words out of all vowels, siccing vocabularies on each other, and spelling out much, much more than high-scoring words.

We write memories all over that board.

Line of the Week

"I love England, especially the food. There's nothing I like more than a lovely bowl of pasta." --Naomi Campbell

Think the English pasta is good? Wait until you try the Italian fish and chips.

Pictionary

So this is what the people at Princeton do in their spare time!

This baby is not your average dictionary or thesaurus, that’s for sure. It’s fascinating to see the associations between words and the resulting patterns: conifer and melancholy produce some spectacular visual displays. (The random button is also a good bet!) What are you waiting for? Go play!

I Now Pronounce You...

In one of my classes today, the professor asked students to read aloud from the text we were examining.

Harmless, right?

Personally, I thought it was quite refreshing. Just the thought of it brought back the chalk-dust and lunch-box nostalgia of elementary school.

Come to find out, there’s a reason you don’t read aloud after elementary school. Exhibit A: mispronounced words.

I know how embarassing it is to find that you've been mispronouncing a word time and again: I'm the repeat offender. Believe me, there’s nothing worse than confidently proclaiming that the ‘sherbert’ was fantastic, when it really was the sherbet that was fantastic. Open mouth, insert foot.

So, what do you say when someone “aks” you to pass them that paper? Or when someone says ‘ek-set-er-a’ when they mean ‘et-set-er-a’? Do you just let them keep on talking and making the same mistake, or do you politely correct them and risk the possibility that they might think you’re a pompous little twit?

Personally, I’d rather have some pompous little twit tell me that my pronunciation is off so I don’t continue to embarrass myself whenever I refer to “Green-witch” village. It’s like mispronunciation immunization: it’s a sharp little hurt when you’re corrected, but now that you know where and what you’ve flubbed, chances are you’ll never make that linguistic gaffe again.

So be a friend and let that person know that it is aficionado, not afandacio, and swallow hard when someone quietly tells you that it is ‘pot-n-tate’ not ‘po-TEN-tate,’ it just saves everyone the embarrassment, no matter how you pronounce it.



P.S. Want a reality check? It’s quite the shocker.

Line of the Week

Just a little piece of brain candy this week:

“Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests” –Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Message In A Bottle

I’m a sucker for stories.

I think we all are to a degree. Mankind has a long history of oral tradition, spoken tales passed down through the ages from every tribe, every time, every nation. Through these stories, we learn something about the teller, and if the teller is a good one, something about the world, life, and even ourselves.

Since this is a blog concerned with language, it’s the perfect place to tell and share stories. So every once in a while, I will include an audio byte or a story that has been told to me that is especially piquant or profound, just so that it might leave even the tiniest impression before it vanishes completely.

Spoken words are fleeting, ephemeral; beautiful oddities that, to be truly considered, must be captured like lighting bugs in a jar, to be released only after we have marveled at them a little.

Here’s this evening’s catch.

Say it again...and again.

Why is it that those little moments of revelation pop up when least expected?

They always happen when you’re typing up something completely unrelated, or you’re 5 minutes into "The Daily Show," and POW: "OhmygodItotallyforgotaboutMom’sbirthday!" hits you right in the face.

Today it was at work, which, in my mind, is totally out of bounds.

I was was perusing my evaluation sheets: feedback from people rating how well I am doing my job. This necessary ‘eval’ sounds worse than it is, it’s merely a tool to pinpoint if there are any flaws in your job performance, and serves a space for people to compliment your service. Today I noticed that for the umpteenth time someone had written something like : "Katie is ‘AWESOME!’" or some other variation (i.e. "Katie is ‘cool beans!’").

POW! Late hit.

Could it be that I am using these interjections too often in my interactions with people?

I mean, I’m articulate. I have a wide and varied range of vocabulary at my disposal. I’m an English major for pete’s sake, it’s my business to make things sound pretty (attractive, beautiful, charming). I didn’t think I sounded like a broken record, but in the case of what comes out of your mouth, the best judges are those whose mouths are shut.

My Dad has always said to my Mom and me, "When you open your mouth your ears close!"

Ha ha, Dad.

It’s true though. While blabbing away, your mind is full of myriad other things, like what you are going to say, and how you are going to say it, and "Jeez my mouth is dry," and is not listening to what actually comes out of your mouth. But your audience is concentrating only on what you say, flaws and all.

Those-with-their-ears-open are the ones who can easily identify any nasty little lingual habits (AWESOME! Cool beans!) of she-whose-ears-are-closed. Which in turn allows them to write clever little remarks on she-whose-ears-are-closed’s ‘eval sheet,’ which consequently throws her into paroxysms of self-reflection and doubt.

She-whose-ears-are-closed thinks that it is high time to revamp her vocab and manner of speaking and get rid of those tired old mainstays.

Line of the Week

Thanks to my brother, his edition of ‘Road & Track,’ and the LA Times for this winner.

“Caution: Vehicle May be Transporting Political Promises”–seen on the back of a septic-tank pumper truck in San Dimas, California.