Saturday, July 26, 2008

WORDS

How we use words or over use them today has been of interest to me.
When trying to compose brilliant pages of literature did our forefathers use dictionaries and Thesauruses, or wing it by creating new and funny sounding utterances? And much later give the meanings out to only those who would ask?
About the above I do sometimes wonder.

Have you ever noticed that the art of letter writing has been lost?
And that now emails have taken up that familiar habit; by now I am sure you have.

Synonyms, homonyms, antonyms, silent letters, combination letters make our English a very different language, and difficult one for others to learn.
Arabic characters are used in many languages at least we have some consistency with that.

And yet if we came from let's say Germany, France or Spain English would be quite a challenge, and their languages would be a breeze for us to learn?
I don't think so. I personally have studied French and Spanish in our schools,
I did fair in French but great in Spanish with A's. Not that easy either, but easier.

My point for this evening is that I'm sure if we decided to emigrate to any of those countries we would speak their languages lickety-split, right?
Not necessarily.

We should put ourselves in our immigrants shoes, and remember our ancestors that had to not only start all over with everything, housing, jobs and school, etc. but do it while adjusting to strangers talking in foreign tongues.

Weak example, but somewhat of an analogy: Most recently my husband and I have began to realize that our hearing or listening isn't what it used to be so since our TVS are all equipped with closed captioning we have been using it, and guess what it doesn't always work so accurately.
Sometimes their is none at all available or the sentences are so misspelled it looks like a foreign language, how about that?
I suggest you try it.
For news and weather it isn't verbatim since whoever does it locally isn't able to keep up!
Now imagine being deaf and trying to know what's going on by using the TV for that main purpose.
Not so easy!

Curiosity is a good thing, and I have been told as long as you have it you'll never get old. In other words try to learn something new every day. As I have gotten older I have realized how little I really do know. It amazes me though that when I was 15 I knew everything!

Good night and a pleasant evening to all.

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