Language a lost Art
A friend from another blog site inspired me to share my own thoughts concerning the English language. He commented on how much he loved it because it is filled with strange oddities and that it was huge compared to his native language Espanola. The piece below is an example of what he loves about English: you can never take it for granted.
Taken from him: "I take it you already know,
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word,
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead - it's said like bed, not bead,
For goodness' sake, don't call it 'deed'!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Why man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five."
My thoughts: There's always a better way to say something. The English language is extremely acquiescent if you know how to manipulate it. That one word can say it all. Make a sentence snap.
It's not very forgiving though, people take things out of context all the time. We're the ugly Americans. Nor does it sound very romantic. Not unless you're from the South when everything sounds like it went through a curling iron. The words themselves don't make the ends curl some times it's the way you say something.
And then sometimes it isn't how you say it but what you say. Words make all the difference least ways it does to me.
People who make me think people like the friend I mentioned; their words above all else capture my attention the most.
The preverbal player can be heard a mile away. I've got an internal mute button built in.
I always feel cynical later when I think I've found that person who's truly reached me verbally; they heat me up, and say the exact right things. It doesn't take me long though to discover their rewind button. A vocabulary limited to what they've memorized and practiced on thousands of gullible women.
People bore me very easily.
The relationship wanes.
I wish there was a more creative way to say the end. I'm sure there is but in cases like this it's become a simple lack of interest to craft one.
~d~
