It is Sunday, July 14.  There are only 164 days until Christmas so you had better start creating your Christmas letters and writing out your cards.  The way the post office has been functioning lately, they may get delivered in time if you have them in the mail by next week.  It is the birthday of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Florence Bascom and Tom Carvel.  In 1850 there was the first public demonstration of ice made by refrigeration.  In 1951, CBS had the first color telecast of a sporting event when it broadcast a horse race.  In 1975 Epcot Center plans were announced.  In France, Guiana, Polynesia, Guadel and Martinique it is Bastille Day and it is African Community day in Senegal.  Tomorrow is Reed Dance Day in Swaziland.

 

I want to spend a little time discussing our language.  I know English can be difficult.    There are rules, but they only hold true some of the time.  There is the old rule of i before e except after c or when sounding like a as in neighbor or weigh.  How do you expect people from other countries to learn a language when you have something as confusing as that for a simple letter combination?  For that matter, how do you expect children in our own country to learn the language with that kind of foolishness?  

Another example is words that look like they should sound the same but do not.  I am not talking about homonyms. I am talking about words that look alike, but do not sound alike.  Take for example the word laughter (laf ter).  If you put an s in front of that word it becomes slaughter (slaw ter).  Why?  I thought maybe it was because of the double consonant, but then I thought about daughter (daw ter) and realized that was not the case.  What it comes down to is the language is screwed up.

Now add to the mix the way people mispronounce words.  One example is the word comfortable.  Let’s look at this word.  Com-for-ta-ble.  It seems fairly straight forward.  So why is it that people leave out the r, shorten the word by a syllable and make it comf ta ble?  This is done in commercials all the time.  Since most of today’s children spend a good deal of time in front of the TV, you would hope that they would hear the language spoken properly, at least during commercials.  Another word that is constantly chopped is recognize.  It usually comes out this way, “Shirley, OMG, you got a haircut.  I almost didn’t recanize you.”

A few of the other words we tend to screw up are words like impordent, jewlery and realators.  For those of you who may think these are the correct words, they are not.  The real words are important, jewelry and realtors.  We do other things like when we see an announcement for a sporting event that states the two teams and says Yankees v Boston.  The correct way to read this would be Yankees versus Boston, not Yankees verse Boston or Yankees v Boston.  I’m sorry but that is a pet peeve of mine.

Another thing that is happening lately is that we leave words off the ends of sentences.  John said, “I have to go to the store for some things for dinner.”  His friend Betty said, “Do you want me to come with?”  Was Betty so exhausted that she was unable to put the word you on the end of the sentence?  If so, it might be better if she stayed home.  I particularly have a problem with the way people describe something as so fun.  I suppose in the strictest sense, there is nothing really wrong with that, but it just sounds wrong.  I wanted to give an example of what makes that wrong here, but I am unable to come up with something that I think would be effective.  Spend a minute or two thinking about it and add your own example.  This helps make the blog an interactive experience.

You want to make things even more confusing?  Add the numerous regional accents that we have throughout the country.  Then add the way the same item has different names depending on where you are in the country.  A sub sandwich can be a hero or a grinder depending on where you are.  A bag can be a sack or a tote.  There are a lot of ways to confuse people when it comes to the English language.

There are a number of other issues I could go into here, but I won’t for two reasons.  One is because after a while it just becomes tiresome listening to someone rant about the same issue in different ways and B is because I can save some things for another time when I need a topic to write about.

One more quick thing is the use of letters to say things like OMG, LOL, LMAO, ROTFLMAO, and other gems like that.  The problem is that not everyone knows what these things mean and they sometimes lose the train of a message as a result.  I got a message once with ROTFLMAO and wondered what Reading On Trains Feels Like Many Angry Otters had to do with anything.  But that is an issue for another time.

This week’s fact – The Chico California City Council enacted a ban on nuclear weapons, setting a $500.00 fine for anyone detonating one within city limits.  Have a good week and stay out of Chico if you have nuclear capability.  Those fines can add up quickly.