Friday, December 30, 2011

1651 Second Language

Our language is certainly difficult for foreigners. Words like "your" and "you're" spelled different and sounding the same. They're called homophones. And words like "refuse" and "refuse" spelled the same and pronounced different. They're called homographs.
Speaking of graphs, I was at an economic symposium recently. The speaker shared some graphs. And it reminded me that sometimes just the sounds of language can convey meaning too. I'm not sure what the name for that is.
The graph the speaker showed was how business had gone precipitously down and then leveled off. The down part looked like a laid-back pole. The levelish part looked like an almost horizontal slash. The speaker said, "The recent economy can be represented by this graph shaped like an L." And I thought, yeah, and it feels like L too.
I made a syllaballic homo-pun.
Another homophone that always gets me is dye, as in your hair, and die, as in your performance on a comedy stage. Or possibly the finish of your performance in life. Actually it's the present continuous conjugation of the past particle "having died" that gets me.
When you're actually dying, it's spelled d-Y-i-n-g-. Why the Y? Doesn't it make it look like the dy in hair dye? Makes you wonder if hair dye's called that because it kills your hair.
Or how about the homophones bridal, as in wedding stuff, and bridle, as in a device you put on a horse? Odd that the homophone almost turns it into a synonym.
Or you could say, not living in sin makes a synonym of bridle the harness and bridal the putting you in harness.
Welcome to American English foreign folks, to understand it, you got to be quick. That's why they call it a second language.
America, ya gotta love it.

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