The Art of Language

People from other countries claim that, like the atonal Asian languages, English is very hard to learn. I will concede that French and Spanish may be more melodious, and German, more precise, but I'm thankful to have been born in an English speaking family in love with words.

Beginning in infancy we grow our vocabularies from many sources; the speech heard in our homes, radios and television sets, and later, words overheard in public, in schools, in theatres. We assimilate words without even knowing we are storing them. Then, once we can read and write, the doors are thrown open to expressing ourselves and being understood. Amazing, isn't it? Most of us don't consciously root around in our vocabularies for words to impress, but what a satisfaction it is to have available the just right word for what we want to describe or express.

Language itself grows, labeling the new, defining what we see or know of our world. We invent slang, find new usages for old expressions. My granddaughter, when she was at Loyola of Chicago was hired to tutor a young Middle Eastern doctor. His schoolbook English was adequate,  and medical terminology was not a problem. What he needed was help with understanding American idioms.

Proving that ideas can come from anywhere at all, the above thoughts began their journey last week while I was bringing in the emptied robotic trash cans from the street. How, I wondered, would you teach someone from overseas the difference between refuse the noun and refuse the verb?