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The reign in Spain is mostly for Juan Carlos, who reigned in Spain.
Reindeer are named for the reins you use to rein them in.
Rain? The water that rains from up above.
The real title for this blog is
Homonyms! Love 'em or Leave 'em? But only English majors would open this page to read such a blog. No doubt hoping for a poem elucidating the paradox. Except they wouldn't get past the corruption of the word them. So they wouldn't read it either.
Too bad. English majors spent the past fifty years twisting homonyms into homophones (spelling doesn't matter - the words sound the same) and homographs - (spelled the same but pronounced differently) with the proviso that all of the types of differentiated words are somehow alike but meaning different things. Since I am older than most of them, I call all those types of words homonyms as my third grade teacher taught me.
Which leaves you (and me) the strong, the silent, the majority! Authors. Poets. Edi-(kaf, kaf)-tors. Critix. -(Cretinx.)- Ideas are our bullets but the words we choose aim those bullets.
1) Homonyms! Love 'em.
Conveying origin, evoking related words, assigning possession: homonyms are the blessing of the English Language. When we speak, using words that sound alike, most folks can infer the meaning based on emphasis, pauses, eye-winks, elbow nudges, head nods, and all the gestures a body or expressive face can add to the speech.
Not so the written word.
Any one word can be called on to mean more than one thing. Let's follow the word there as used in the following story:
[Tense music rises as does the curtain]
"Over there are the dummies who are corrupting the language," the villain hissed without pausing or inflecting.
The hero protests,"Those folks over there?"
The hero nods and elbows a convenient stagehand, continuing, "There not corrupting anything!"
The villain contradicts the hero, in a slightly higher and more rapid patter, "There foible of confusing homonyms has grammar nazis pulling out [heaves a sigh] there hair."
[Fade to black]
Those of us who know and love homonyms read the story above as a fable, after we substitute the correct homonym. We grasp that the moral is "Choosing the correct homonyms impart exactly the information we had intended as soon as the words are read. Otherwise, the reader has to read and re-read (and dodge the occasional nudge) in order to make sense of the writing."
For those who don't appreciate homonyms, if you are confused it is your own fault.
OKOKOK
Restating the fable from above:
"Over there are the dummies who are corrupting the language," the villain hissed.
The hero protests,"Those folks over there? They're not corrupting anything!"
The villain contradicts the hero, "Their foible of confusing homonyms has grammar nazis pulling out their hair."
2) Homonyms! Leave 'em.
I've heard that the English language has more words than any other language. Franco-Latin overlaying Anglo poised atop Saxon with loanwords from every other language from every culture and planet we've encountered, grok?
So many words so damned many spellings.
Who needs 'em?
Spell them the way they sound!
As you read, say the sentence to yourself and the pathways built into your language skills automatically choose the word that the writer meant.
Except... those neural pathways were created as different words were juggled. Kids learning to read in the same new world where same sounding words are spelled the same are not juggling different words. They're just seeing the same word that sometimes means one thing and sometimes another without any hints from the spelling.
3) Like 'em or not, we are stuck with homonyms!
Homonyms serve a real purpose giving writers an advantage. Science can be learned. Knowing the language is a science. Readers pick up the clues from the words they read and, when they are told the correct words, they can understand the story. Well, they understand what they see written. Story telling is an art.
Which is a whole nother blog!
I wrote Bat Flitters for Halloween and it still works.
Am sketching the back story but it's difficult to spell.
(Mixing another metaphor. Shouldn't metaphor in mixed metaphor be plural? Hard to mix just the one...)
Anyways, maybe a longer version for the next Halloween Contest.
Interesting conversation I imagined this morning while on hold.
Anticipating a simple quick solution, I jump to the end:
"Thank you! You made this simple!
Before I say goodbye, I have an In with the 1God, so blessings on you thru which ever gods you follow."
"!!!"
"Oh, You do not?
"Great! You are Self-godded!
"The Self is the most intimate and powerful of gods - since all the other gods were created by some other self.
Have a nice day!"
click
Reposted with less of that distracting accent. (Hell! This is less?) Please feel free to point out continuity errors or that one grammar mistake.
[Setup, "...you can do the research into that area. Don't look at me; I know little about chemicals."]
Slam, "We all have our academic blind spots, Fiona. Yours happens to lie in science. Don't let it worry you; instead, you are our expert on psychology."
in Reginald's Future by Gordon Johnson, Chapter 3
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