Words, words and more words

It's amazing how things work out sometimes. Recently, one of my past students (Jim Ryan) triggered in my head a book I once read called, "Cultutal Literacy — What Every American Should Know." (CL-WEASK)

And the conversation that brought it up was one of idiomatic language. CL-WEASK is all about language and how it evolves. The author, Ed Hirsch, Jr., states that much of language gets lost from one generation to another and one of the things that is hastening this process is the influx of other languages and the Internet's effect on how Americans speak.  The issue is that idiomatic language does not translate well from one language to another, and new terms that try to integrate into current language take a while to be either accepted or rejected (unless the derivation is Shakespeare!).

One of the first things that goes, or is lost to posterity, in terms of language, is idiomatic phrasing, such as "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." (circa 1670) Now these 11 words represent much more than could be explained as long as you know what it means.  But if you don't, or it needs to be explained to you, then it fails.

My favorite idiomatic author is Ben Franklin, and one of my favorite phrases of his is, "Fish and visitors stink after three days."  If you've ever had anyone stay with you for more than three days, well . . . this doesn't have to be explained.

Anyway, the point of this is that idiomatic language keeps fading from generation to generation. And new things prop up, like "slash." Some of this may be due to texting and a lack of true conversation, and I think this is truly a shame. There is another point to this, I suppose.  I was having a conversation with Jim on the web and that led to me reviewing this book again (CL_WEASK ^).  I think I've read this book twice, maybe three times and I totally forgot that this is where I first encountered George Miller's "Seven Plus or Minus Two" theory. This is basically about how much information you can store in your short-term memory before you can't remember it, or ultimately — nine units.

The interesting thing about this is that we all read, many, many words in a string — well beyond nine (the limit of 7+/- 2), and even though logic would say that you shouldn't remember any of that; that's not the case. Our minds have the capability to turn short-term memory into long-term understanding.  But that is also why it is so important to set-up online screen views so that they are easy to read.

Anyone who has sat in my classroom knows about "7+/-2," and the importance that I give this theory in trying to discern language.  Language is a tricky thing, and cognitive science is still being studied every day, so if you are a logofile (lover of words) then you must read this book.  It is a great read.

Here's a beautiful quote from the book that I'll leave you with:

"From an evolutionary standpoint it is much more desirable that we forget the literal words we encounter, and remember their meanings, than that we have an absolute memory for both the words and their meanings."

 

And the fact that our wonderful brains can do this is      a m a z i n g ! (7 letters)