Driving in our fair city can be rather trying. In even the idyllic suburbs, well beyond Pittsburgh proper, it's quite clear that post-modern driving skills continue to decline rapidly. I'm not sure how some of these people were legally granted driver's licenses... Alas, they were.
I am not proud to tell you that my personal battle-of-the-potty-mouth is waged most strenuously when I am behind the wheel. (Hey, I'm not a sailor's daughter for nothing! It's a constant struggle.)
Lately, other drivers have been even more lax, more rude, and more self-absorbed and distracted than normal. So, I've come up with a whole slew of other words to use in place of the vitriol that springs to my lips after I am cut off yet again, or watch a person cross the center center repeatedly only to find upon passing them that they are texting illegally, eating a meal, or fixing their hair...
Jagoff is always a nice word to swap in, being specific to Pittsburgh and rather enjoyable to utter. Jackaninny works well, as does asinine person or simply "big git" (thanks, H. Potter, for that one!) I won't lie, though; none of these substitutes can deliver the same mean satisfaction that the true bad words offer... However, these weaker word choices also carry less guilt than the "real" words.
That is, they used to carry less guilt. Then, we were re-reading the big commandments in Exodus. The one about murder. And the other one about lust. And how even just thinking about such acts was pretty seriously bad.
Which took me to Matthew 5. There are various references therein about how out of the heart come evil thoughts, and how to look upon a woman with lust is the same as committing adultery with her... Which, of course, translates to the concept of speaking about a fellow driver with murder in my heart... Yep, even when I use my cutesy little psuedo-swear words, God knows what I meant. He knows my heart—and therefore knows the word that I was thinking when I subbed in a less offensive moniker for that other driver.
There goes my awesome plan to stay verbally pure while driving.
?#*!.
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Them's learnin' words
I have much more to say about Christmas, but I think I’ll leave it alone for now and talk about something new: Language acquisition.
The entire concept is pretty amazing, really; it’s even more amazing to witness it happening in a real person. I never truly understood the power of imitation, what little parrots we all are as children. It’s no wonder that these are golden years for absorbing words, learning to speak multiple tongues, etc. because pretty much all a hearing child does is mimic the bigger people around him. Sometimes this is cute; sometimes it is obnoxious or even dangerous. Often, it reveals how a human brain moves from generalities to specifics to rule exceptions.
Marcus is beginning to figure out past tenses. He’s applying generalized rules already, and this part is cute:
“Hey Mama, camel comed to see giraffe and he had Christmas present.”
“Hey, that Silent Night—we singed that in big church.”
He doesn’t yet grasp that some verbs are irregular, and can’t be changed into past tense simply by adding a “d,” but hey, he’s 2 ½—I’m impressed that he is applying any rule at all. And he’ll figure it out, as time goes by. He’ll get to know the tenses a little better, will start to understand how to turn all verbs into past tense, even in our unpredictable, unlawful English language. He’s figured out that there’s a yesterday, a now, a tomorrow that is yet to come, and that you refer to them in different ways to signify time of action. It’s awesome.
Not so awesome is his eagerness to repeat what he hears spoken. Yesterday, we made the mistake of turning on the TV, and the movie Bruce Almighty was playing on one of the stations. We left it on, foolishly—and don’t get me wrong, I thought the movie was rather clever and much better than I’d expected it to be—but at one point, Jim Carrey screamed “You suck!” Shortly thereafter we turned the TV off.
Now, Marcus never said a word about this. Never commented, didn’t respond with a facial expression, nothing. And what does he say today to his father? Without prompting? You guessed it: “You suck.” Todd was flabbergasted. I was horrified—but remembered in a flash where the kid had learned such rudeness. Yes, our own fault completely—and a good reminder of how everything a child hears is funneled through his awareness and stashed away somewhere inside. EVERYthing. Especially the stuff you were hoping he didn’t hear.
So, I’ll continue to be rendered speechless by my child’s language development skills—both by the progress therein, and by the disgust I feel when I hear my own words spouting forth from his tiny, clueless mouth.
The entire concept is pretty amazing, really; it’s even more amazing to witness it happening in a real person. I never truly understood the power of imitation, what little parrots we all are as children. It’s no wonder that these are golden years for absorbing words, learning to speak multiple tongues, etc. because pretty much all a hearing child does is mimic the bigger people around him. Sometimes this is cute; sometimes it is obnoxious or even dangerous. Often, it reveals how a human brain moves from generalities to specifics to rule exceptions.
Marcus is beginning to figure out past tenses. He’s applying generalized rules already, and this part is cute:
“Hey Mama, camel comed to see giraffe and he had Christmas present.”
“Hey, that Silent Night—we singed that in big church.”
He doesn’t yet grasp that some verbs are irregular, and can’t be changed into past tense simply by adding a “d,” but hey, he’s 2 ½—I’m impressed that he is applying any rule at all. And he’ll figure it out, as time goes by. He’ll get to know the tenses a little better, will start to understand how to turn all verbs into past tense, even in our unpredictable, unlawful English language. He’s figured out that there’s a yesterday, a now, a tomorrow that is yet to come, and that you refer to them in different ways to signify time of action. It’s awesome.
Not so awesome is his eagerness to repeat what he hears spoken. Yesterday, we made the mistake of turning on the TV, and the movie Bruce Almighty was playing on one of the stations. We left it on, foolishly—and don’t get me wrong, I thought the movie was rather clever and much better than I’d expected it to be—but at one point, Jim Carrey screamed “You suck!” Shortly thereafter we turned the TV off.
Now, Marcus never said a word about this. Never commented, didn’t respond with a facial expression, nothing. And what does he say today to his father? Without prompting? You guessed it: “You suck.” Todd was flabbergasted. I was horrified—but remembered in a flash where the kid had learned such rudeness. Yes, our own fault completely—and a good reminder of how everything a child hears is funneled through his awareness and stashed away somewhere inside. EVERYthing. Especially the stuff you were hoping he didn’t hear.
So, I’ll continue to be rendered speechless by my child’s language development skills—both by the progress therein, and by the disgust I feel when I hear my own words spouting forth from his tiny, clueless mouth.
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