language

I know my friends were concerned about the tweet I left last night about wanting to come home, and I realized this morning there was no way I could explain what was going on in my head in under 140 characters.  I could say "I’m homesick," but that puts a cheap and easy spin on something I recognize is not either cheap nor easy.

“Are you going out today? If you are, then don’t forget to take your umbershoot.”

If my mother said this to you, you would probably look at her with a great degree of puzzlement. If my mother said this to me, I would know that we were supposed to get rain that day.My mother can be dour and serious. She was the eldest of four children, and her unasked-for position of seniority required her to be the caretaker of her siblings while her parents ran a small store.

As a result of that caretaking, I can vouch for her excellence at it.

She graduated from high school in 1961, when in Arkansas, the propriety of the 1950s hadn’t quite been overtaken by the gaiety and looseness of the 1960s. She was unmarried, and through casual comments she made, I gather that her family despaired that she would ever marry.

I sometimes wish that English was more supportive of the use of diacritical marks.

This occurred to me last night while putting in the playlist. One of the songs I was listening to was Orbital’s “Otoño.” My thoughts started racing from there. I remembered the girl in my high school whose name was Danée, and how frustrated she must have been all the time to see her name spelled Dane’e.I like diacritical marks. When studying German I found them incredibly helpful. I find it impossible to guess at pronunciations for French and Spanish words without them. I like the certainty that they give when you’re reading aloud. (Bonus points, though, to the first person who can tell me how to correctly pronounce ‘Björk Guðmundsdóttir.’)

Considering that English is an incredible bastardization of many languages, I wish that we used them. It would make reading easier for a lot of people…