Words
Just now, while ordering food at a deli, I had an incident that didn't need to happen Here's how it all went down:
This particular deli you walk up to the counter, order your food, they bring it to you right then and there and then you go find your seat. Easy, right? Well, usually. Today it was far less busy than I thought it would be and I stepped up at my turn and ordered what I wanted. The girl behind the counter grabbed my food and a cup for the soda machine and slid them out to me. As I was paying I noticed my cup had a misshapen rim that wouldn't be conducive to a lid, so I asked, "Can I get a cup a lid will go on?"
The woman who as taking my money pointed to the soda fountains, "Lids are over there."
So, I tilted the cup down and showed her the rim that looked like it had been squished at some point or another, "No, I need a cup that a lid will go on."
She looked at me again, indicated the general direction of the soda fountain and said, "Lids are over there."
A little frustrated it was becoming far too hard to replace my cup with the FUBAR'd rim, I pointed the rim towards her and said a little more firmly, "Do you think a lid will fit on here?"
She looked at the cup, then at me, "Oh you wanted a cup."
"Yes. That's why I asked for a cup. That a lid would fit on."
She gave me a dirty look, handed me a cup and then proceeded to ignore me.
This is but just one of many examples where people don't listen and then become annoyed or upset that you, me - all of us - didn't conform to what they heard or believe they heard. I see this nearly everyday where someone says something and when you hold them to their word they seem to become irritated. "Hey, you said ... " one might point out, but it doesn't matter. What they've contrived in their head may be different than what they conveyed to others, but what they actually said seems to always take the back seat to what they believe they said.
If I remember correctly, I wrote once about how words have meaning and using the proper work in the correct context was key to having a conversation wherein the parties involved all on the same page. Yes, it can be a little cumbersome and, yes, it can make a conversation seem dull or academic - or, worse yet, sounding very formal - but this is why we have words with different meanings: to convey different ideas.
I read somewhere once that there is a tribe of people in South America or the Pacific Islands or somewhere little touched by modern man where they only counted to five. After 5 everything was "a bunch". A very inelegant way of keeping track of things that consisted of more than five, if you ask me.
More recently I read an article (a year or two ago) that some scholars wonder if the color blue existed before a certain time period as it was never mentioned in any discovered writings. This was, they said, found across cultures and geography. No Greeks, Romans, Chinese or anywhere else mentioned the color blue. Does that mean the color didn't exist? Or does it mean humanity couldn't distinguish that color? Or, as I believe, does it mean the color blue was just so prevalent (hell, the sky is blue and so is most water) that it didn't need to be mentioned because it was a given? How often do you mention oxygen, even when you're mentioning the air? Almost never, I'd wager and yet we all understand the air on Earth has oxygen.
We mention the colors of sunset or the sunrise; we mention the anger of the storm or the ominous clouds, but we rarely ever mention the blue sky unless it's been a while without one and we're making a point. How hard is it to believe our ancestors just didn't think the sky was worth mentioning unless something out of the ordinary was happening with it that directly affected their story? And so, blue became a color that needed no mention.
The same could be said for a bunch. What if a culture never needed more than five? That it was so rare to need or have more than five that no need sprang up to give such concepts their own designation?
And yet, in other parts of the world, where scholars and scientists were trying to quantify more than five, we developed numbers infinitely larger. Where artisans were plying their trade and had to paint the sky in color as opposed to on cave walls we developed a name for that particular color.
We created word - words that have specific meanings. One might say, "the color of the sky" but which color is that? The oranges and reds of the sunset or the blues and yellows of the sunrise; the dark grey of thunderstorms or the puffy white of summer clouds? And so we have blue and then more shades to describe the different colors the sly goes through on a given day and different times of the year.
Just as we have numbers for five plus one, plus three, plus 35,872. Just as we have words for locomotive (crazy engine for those of you who love etymology as I do) or car, a derivative of a train's car. Or, more recently, to Google something is nearly synonymous with to search the internet, but to Google means only to use Google's search engine to search the internet. Would one google the internet if they were using Bing, Yahoo or LexisNexis? Maybe one day we will, but for now, to Google something still means to use Google's search. Which is nearly synonymous with searching the internet.
See that qualifier there? Nearly. Not completely, just more than mostly. Without that single word, the sentence takes on a completely different meaning and most people seem to skip over the qualifiers.
Words have meaning, the order they come into a sentence can also have meaning. And they can drastically change how we interpret what's being conveyed to us.
I needed a cup that a lid would fit. Not a lid that fit the cup. Two completely different sentiments using nearly the same words.
Choose your sentences wisely.
[Update: After posting this I couldn't get the idea out of my head that I had the origins for the word "car" incorrect. I attributed it to a "train car" which early vehicles might have resembled to people who weren't familiar with automobiles and then I thought perhaps it was short for "carriage" such as in a "horseless carriage/car" but, as it turns out, car originally came from an Old Celtic word meaning wheeled wagon probably a cart.
This particular deli you walk up to the counter, order your food, they bring it to you right then and there and then you go find your seat. Easy, right? Well, usually. Today it was far less busy than I thought it would be and I stepped up at my turn and ordered what I wanted. The girl behind the counter grabbed my food and a cup for the soda machine and slid them out to me. As I was paying I noticed my cup had a misshapen rim that wouldn't be conducive to a lid, so I asked, "Can I get a cup a lid will go on?"
The woman who as taking my money pointed to the soda fountains, "Lids are over there."
So, I tilted the cup down and showed her the rim that looked like it had been squished at some point or another, "No, I need a cup that a lid will go on."
She looked at me again, indicated the general direction of the soda fountain and said, "Lids are over there."
A little frustrated it was becoming far too hard to replace my cup with the FUBAR'd rim, I pointed the rim towards her and said a little more firmly, "Do you think a lid will fit on here?"
She looked at the cup, then at me, "Oh you wanted a cup."
"Yes. That's why I asked for a cup. That a lid would fit on."
She gave me a dirty look, handed me a cup and then proceeded to ignore me.
This is but just one of many examples where people don't listen and then become annoyed or upset that you, me - all of us - didn't conform to what they heard or believe they heard. I see this nearly everyday where someone says something and when you hold them to their word they seem to become irritated. "Hey, you said ... " one might point out, but it doesn't matter. What they've contrived in their head may be different than what they conveyed to others, but what they actually said seems to always take the back seat to what they believe they said.
If I remember correctly, I wrote once about how words have meaning and using the proper work in the correct context was key to having a conversation wherein the parties involved all on the same page. Yes, it can be a little cumbersome and, yes, it can make a conversation seem dull or academic - or, worse yet, sounding very formal - but this is why we have words with different meanings: to convey different ideas.
I read somewhere once that there is a tribe of people in South America or the Pacific Islands or somewhere little touched by modern man where they only counted to five. After 5 everything was "a bunch". A very inelegant way of keeping track of things that consisted of more than five, if you ask me.
More recently I read an article (a year or two ago) that some scholars wonder if the color blue existed before a certain time period as it was never mentioned in any discovered writings. This was, they said, found across cultures and geography. No Greeks, Romans, Chinese or anywhere else mentioned the color blue. Does that mean the color didn't exist? Or does it mean humanity couldn't distinguish that color? Or, as I believe, does it mean the color blue was just so prevalent (hell, the sky is blue and so is most water) that it didn't need to be mentioned because it was a given? How often do you mention oxygen, even when you're mentioning the air? Almost never, I'd wager and yet we all understand the air on Earth has oxygen.
We mention the colors of sunset or the sunrise; we mention the anger of the storm or the ominous clouds, but we rarely ever mention the blue sky unless it's been a while without one and we're making a point. How hard is it to believe our ancestors just didn't think the sky was worth mentioning unless something out of the ordinary was happening with it that directly affected their story? And so, blue became a color that needed no mention.
The same could be said for a bunch. What if a culture never needed more than five? That it was so rare to need or have more than five that no need sprang up to give such concepts their own designation?
And yet, in other parts of the world, where scholars and scientists were trying to quantify more than five, we developed numbers infinitely larger. Where artisans were plying their trade and had to paint the sky in color as opposed to on cave walls we developed a name for that particular color.
We created word - words that have specific meanings. One might say, "the color of the sky" but which color is that? The oranges and reds of the sunset or the blues and yellows of the sunrise; the dark grey of thunderstorms or the puffy white of summer clouds? And so we have blue and then more shades to describe the different colors the sly goes through on a given day and different times of the year.
Just as we have numbers for five plus one, plus three, plus 35,872. Just as we have words for locomotive (crazy engine for those of you who love etymology as I do) or car, a derivative of a train's car. Or, more recently, to Google something is nearly synonymous with to search the internet, but to Google means only to use Google's search engine to search the internet. Would one google the internet if they were using Bing, Yahoo or LexisNexis? Maybe one day we will, but for now, to Google something still means to use Google's search. Which is nearly synonymous with searching the internet.
See that qualifier there? Nearly. Not completely, just more than mostly. Without that single word, the sentence takes on a completely different meaning and most people seem to skip over the qualifiers.
Words have meaning, the order they come into a sentence can also have meaning. And they can drastically change how we interpret what's being conveyed to us.
I needed a cup that a lid would fit. Not a lid that fit the cup. Two completely different sentiments using nearly the same words.
Choose your sentences wisely.
[Update: After posting this I couldn't get the idea out of my head that I had the origins for the word "car" incorrect. I attributed it to a "train car" which early vehicles might have resembled to people who weren't familiar with automobiles and then I thought perhaps it was short for "carriage" such as in a "horseless carriage/car" but, as it turns out, car originally came from an Old Celtic word meaning wheeled wagon probably a cart.
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