Have you seen the new Pixar movie Up? We love it; the story lines, characters, and–squirrel!–hilarious talking dog collars. I could really identify–point!–with the dogs and their “chasing shiny objects” mentality. Lately I feel very stream of consciousness, where I start on one thought and end up somewhere totally different before coming back to my original thought.
To demonstrate, I’ll share one of those “streams” with you. So I’m studying Esther this summer, and in my previous post I mentioned that the events in Esther were about the Jews remaining in Persia, called the Diaspora. I was talking to Ryan about the exile and I mentioned the “dee-uh-spore-uh”. After a moment of silence, Ryan said, “did you mean “dye-as-per-uh”? I had never, ever heard it pronounced his way, and he had never heard it pronounced it my way. We speak the same language, right? This led to a consultation of Dictionary.com, where they clearly pronounce it Ryan’s way. Grrr. So all week I’ve been working on my pronunciation so I wouldn’t screw it up when it came time for our first video session on Esther.
That exercise got me thinking about pronunciation in the English language. Granted, diaspora is a Greek word, but we try to apply English pronunciation rules to it (like we do most other foreign words). That reminded me of a great video I saw on YouTube. This video is a funny, interesting, and perfect example of silly English spellings.
Love that guy! And he is so right about the need for reform; English is entirely too complicated. Nevertheless, I stand corrected on ”dye-as-per-uh.”
Diaspora was an interesting “shiny object” to chase, and I even learned something along the way. But seriously, my entire week has been this way; one thing after another until my head spins. I need a break! Maybe I’ll go watch Up again.
