Growing up I was never really into my English classes nor
reading and so my appreciation for the English language didn’t rate very high
at all in my world back then. My father, however, has a verbal repertoire which would
have challenged William Wordsworth if Wordsworth was still with us.
My father, having grown up in South Australia, is often mistaken for English gentry due to his pronunciations of particular words. South Australia is the state
where the English gentry settled and it was a “convict free” settlement when
Australia was 'invaded' by the English.
I grew up being corrected often with my Queensland pronunciations of certain
words. For example, dad pronounced the word ‘castle’ as if he had been educated
at Oxford, England, and so his pronunciation was ‘carsel’ where as the good ol’
Australian accent simply stated it as 'casel,' much to dad’s annoyance. He would state
that we were going to a ‘darnce’ where I would say dance etc. A rockmelon fruit
to us was just that, a rockmelon. However a South Australian would call it a
cantelope. A school case or bag to Dad was known as a port and so it went on. Back
then and to this day, friends will ask me if dad is English by birth due to his
fabulous Oxford accent to which I explain the first settlement story to them.
Apart from his correct pronunciation of the English language,
he is also a fabulous orator along with a magnificent wordsmith. I am sure that
if you walked into his abode today and peruse the various magazines and
newspapers containing crosswords that not one would not have been completed by
my father.
It was not until later in my life that I started showing any
real appreciation of the language which clearly Dad had grabbed on to at an
early age. I commenced writing letters etc to which Dad commended me on my
writing prowess and is one of the reasons I now have this blog. Regardless, I
think I have come of age now and can now exclaim with pride that I currently
have three books I am currently reading and my blogtastical banter has given me the
freedom to exercise my talents of writing which clearly did not arrive until
fairly recently.
I have clearly inherited Dad’s love for words. All through
my life and particularly during my schooling I would approach Dad for some assistance
with regards assignments etc. He would always captivate me with his responses
which would always contain at least one word which I had no idea meant. Feeling
inferior, often I would simply nod and thank him for his help and hope that by
the time I reached my study desk, I could hold that word in my head long enough
to clamber through the dictionary and find not only the word but also the
meaning and hence be able to complete the entire conversation we had just had
together which would then make sense to me. I think it was from these ‘get
togethers’ that finally, I realised there was much to learn when it came to my
native tongue and that I should really show more appreciation of it by learning
more about it.
Consequently, as my girls have walked through their years of
education, the two books which I purchased when they were very young were
indeed the Concise Oxford Dictionary and the accompanying Thesaurus. These two
books still adorn my bookshelf and always will until I am some ‘six foot under.’
It is just recently that I too have commenced the challenge
of crosswords in my local newspaper which apparently makes me a cruciverbalist.
I do so enjoy the occasional medical question which occurs sometimes and which I
usually have the answer to due to my nursing background. One beauty which is
not found very often at all is the word choleduchojejunostomy which is a
surgical procedure of the gastrointestinal system which I learnt in my nursing
days but is seldom used now but I hold on to regardless. Regardless, to be
brutally honest here I have a very long way to go to even becoming remotely
close to Dad’s talents but that is OK. Words like belligerent, sanctimonious, ultracrepidarian
are just a few I do so love to use when I can. Autolatry is one word some may
currently use to describe me as I type this blog.
Regardless, I hope that I never grow tired of improving my
English vocabulary. As my darling grandfather would often say to me, ‘every day
you learn something which you should file away for future reference.’ How true
this statement is. So clearly I have not only my wonderful father to thank for
my newly found talents but also Poppa for forecasting what I do so
appreciate....the magic of words and how I do so love to refer to those extra
special ones on a regular basis.
No comments:
Post a Comment