Well My Tender Lumplings, I know that my posts have slacked off a bit this summer but I beg your forgiveness. As you all know it has been a hot one and that has affected a lot of previous plans I had. When it is over 100 degrees in Tennessee, well, that is just ridiculous. It is too hot to do most of the projects I had planned and it is, yes, too hot to blog. Who can think of witty things to write when you brain is sweating? Not I, and I can normally do some pretty amazing things. But that is for another post.
This time around I want to talk about language. It’s a funny thing. I love to listen to people speak other languages. They are so diverse and distinct. Some sound beautiful and poetic even when they are saying the most horrible things. And others sound horrible even when they are saying beautiful and poetic things. I am very fascinated with dead languages, things that have not been spoken in centuries. They are some of the most bizarre sounds I’ve ever heard come out of a person. But, I wonder how close a so called expert’s reproduction of those languages really is to the actual thing? If one of these people went back in time and tried to talk to someone, would they be understood or would they end up on the wrong end of an Aztec sacrificial knife? That is the things about the long past, you have no way of knowing if you are right.
I digress, the main point I want to bring up today is a trait of the English language, it may be a trait of others but I don’t speak any others so I don’t know. If you do, feel free to speak up. This trait is the way some words can mean two or three completely different things. There are many of these sorts of words but today I want to look at one of them: Manifest.
Why, Manifest? Well, it is a very interesting word. First, it is fun to say. Try it out a few times. Manifest. Manifest. See. And second, there are the two meanings. Webster’s says manifest means: readily perceived by the eye or the understanding; evident; obvious; apparent; plain. But it also is a noun meaning: a list of the cargo or passengers carried by a ship. Now I know there are words that have definitions that are more opposed to each other but manifest illustrates my point nicely. What I like most of about manifest is its meaning as a verb, because nothing good ever manifests. When a ghost appears it is said to manifest. It is a manifestation. The symptoms of a disease always manifest. The warning signs and other indicators of the onset of some sort of mental illness are said to manifest at certain times. I read that schizophrenia is said to manifest, usually, when one is in their early twenties. You can imagine my relief when I became twenty-six or twenty-seven and had not yet begun to hear voices telling me to do things. Make no mistake; I am quite mad, but not like that. Just a mild case of garden variety nuttiness. It’s part of my charm.
So why a perfectly nice word like manifest should be stricken with this connotation of negativity. It doesn’t deserve it. It is a lovely word yet it is rarely used in a nice way. And don’t even get me started on the whole manifest destiny thing. What a load of crap.
What have we learned here today Dearies? Two things should be perfectly clear to you now. One: sometimes I get really, really bored. And two: I can write 650 words on nearly any subject and trick you lot into wasting 10 minutes reading them. I feel so powerful. Until next time…
