Word Power
My children and I have been studying the history of our English language. The many regional variations of speech in America alone is an amazing thing to study. In doing so, I found myself comparing these different dialects to the elusive “voice” we writers attempt to describe or try to pinpoint.
Isn’t it funny, for instance, how we can recognize everyone else’s accents, but not our own? (Kaye Dacus agrees by the way and is blogging a great series on writer “voice” if anyone is interested!)
I’ve been enjoying Bill Bryson’s The Mother Tongue, English & How It Got That Way. He brings up the most famous study of American dialects, the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) in which are collected:
“…local or regional names for practically everything, from household utensils to feelings of affection to slang words for passing gas. They found more than a 100,000 variations in terminology and pronunciation throughout the country, including 79 names for dragonfly, 130 names for oak trees, and 176 names for dust balls under the bed.”
What a wealth of language at our disposal. Our English language is around 600,000 words, depending on who you talk to, and made up of words with many different origins. We’re blessed to avoid the handicaps of masculine and feminine nouns– anyone else recalling Spanish or French class nightmares? (La or Le? El or La?) Many words can be used both as nouns and as verbs, we have active and passive freedom in our sentence structure…and opportunities to create new words and catch-phrases.
Consider all that Shakespeare himself coined according to Bryson,
Shakespeare used 17,677 words in his writings, of which at least one-tenth had never been used before. Imagine if every tenth word you wrote were original.
Here are a few mentioned: barefaced, critical, leapfrog, monumental, castigate, majestic, obscene, frugal, radiance, dwindle, countless, submerged, excellent, fretful, gust, hint, hurry, lonely, summit, pedant and some 1,685 others.
Pretty amazing.
But the most universal and powerful Word of all would be Jesus, who is called “Word” in John 1:1. No language, no book, no one on this earth will ever compare or impact lives as Jesus does. His dialect reaches to the uttermost.
And we’re His tools. Now that’s word power.
