100 Things: #1 -- Words!

[gnomi]

I am something of a word nerd. That was a giant understatement right there. I cannot remember a time I didn't love words, playing with words, learning about words. I do know that when I was in my early teens I spent an afternoon in the Boston Public Library poking through books about words.

My love of word play is definitely traceable back to my childhood. My father is an inveterate punster, and he raised beckyfeld and me to look at words as things that can be played with. I eventually parlayed that into a focus on Linguistics and subsequently into careers as an editor and as a technical writer.

I often say that my Linguistics background gives me license to create new words (neologisms). I have a number that I use regularly:

-- Snackquistion (the acquisition of snacks)
-- Procrastiknitting (knitting instead of doing something else I should be doing)
-- Splorp (home made whipped cream)

Now I am watching Muffin and Squeaker learn about language. I'm fascinated by the stages they are going through while acquiring language. They clearly have studied Jean Berko Gleason's research on children's understanding of morphology, as they have an innate sense of how to pluralize words they have never heard before. They are also learning the pitfalls of irregular verbs in English as I correct their "goed" to "went" and "childs" to "children." (Of course, I am also warping them by referring to them as one girlificus and two girlifici.)

(This is most likely just the first of many 100 Things posts that will be somehow about language, words, and the like. Just warning you all.)

Comments

[marafish.livejournal.com]

I have taken to using procrastiknitting with love. Shabbat Shalom!

[china_shop]

This is most likely just the first of many 100 Things posts that will be somehow about language, words, and the like.

To which I say an emphatic "Yay!"

[tsuki-no-bara.livejournal.com]

you also introduced me to "procrastisurfing"!

[fynixsoul.livejournal.com]

I like snackquisition. Seems as satisfying as snacktivity, but with potentially less work involved.