Hear Jim’s podcast on youtube: https://youtu.be/z1nixFA2zUU

or read his story below:

Life, actually…

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WORDS ARE US

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As a Deep South native who loves being a Deep South native, I spend a lot of time trying my best to hold on to the rich language of this region.

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It’s not easy, some days.

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I resist being influenced by the shaky usage and  frail pronunciations slung at me by media both social and asocial.

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It’s hard to keep it in the road when an airwaves announcer says, “She was feeling LOW-gee one day.” Maybe, just maybe, the speaker meant to say “logy.” Or maybe LOW-gee is on some musical scale. Hard to tell.

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Yet another authoritative-sounding voice tries to ex-TRAPP-puh-late meaning. Probably never heard extrapolate being pronounced aloud. Or, could he be right. Could I be the ignoramus? 

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Stopping at a traffic light, I am momentarily mesmerized when a pundit rails against the TIE-ruh-nee of a political party. Tyrannical is even worse, don’t you think? A tooting horn behind me signals that the signal before me has changed to green.

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“That school may lose its uh-cre-duh-DAY-shun,” according to the news reporter. Accreditation may come once the offending institution learns to pronounce it properly.

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Am I being picky? Well, I don’t pick them, they just come at me.

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For instance, a pompous political entity wants to rule by FEE-at. Sounds ok to me, so long as he doesn’t mean fiat. If he is a hew-muh-TERR-ee-uhn (his word, not mine) he can be forgiven. But only on humanitarian terms.

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I’m not trying to be snooty here, I just prefer words and meanings to be so clear that I won’t waste time trying to close-caption people before I can grasp what they mean.

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Even signs of the times slow me down until I can interpret them.

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BRIDGE MAY ICE WHEN COLD. Do I need to be told this? It’s not likely to ice when hot.

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Why not BRIDGE MAY NOT ICE WHEN HOT.

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or

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BRIDGE MAY MOISTEN WHEN DRIZZLING

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“This thought was para-DOX-uhl to him.” Huh? Does he mean paradoxical, or has another new word emerged today on the neverending internet?

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It’s not just words that jump the tracks. Thoughts can go awry, too.

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“Jazz is America’s art form,” this promo for an upcoming documentary spouts forth in dignified and lofty language. Jazz is America’s art form? Let’s run it by our Native American historians and see what they say about that.

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And don’t forget to “help people conquer their goals.” Does that mean we need to help folks overcome or pillage their goals? Really, “help people conquer their goals?”

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I’d better bring this rant to a close before some attorney begins supp-PEEN-ing me, as one NPR announcer reported. Said lawyer might decide to call me one of those HIGH-nuss criminals. No kidding. That’s what I heard.

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Let’s just hope the Word People like me don’t rise up and commit a “series of violence” or conduct some “ree-TALLY-torry” actions against ill-informed pundits.

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To quote another bespeaker, all this means I feel “LOW-gee” when all this wordflow overstays its welcome.

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As one mouther-offer of words was heard to say, “Why don’t we look for alternative options?”

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As an educator once said, “I’m a educator.”

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And that man should know. I are an educator, too

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© Jim Reed 2022 A.D.

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