Latin roots

   Latin--as in ancient Rome's language--is still the root of many English words, including the names of some of our months--
"September" means the 7th month
"October" means the 8th month
"November" means the 9th month
"December" means the 10th month

If that seems wrong, it is, and it isn't. Pay attention.
That is really what those words mean. But the Romans stuck 2 months in front of them (July and August--named after Roman Caesars), without changing the names of the numbered months. So now the 7th month is actually the 9th month, the 8th is the 10th, the 9th is the 11th, and the 10th is the 12th.  Trick or treat!

reinsurance, renewing insurance

     When your insurance policy expires, and you contact the insurance agent to pay for another year, you have renewed your insurance policy. The new policy is a renewal of the old one.
     Reinsurance means something completely different. You may have encountered this term if you have read all of the "fine print" on the back of your insurance policy. Reinsurance is what an insurance company does when it farms out some of its insurance. Another insurance company--a reinsurance company--is actually assuming the risk, or some of the risk, of insuring you. The relationship of the initial insurance company and the reinsurer is strictly financial--you will still deal only with the insurance company whose name is on your policy.

twenty-five cent words

     The expression "a twenty-five cent word" means a very long word. It's not simply a description, but a bit of bygone reality.  Very long words cost twenty-five cents to send, in the days of telegrams. Other words could be sent at the rate of ten cents per word. If someone tried to save money by substituting one very long word for three or four short ones, the telegraph company charged extra--twenty-five cents per extra-long word.  I don't know exactly how long a word had to be to cost twenty-five cents to send.
     In some ways telegraph messages were a lot like modern "texting". Any word not strictly necessary was left out--because the sender was paying by the word, not because typing was hard on a tiny keyboard. This is still called "telegraphic speech"--using only the few words necessary to get a message across.

bad, badly

To smell bad means to stink.
To small badly means to mistake garbage for roses--or roses for garbage.

Bad is an adjective--it modifies a noun (thing or idea).
Badly is an adverb--it modifies a verb (an action of some kind, even a mental action, like thinking ).

To feel bad means to be sick or to hurt. Saying it this way means the person is what feels the bad feeling.
To feel badly means to grab a cactus when you meant to grope for a towel. Ouch. Here you have a person doing a bad job of feeling.

dead letters, dead languages, a morgue for articles

     A dead letter is a letter or some other piece of mail that the post office has been unable to deliver. It may be missing an address, and have no return address. The address may be illegible ( impossible to read ). This mail sits in what the post office calls the "dead letter office". The post office keeps it there for a while before discarding it. So put your return address on any mail you send. If the post office can't deliver a piece of mail, and it has a return address, they bring it back to the person who sent it.
     A "dead language" is a language that no one speaks. Like Latin or ancient Egyptian, it exists only in old books and museums. There are a few people who can read some of these languages. They became interested enough to study them, and can read the old books or tablets written in "dead languages". No one really knows what these languages sounded like, because no one alive can speak them.
     A newspaper "morgue" is a file room where a newspaper keeps copies of articles it has published in the past. If you wrote to the newspaper and told them what you were looking for, they would find it and send you a copy. Sometimes they charged for copying and mailing, but that's all. Now some newspaper archives are available online, and the custom of newspaper "morgues" is dying.

acronyms

An acronym is a word made of the first letter of each word in a phrase--a longer name or title, for instance. "MADD" stands for "Mothers Against Drunk Drivers", for example. When the initials (the first, or "initial" letters ) of the phrase make a word, or something that can be pronounced as a word, that is an acronym. When the initials do not make a word that we recognize, we usually just say each letter, as in "USA".

"AIDS" is an acronym for "acquired immune deficiency syndrome."

"PTSD" doesn't spell a word, or what can be pronounced as a word, so we just say each letter--P--T--S--D--when we see it written down. It stands for "post-traumatic stress disorder".

"PIN" is an acronym for "personal identification  number". It is read just like the word, "pin".

"ATM" stands for "automatic teller machine", but we have to say each letter---A--T--M.

anthropomorphism and personification

     Anthropomorphism and personification are two very long words some people (you know who you are) love to bandy about, sometimes in the wrong way.
     For the record--anthropomorphism is all the talking animals you have ever seen in a cartoon, or in a children's book--or anyplace else. Making animals talk as if they were people, or dressing them in clothes and having them go to school, drive a car, or perform a human job of some kind--all of this is anthropomorphism--to make them into people.
     Personification means to make an idea, particularly an abstract (can't touch it, or put a "shape" on it) concept, into a person. One example of personification is the Statue of Liberty.  Another is the image of justice as a blindfolded woman with a balance scale and a sword. That is what we think justice would look like if it were a person. The concept of personification also applies to a depiction of the same kind of abstract concept in words--as in a poem or myth.

America's colonial era and the natives

      America's colonial era began when the pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock--we commemorate their survival every Thanksgiving.  The colonial era continued until America became a nation in 1776. After 1776, America's history is the history of the republic. Many settlers came to America during its colonial era, not only from England, but from other parts of Europe. Some made friends with the natives they found here in America ( called American Indians or Native Americans )--the story of one such friendship is part of the Thanksgiving story.  The colonists also fought with some of the natives they found here, but the wars they fought were local and limited in extent. The great campaigns of removal and extermination came later, when America was an independent nation.
     America never ruled over a body of natives. The Americans made treaties with the Indians, and until the 19th century Americans and Indians lived very separate lives. As long as there was still territory to which the Indians could remove or be removed, that was how any conflicts were settled. The Indians were, and for some purposes still are, considered independent nations. Their relationship with the federal (national) government was by treaty. Indians were not counted in the census, and did not become citizens of the United States until 1925. Some of the treaties signed by our government are still in effect, and the Indian tribes still have title to the lands described in them.
    The settlement of the American West ( from the middle of the 19th century, or 1800's ) left very little territory for the Indians, and a campaign of extermination or confinement to reservations began. Its motto, to many, was "the only good Indian is a dead Indian". Indians confined to a reservation became dependent on the government for food and supplies, which were often insufficient. They would leave the reservation to hunt, and would be hunted themselves unless they returned. Forcible confinement to a reservation continued into the 1970's. An Indian who left the reservation could be hunted as a felon by law enforcement officials.
     American history books do not use the term "genocide" to refer to the campaign to exterminate the Indians, but other history books sometimes do, and with reason. There are very few Indians left alive today, and most of their cultures and languages are extinct.

judge of elections

     A judge of elections is the person who asks your name when you go to the polls to vote, and then checks for your name in the list of registered voters for that particular polling place. Elections can be very local--in cities and towns we have many voting districts, each of which may have different candidates running in elections for city council or other local offices. It is not just important to vote in your own district, and at your own polling place, it is required by law. You will not be permitted to vote anywhere else. The judge of elections will only have a list of voters for the polling place in which he or she is working. If it isn't your polling place, your name will not be on the list.
     Each polling place has at least two judges of elections--one from each party, to make sure that one party is not taking advantage of its position by turning away voters from the other party. If a judge of elections from each party is not present, they might have to close the polls at that particular voting site. These people are volunteers, so remember that next election day. And find out where your polling place is, if you don't already know.

squirrels

   You can read that some people consider animals to be more intelligent than human beings.  Some claim that cats are superior, intellectually, to people. Some say it's dogs, or even pigs. I vote for squirrels, based on scientific (empirical ) evidence. How many cats have ever outwitted a human? Oh, sure, they refuse to do human bidding, but that's not the same thing. It's just part of feline political philosophy, or something like it. Cats live in our homes. If they were smarter than we are, they would run the world by now.
      Squirrels, on the other hand, have outwitted many humans--particularly those who go to great trouble and expense to keep them out of bird feeders. They always get the birdseed, no matter what kind of squirrel baffles the bird-feeding person installs. If you watch them, it's as if they were playing a game, and mocking petty human efforts to thwart their desire for birdseed. Some people with bird feeders decide at the start that the bird feeder is a combination bird and squirrel feeder, saving themselves the humiliation of being outwitted by a squirrel, and publicly. Search "squirrel obstacle course" if you would like to see this in action.

transliteration

     If you are reading this now, you are familiar with the alphabet I am using to type it. It is still called the Phoenician alphabet in textbooks. There are other alphabets--Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic (used in Russia and parts of Eastern Europe) , Sanskrit, Arabic, and more. An alphabet uses characters that stand for sounds--it is phonetic--based on sounds, or "phonics". Each of the different alphabets stands for the set of sounds making up the languages using that alphabet. Different languages may have sounds that are not used in other languages. The sounds are part of what a person learning to speak a foreign language has to practice. You may have noticed that the "th" sound is a difficult one for foreign speakers of English. It is uncommon, and to some foreigners it sounds rude--like hissing at someone, or giving the raspberry or "Bronx cheer".
     Learning to read or write a foreign language is difficult and time-consuming. Learning to read or write a language that uses a different alphabet is even more difficult. A student needs to begin with ABC--literally. To translate these languages, speaking, is like translating any other language--the translator needs to speak both languages well. When the translation is written down, it is done using the characters in our alphabet. This is called a transliteration. Someone takes the sounds of the foreign language, and renders them into a usable form using our own alphabet and its sounds. This is why you may have noticed different spellings for Russian names, for example. A new, and presumably better, style of transliteration meant a new way to spell Russian words in English--one that would be closer to correct when an English-speaking person tried to pronounce the Russian words.
     We have to do something like this to translate Chinese and other Oriental languages. The Chinese system of writing does not use an alphabet at all. The characters stand for ideas, concepts, and things, not for sounds. This makes translation even more difficult. A system of rendering the Chinese sounds in English characters is called "pinyin". Pinyin may also make it possible for Chinese-speakers to use a computer keyboard, which would be difficult using the Chinese written language--it has thousands of different characters. This is how "Peking" became "Beijing"--it helps us to name the city so that a Chinese person would understand what we are saying. The older form isn't "wrong", and it doesn't need to be corrected in old works in print--but it helps to be aware of the changes, and why they were made.

oh, zero

One short bit of cyber-advice--don't forget that the letter "O" is not zero--"0" when trying to read "captchas" or the passwords offered by some sites. Since printing can be different, it may not be possible to tell whether "O" or "0" is intended--you may have to try them both.

beware of these

Acme and smack me were playing on the roof. Acme fell off. Who was left?














correct. thwack.

suspension of disbelief

      When we read a book or watch a movie, we may enter into a world created by the author or filmmaker. While we are in this world, we believe that it is real--that the characters are real beings with real problems. In literary terms, this is "the suspension of disbelief". We may suspend our disbelief that people can do magic, for instance, and be entertained by a tale of magicians. When we do not believe that the characters are real, the book or movie seems boring. We may leave the movie or fail to finish the book.
     An author or filmmaker may tell a story set in the real world--but if the characters do not seem real, the story is unrealistic to us. The things the characters say, the feelings they express,  the way they interact with one another or respond to problems, all serve to make them real and convincing--or flat, unconvincing and boring. Political dramas in which the characters take themselves too seriously are often unconvincing--both the plot, which has the character being the only person alive who can save the world (even most comic books don't go this far), and the characterization, which has an actor trying to portray the only person who can save the world.
     The Wizard of Oz is a good example of suspension of disbelief. For the purposes of the film, most people (including me) believe that scarecrows can talk, that there really are wicked witches, and that there is a land somewhere over the rainbow, populated by munchkins. We not only believe that these characters and their problems are real, we care about them and hope that Dorothy gets back to Kansas, and that the wicked witch gets her just deserts.

what to do about trillions

     When they write about trillions in the newspaper, it all looks like a lot of zeros. It doesn't really have a meaning to the average person--not even if the average person is certified to teach social studies, as this one is. What I like to do when I read about trillions is to figure out how much money that would mean for every man, woman, and child in America. I round off the population of the United States to 250,000,000 (two hundred and fifty million ), which is a quarter of a billion. That makes four (4) dollars for every man, woman, and child in  America every time someone says "a billion". It makes four thousand (4,000) dollars every time someone says "a trillion".

more numbers, and how to say them

Some numbers, and how to say them--

1--one
10--ten
100-a hundred or one hundred
1,000--a thousand or one thousand
10,000--ten thousand
100,000--a hundred thousand, or one hundred thousand
1,000,000--a million or one million
10,000,000--ten million
100,000,000--a hundred million, or one hundred million
1,000,000,000--a billion or one billion
1,000,000,000,000--a trillion

Fractions--
1/2--one half
1/4--one quarter
1/3 --one third
1/8--one eighth
1/10--one tenth
.10--one tenth or ten percent
.50--fifty hundredths or fifty percent
.01--one hundredth or one percent

Percent--
100%--one hundred percent
50%--fifty percent
10%--ten percent

Ordinal--counting by rank--
1st--first
2nd--second
3rd--third
4th--fourth
5th--fifth
6th--sixth
7th--seventh
8th--eighth
9th--ninth
10th--tenth

how to conjugate a verb

How to conjugate a verb--sorry, this doesn't have anything to do with sex--

I--first person (speaking of oneself) , singular                                        we--first person, plural
you--second person (speaking to someone), singular                             you--second person, plural
he, she, it, one--third person (speaking about someone), singular           they--third person, plural

"to be"--present tense          "to be"--past tense               "to be"--future tense
I am          we are                 I was         we were              I will be        we will be
you are      you are               you were   you were             you will be     you will be
he is          they are               he was       they were            he will be      they will be


"to be"--present  perfect tense            "to be"--past perfect tense          "to be"--future perfect tense
I have been       we have been            I had been   we had been          I will have been       we will have been
you have been   you have been          you had been  you had been      you will have been    you will have been
he has been       they have been          he had been  they had been       he will have been     they will have been

The perfect tenses indicate actions or states of being already finished or "perfected" at the time shown by the auxiliary or "helper" verb--what has already been done in the present; what had already been done at some point in the past; or what will have been done by some time in the future.

"to be"--subjunctive                               gerund--being
if I were         if we were                        infinitive--to be
if you were     if you were                       present participle--being
if he was        if they were                       past participle--been


Conjugating a verb means writing out all of its forms and uses. There are more, but you get the idea. if you have formally studied a foreign language, you have probably encountered this, but it is rarely taught in English classes now.  You is used twice because it represents both the singular (one person) "you" and the plural (more than one person) "you". He, she, it, and "one" used as a pronoun all take the same verb forms.

what we owe to seaweed

     When Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, in fourteen hundred and ninety-two, his men were ready to mutiny. They had been a long time at sea, and were beginning to think they would never find land again. The men wanted Columbus to turn around and go back to Spain. They didn't find land immediately, but they soon sighted the Sargasso Sea. The Sargasso Sea is a big pile of seaweed floating in the ocean. It looked a little bit like land to Columbus and his men, so the men put off plans to mutiny. They found real land in a few more days--landing in what is now the Bahamas, and discovering the "New World".  If Columbus and his men hadn't encountered the Sargasso Sea--the pile of floating seaweed--they might have turned back. And where would we be now? I suppose someone else would have found the Americas eventually, but we wouldn't have a Columbus Day Parade.

alphabet soup

     During the Great Depression of the 1930's, many people were out of work and had no money. It was very hard to get a job, because so many businesses failed. The federal government, led by the president at the time, Franklin D. Roosevelt (the "FDR" you can see on the dime) started a lot of different programs to help people. Many of these programs were known by their initials--the first letter of each word. The WPA, the NRA, the CCC, the SSA (Social Security Administration--still in existence) were some of these. The set of government programs was called "alphabet soup"  in the press, and the name stuck. Many people thought that Roosevelt was wrong, and that he should leave the economy alone. They were sure that he was only making things worse through government intervention. One of the more accessible books to read, if you're interested, is Studs Terkel's Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. Terkel interviewed a lot of people about their experiences during the Depression, and collected the interviews in a book.

glasses

     People wear different types of glasses, depending on what is wrong with their eyes. Some people find that anything within arm's length of their faces becomes blurry. These people may need glasses only when reading or doing close work. These people are "far-sighted". The glasses they wear are commonly called "reading glasses", although they won't help you read--they can only help you see, and only if you need them. If your eyes are fine, and you put on someone else's glasses, things may look blurry to you. Most people get their glasses from an eye doctor or an optometrist. They are made just for the problem they have with their eyes--that is why they are called "prescription glasses". They are quite expensive, will not do anyone else any good, and people become upset when they lose or misplace them. They may need them to do their jobs, or to get to their jobs.
     Some people have trouble seeing things in the distance. These people are "near-sighted". They may need glasses only to drive, so a lot of people refer to these glasses as "driving glasses". There are still other people who need their glasses all the time--no matter what they are doing. Some of these people wear contact lenses--they put small lenses right on their eyeballs. The people who wear contact lenses have glasses, too. They wear them when they don't feel like putting in their contacts, or when their eyes are irritated.
     Glasses are made of plastic now, but we still call them glasses. Plastic is much safer and more comfortable than glass. Glass was heavy--the glasses didn't stay on as easily. Glass might break, so children with glasses weren't allowed to run around and play the way other children did. Modern plastic glasses can be scratched easily (making it difficult to see out of them), but otherwise they are a great improvement on glass.

the underground railroad

     The "underground railroad" does not mean the subway, although it seems a logical error. The underground railroad refers to the chain of "safe" houses that once made a "network" through which slaves from the American South could escape to the North--where they would be free. There are still a few old houses that have hidden cubbyholes--like closets--where a runaway slave might have been hidden, in case anyone had followed him or her. The federal law required people to return runaway slaves, but this law was impossible to enforce in the North. People had to be careful anyway, and would hide the runaway slave if strangers approached.