Happy Mother's Day!!!

In light of that well earned holiday, Mother's Day, I offer a link to a very informative article on the subject. It's rather interesting, actually. I would sum up what's in it, but you might as well just click the link and find out yourself.
I love this poem, and I thought that it would be good to post on Mother's Day.

The Boy Who Kissed His Mother

           By Eben E. Rexford

She sat on the porch in the sunshine,

as I went down the street-

A woman whose hair was silver,

But whose face was blossom sweet,

Making me think of a garden,

Where, in spite of the frost and snow

Of bleak November weather,

Late, fragrant lilies grow.

I heard a foot step behind me,

And the sound of a merry laugh,

And I knew the heart it came from

Would be like a comforting staff

In the tie and the hour of trouble,

Hopeful and brave and strong;

One of the hearts to lean on

When we think that things go wrong.

I turned at the click of the gate-latch

And met his manly look;

A face like his gives me pleasure,

Like the page of a pleasant book;

It told of a steadfast purpose,

Of a brave and daring will- 

A face with promise in it

That God grant the years fulfill.

He went up the pathway singing,

I saw the woman's eyes

Grow bright with a wordless welcome,

As sunshine warms the skies.

"Back again, sweetheart mother,"

He cried and bent to kiss

The loving face that was lifted

For what some mothers miss.

That boy will do to depend on, 

I hold that this is true-

From lads in love with their mothers

Our bravest heroes grew.

Earth's grandest hearts have been loving hearts,

Since time and earth began,

And the boy that kissed his mother

Is every inch a man.

It seems that in modern American society, everything is BAD until proven GOOD, not the other way around. This certainly includes the way kids look at their parents. Whenever I meet one of someone's parents, I expect them to be evil or crazy the way the kids talk about them. Not many boys I know would even dream of showing affection towards their mothers. However, it's a rare but wonderful quality; a girl always likes to see a lad in love with  his mother, because its from them our bravest heroes grow. 

Welsh, a Revelation of Beauty

Dwi'n leicio siarad Cymraeg.

The first language I ever tried to learn (aside from English, of course) was German. That was probably sometime around third grade. Of course, not being in a formal class or even having a formal course didn't get me very far. I had an old German book of my Mom's that I tried to decode as best I could. Needless to say, I didn't get very far. My Mom tried to help me of course, but it is often very difficult for an American third grader to grasp not only masculine, feminine and neuter, but also all the odd conjugations and things that make German so hard. The only thing I really retained from my third grade pursuits was der kugelschreiber, the pen. However, I loved it. From that time on, I adored language. Words, to me, were the most wonderful and fascinating thing I'd ever encountered (and even though German is not always thought of as the most beautiful language in the world, I thought it was, and I still have a soft spot for it to this day). After that, there was rarely a period where I wasn't at least dabbling in some tongue or another. Fourth grade was French; fifth, Russian and Italian; sixth, Spanish and Japanese, et cetera, et cetera. Mind you, I don't consider this anything extraordinary - nay, I'm sure many of the people reading this will have had done the same or similar thing, perhaps getting much farther than I. I never really got to speaking level, but I tried. You can only do so much on your own. What I did get though, was a fair knowledge (at least a secondary knowledge) and feel for language itself. Though I couldn't speak a fluent German sentence, I could usually tell if a word was German and perhaps guess at the meaning. And by learning primarily Germanic and Romantic languages, I was able to see the connections between all of them, thus making it easier to learn any one of them. My understanding of English itself was improved, as well.
Then there was 9th grade. It was my first year of high school, and indeed my first year of public school (I had gone to Catholic school all my life). I absolutely detested it. It was horrid, hostile and sterile looking - and the level of work was horrendous! Everyday we had to make some new poster, or mobile, or something like that! In English class, we only read one book the entire year, and that was out loud! Aughh! It was the worst year of my life. Homeward Bound by Simon and Garfunkle became my official theme song. Weekends became the most glorious moments in the entire history of my existence. And the stupidity and false cheerfulness was absolutely stifling.

One day, my Mom, who was pregnant at the time with a girl, began discussing baby names with me. We were going alphabetically through a babyname book. We were on B.

"Hey, how about Bronwyn? (hahaha)"
"Oh, I've always loved that name. (hahaha)"
"Wouldn't it be funny (hahaha) if we named her Bronwyn?"

...
...
...

"Well why the heck not?"
"Well, because it's..."

...

It was Welsh. We weren't Welsh. Most people around here don't even know what "Welsh" is. I knew one person who literally thought it was what whales spoke. My mother's side of the family is Irish/Italian/German, but so far as we knew no one in our family had ever had anything to do with Wales. But still...it was a nice name. It was unique, but not made up or even too weird. My mom and I fought the battle and won, and my youngest sister is now named Bronwyn.

But Welsh, really? Being name people, we had to research the etymology of the name and everything that had anything to do with it. It means "white breast" spelled Bronwyn, but "white raven" spelled Branwen, which was actually my preferred spelling, but which was deemed too masculine (which is funny, since this is actually the more feminine form in Welsh) and confusing. For obvious reasons, we opted to use the second definition for all practical purposes. Many strange things came about regarding that name, all of which will be discussed at some later date. But there was one thing that happened which I shall expound upon you.
We began to get into Welsh the language. It was incredible. It was something I had never seen the likes of before. It was graceful, mysterious, enchanting and challenging. I no could longer simply guess with 80% accuracy what a word meant. It was not related to anything I had ever studied. As the good professor J.R.R. Tolkien said, it "pierced my linguistic heart" and had "an abiding linguistic-aesthetic satisfaction." And thus my long affair with the language of the gods began.

I first began to use the BBC "Big Welsh Challenge" program online, which, though helpful, is only a conversation course. I really wanted to learn the whole thing, grammar and all. I was now more serious about this language than I had ever been about any before (except perhaps Esperanto). I searched and searched, and finally found a very good site. I didn't think I could buy a course (though I do have a book and CD now), so I had to find a free online one. What I found was this wonderful website. Say Something in Welsh is an amazing place. It is completely free and offers 25 beginner lessons at 30 minutes each. Since Welsh is so strange grammatically, it's pretty difficult to learn the traditional way (textbooks). This method (a bit like the Pimsleur method I think, which is kind of silly for something easy and regular like Spanish, but quite appropriate for Welsh) relies solely on listening and speaking. In fact, they tell yon that you are not allowed to see how the words are spelled. This allows you to quite literally learn like a baby. It is rather easy and by the third lesson you start to feel like learning Welsh, once very intimidating, is a very doable thing. I highly recommend it.

If one is perhaps interested in learning Welsh, another thing I would highly recommend is listening to and learning Welsh songs. Bronwyn (2) already knows all the words to Calon Lân, her favorite Welsh song. In fact, she frequently requests "Tewys Matoos!", whom the rest of the world knows as Cerys Matthews, a Welsh singer. Her second favorite is Arglwydd Dyma Fi, and third, Bachgen Bach o Dincar. She is an odd child.
                                                        

LEARN WELSH!! It is an endangered language, and it must be kept alive!!!
LEARN WELSH!! Even if you are already learning another language, because, of course,

Dyw un iaith byth yn ddigon!
(One language is never enough!)

Hwyl!

"Get out your skelets or I'll tickle your bases!"

If the above sentence made any sense at all to you, you are either fooling yourself, insane, or a member of my family.

Ah, language, that glorious flowing entity, that delightful, ever-changing dimension of humanity! Why is it that languages are so diverse? What is the reason for over 6,500 different tongues out there, with every conceivable syntax and every phoneme humanly possible? Don't mistake me, I by no means think that this is a new question. Neither am I going to give a fancy, linguistically correct explanation. I simply wish to share an observation that many of you have no doubt observed yourselves.

Whenever a group of people is cut off from the rest of their "tribe" (such as the colonial Americans were somewhat cut off from the British) many curious things regarding their language tend to happen. Like the Americans (upon leaving England), changed their accents and much of their daily terminology, average people (upon leaving the rest of the world) do much the same when they enter the home and family life. Now, I'm not suggesting that the switchover is nearly as drastic as British to American, but surely we can admit that there is some change taking place? Even if it's as simple as using diminutives on objects not often diminutized when speaking to a smallish person, this is still a change worth noting. Especially when this diminutized or otherwise mutated word evolves and becomes part of the family language. When you have one parent seriously telling the other that they need to buy more ba-bas (bottles), something extraordinary has happed. The language has changed. A new, functional, often completely unique word has been born. What's more, these words are often passed down from generation to generation as family heirlooms, occasionally leading to embarrassment when used outside the "tribe". As an American is likely to get blank stares or be laughed at when she tells an uninformed Brit that she made some cookies (not biscuits), so would a man be who tells his boss he was late because he had to buy ba-bas.

The words resulting from diminutization are not even the most interesting. The most fascinating examples of this phenomenon occur when something more complicated (or even simpler) takes place. However, I must admit that even these types are often or usually connected with children. For instance, one day when my aunt was little, she went up to several members of the tribe and asked if they wanted to see her base. At first they thought she maybe meant face....but, no - she meant her base, which in Modern English is known as the armpit. To this day no one knows why she insisted on her armpits being called bases, but they have remained bases to this day. In fact, this was so ingrained in our family culture, that I only learned that they were armpits (what a terribly vile word! I shudder as I say it) to the rest of the English speaking world when I was old enough to have said bases 30,000 times in public(!!!), oblivious no doubt to the odd faces I was receiving. This one word spawned at least one new term, basedrilling, which means, roughly, "To mercilessly tickle an individual's armpits to the extent that it is rather painful and often results in a wrestling match and/or crying".

Of course, not all of these words come from the small people. When my mom was little, my grandfather used to call the clothes that you would put out at night for the next day skelets. My grandfather, being quite clever, (albeit a bit eccentric) drew this word from skeleton, so I'm told. Again, it is regularly used to this day, and, once more, I was left in the dark till just recently (Well, how was I supposed to know!? It's not a concept frequently discussed, you know).

So there you have it. Family-Speak is a language, or at least a dialect. Perhaps in this way one can more easily grasp one aspect of how languages evolved. Who knows what our family would be speaking if we were all isolated for hundreds of years! And who knows how much of any given language came about like this, in which case it would be nearly impossible to discover the etymologies of the words in question? Who knows, indeed.

Examples of our family vocabulary:
Base: Armpit
Skelet: Clothes set out before bed
Ba-ba: Bottle
BeeBoBie: Peanut butter sandwich - warped child-speak
Bomb: Bottom; behind; butt - child-speak (unable to say bottom)
Boom: Feces; poop - In an attempt to avoid vulgarity, my nurse grandmother used B.M. (bowel movement) with her children, which evolved into boom.
Guarantees: A certain type of candy. My grandmother always told my mother that she would "guarantee you won't like them." So my toddler mother always called them "guarantees"
Hairstyles: Ponytail holders, ribbons, et cetera