Word Power--The Other Side Of The Coin

An epiphany came during our recent vocabulary
building. I noticed that Tim had no trouble with
many short Anglo-Saxon words used to explain the
key words that we were trying to master. Then I
realized, as an immigrant through pursuing higher
education, the words I worked hard to acquire were
for passing exams and mostly made out of Greek or
Latin roots which books such as "Word Power Made
Easy" do a good job explaining.

But it is not the street-English people use! They
prefer short Germanic words and idiomatic phrases
to the Greco-Roman. It makes sense when one
considers the history of English, or rather that
of the English-speaking people. In fact, I detect
a trace of grudge toward big words in day-to-day
interaction with people, i.e., colleagues, school
teachers, grocery tellers, baristas, etc. They
grimace invisibly at my multi-syllable pomposity,
which I by no means want to put on, and often
rephrase my statements with simpler words.

It's very frustrating to have mastered Mr. Yu's
"GRE Vocabulary" and scored high in exams only to
fail to communicate freely with the English-
speaking mass. (It didn't help that we used to
remember the words' meanings in Chinese.) Superior
vocabulary does not give me the least ease in
tackling the simplest verbal exchanges with real
people around.

I was aware of the problem, to some degree. A long
time ago, I read George Orwell's lamentation
against coining new words from Greek and Latin
roots (Politics and the English Language). And
Winston Churchill said "Broadly speaking, short
words are the best, and the old words best of
all." I was busy passing exams and just didn't pay
much attention.

It's not fair to blame myself. I couldn't afford
the time even if I wanted to dig deeper in the
vernacular. But that's how it has been. These days,
I'm often amazed at the things Tim say, e.g.,
"That hit the spot for me, Dad" in a dramatic
voice after a nice tuna pasta dinner. So, 30 years
since I started learning English and 15 years
living in the West, things started to change.

[7grizzly]

回复 '暖冬cool夏' 的评论 : Wonderful! Tim's very much into reading, especially after I take away his iPad ;-) He reads much faster than I do, though, and starts to recommend a growing book list for me. I struggle to keep up but hope he absorbs what he reads. Thanks again.

[暖冬cool夏]

SAT vocabulary test before the change (SAT changed back to 1600 a couple of years ago. I don't know the current one) tested a lot of hard words, in which cases the study of the words like word stem, prefix, etc. really helps. It makes the understanding and memorization or even the guessing of words easier. Schools here don't teach such kind of stuffs (they teach more literature, American or English). So your knowledge of vocabulary will definitely helps Tim later on, or even now you can penetrate into him little by little. But the key is still reading. Fostering a good habit of reading will eventually help him A LOT. Unlike maths, kids could hardly improve their reading score within months of practice. It can only be built up through years of enormous readings. You can guide him now through selecting good books or magazines for him to read, and you will see the effort being paid off in years to come. Happy reading!

[7grizzly]

Thank you, 暖冬, for sharing your experience! It looks like as a parent I'm following your footsteps. Maybe you can warn me about what's to come ;-) "Have your back" is a good one and hearing it from you makes it memorable.

And it's interesting how the mind and body connects, isn't? I heard from Tim Ferriss something like "if you find yourself struggle mentally, do something physical." It works for me.

To address "the other side of the coin" problem, I think trying to remember words' meanings in English should help and that's another idea from the past month of vocabulary building.

Thank you again for a meaningful conversation!

[暖冬cool夏]

I am GLAD that you realized／mentioned the other side of coin. As I said once, you think. When my daughter was studying SAT vocabulary, she had two boxes of index cards to memorize. I tried to jump in too, only to find that in the end I forgot 90% (if not more) of what I tried to memorize. As you said in the post, we cannot afford the time and we don't have the luxury of spending too much time on something that we cannot retain much or of less use in our daily life. Simillar to what Tim enlightened you, my daughter once wrote me a sentence, saying that " I will always have your back like you always had mine" , an expression that I probably say "I am always on your side, or I am always here". Good we both realize the beauty of being simple and idiomatic.
An expression I recently learnt to share with you: The mind suffers, the body cries out. Very simple.