Thursday, July 6

Didn't Happen

These are some of this things that didn't happen today. I was inspired by the endearing autisitic teen that is the narrator of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time"

I didn't eat toast for breakfast (although I thought about it). Nor did I eat a banana. There weren't any stray cats in the room while I ate and I didn't trip while walking down the stairs to brush my teeth. I didn't steal my neighbour's corvette and drive to work in it. I didn't call in sick (although, again, i really really thought about it).

At work I didn't design a building, or tame a wild (honeymoon) stallion, or train for a marathon, or play risk or order in chinese.

It just always boggles my mind to think about all the things that didn't occur. Especially since maybe, when I was 7, if I hadn't dropped my Beauty and the Beast thermos and broke it making me late for school...who knows, maybe I would have done one of those things. Ok, well probably not, but the whole "butterfly flaps its wings" thing, weird.

Another thing I've been thinking about. I have been reading quite a bit about the English language. Right now its "Language Visible", a history of every letter of the alphabet. Fairly entertaining. But the more I read, the more I realize: The alphabet is not that suited to English. Our vowels take on so many sounds its often by memorization than phonetics that we learn to spell any of them.

We should have something like 45 letters instead of 26 for all of the sounds in English. We are more like Chinese in some ways since, with many words, its the shape or the word itself that signals its sound or meaning. Por ejemplo. In Spanish, every letter has its specific sound, even vowels. They rarely deviate. A word is pronounced just as it is written (or written just as pronounced). But, those poor people trying to learn english, try spelling 'cough' phonetically?

but, I ramble.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think I should learn spanish. I still can't spell english words. If i learned how to speak spanish, i wouldn't be such a bad speller!

Anonymous said...

I agree with the phonetic spelling... and w/dyslexia it is even more difficult! Take the word dyslexia, why isn't it spelt dislexia?

And KV, have you been watching the Butterfly Effect?