I Love the English Language, but …

Yes, as a writer, I adore our language, the way it changes, and grows, taking bits from here and there, and using them in sometimes different ways. And the sounds of words, too, when they fill the mouth with the essence of the meaning of a word, accidentally, perhaps, or maybe on purpose.

The word SCRATCH, for instance, compared to the word MAMA. One of those words is painful and nasty, the other word feels like a warm hug from a beloved parent. Do you agree? Of course, knowing the meanings might taint my attitude, but even so, say the words out loud, and you’ll get what I’m saying, I’m sure. Words have power beyond their meaning …

And speaking of meaning, I had the most weirdly interesting use (misuse?) of a word. It’s one I’ve never encountered before, and suspect I may not ever again, unless it were to take off amongst a certain group of writers, Spammers. I was checking the spam on my website/blog, and came across a sentence, and had to share it with my writing friends here. Is it a brave attempt to reshape a word, or is it simply misuse of a word by a person whose first language isn’t English?

This is the sentence, picked out of the spam post, and copied, just before I deleted the spam. “I did however expertise several technical issues using this web site, as I experienced to
reload the website many times previous to I could get it to load properly.”

It’s an awkward sentence for sure, but really, a brave attempt, I suppose to make a person want to use the spammer’s expertise to fix a problem. But they’ve confused two words, using ‘expertise’ when they obviously meant ‘experience’, and then they use ‘experienced’ incorrectly when ‘tried’ would have been a better word for what they meant. And then they made a mish-mash of the final part of the sentence. With ‘previous’ instead of ‘before’ and ‘to’ instead of ‘so’.

I’m not laughing at this person, or trying not to. If I had to write anything in a language other than English, my attempts would be equally as dodgy, I suspect. But if this person had stuck to smaller words, they may have been more successful. Short words, when used correctly, have far more gravitas than longer words used incorrectly.

I’d love to have some comments about this from my writing friends here, lets have some fun with words. Who has a favourite word they’d like to share? I like the word softly, said in a gently voice, with the ‘s’ extended, like a blanket, and the ‘of’ sound, a person snuggling down and the ‘tly’ sound the blanket being tucked in …

Tell me about your favourite word, I’d love to hear about it!