An enjoyable aspect of writing a column is talking to and learning from people. Often, as I once did with the term \u00e2\u20ac\u0153church key,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I ask people younger than I (and that includes the masses) what certain words mean to them.<\/p>\n
Usually, they can divine the meaning but seldom can explain why. For example, my three grandchildren, ages 7 through 14, know the expression to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sound like a broken record,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but they aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t able to explain that a broken record skips, and the needle (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153whatever that is, grandpa\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) gets stuck in the groove (whatever groove is) and keeps repeating.<\/p>\n
Those of us alive in the pre-CD and I-Pod generation probably still use the term. When the husband accuses the wife of sounding like a broken record, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because of her incessancy in reminding him to take out the trash. But when the wife applies the expression to her mate, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because he is emphasizing a point, not being repetitious at all.<\/p>\n
Phonograph records in those days were brittle. My dad once brought home a four-record album of The Nutcracker Suite. He shopped at the Music Album, downtown. The album weighed as much as a small horse and provided about 20 minutes of music.<\/p>\n
Before my birth, I have been told, when phonograph records ran at 78 rpm and contained grooves that accommodated a needle as thick as a garden hose, my mom flirted with pre-natal symphonic practices.<\/p>\n
She had read that playing classical music while carrying a baby (inside, not in her arms) likely would nurture an appreciation of fine music in the fetus.<\/p>\n
But as Mom was several months along, she took a tumble while carrying a Mozart album and me, cracking all the records. However, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe that mishap affected me \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 affected me \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 affected me.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
Recent columns have yielded some interesting aspects of language. Here are some:<\/p>\n
Karyl Lyne, a prolific e-mail forwarder, spends much time receiving and passing on announcements of public interest. One of them, submitted to her, contained an announcement of a political precinct meeting.<\/p>\n
Alas, spell-checkers on computers sometimes let us down. The person sending the announcement to Karyl came up with a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153prescient meeting.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Now that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something entirely different. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Prescient\u00e2\u20ac\u009d involves knowledge of things about to happen. But don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t these precinct meetings usually lack surprises anyway? Aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the names of the finalists generally a foregone conclusion? Maybe prescient is the correct term after all.<\/p>\n
Nick Flores, formerly of Las Vegas and now living in Dallas, commented on my reference to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ponte truchas,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d an expression we use to mean \u00e2\u20ac\u0153watch out.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Nick, a 1975 graduate of Highlands University, has spent time in Puerto Rico and South America. What does the trout expression mean to anyone not from northern New Mexico? Nick says he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s passed the term on to his grandchildren, along with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sapo,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d an unexpected, lucky occurrence, such as sinking a three-pointer or having the Dallas Cowboys complete a pass.<\/p>\n
And Jessie Farrington, a former dean at Highlands, says she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d not been familiar with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153truchas.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Farrington, now living in Indiana, said around the time she read the truchas piece she received a phone call from an acquaintance in Lubbock.<\/p>\n
She wrote, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I asked him if he knew the expression \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcponte truchas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and he immediately laughed and said \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcLook out.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 He went on to say that when he was a student at Highlands they usually shortened it to just \u00e2\u20ac\u0153truchas.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Ben Moffett, a frequent contributor to the Work of Art blog, wrote, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My Spanish-speaking buddy in junior high taught me \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctruchas\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 as a stand-alone word for \u00e2\u20ac\u02dccareful\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 but in the sense of a soft threat, as in \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwatch it,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 maybe on the basketball court as the result of a hard foul. This was in the 1950s, Albuquerque South Valley.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Another word he remembers from that era was caramada (for buddy) \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I wondered why it wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t \u00e2\u20ac\u02dccamarada.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard \u00e2\u20ac\u0153camarada\u00e2\u20ac\u009d many times. But did anyone ever flip the key letters? Sorry, but \u00e2\u20ac\u0153caramada\u00e2\u20ac\u009d just doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t cut it. Maybe the caramadas\/camaradas in the South Valley simply talk funny.<\/p>\n
Regarding a column on Grand Avenue in the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc50s, my sort-of neighbor Grover Durham questioned my use of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153yew-ee\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (pronounced you we) to mean a U-turn. He says that to newcomers to this community, the process really should be a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Las Vegas left-left turn.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s merit to that. But it also makes one wonder whether people in the south call it a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all turn.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Using that logic, we might inquire whether a member of the ovine species makes a ewe-turn or whether a British carpenter\/lathe-man makes a yew turn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An enjoyable aspect of writing a column is talking to and learning from people. Often, as I once did with the term \u00e2\u20ac\u0153church key,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I ask people younger than I (and that includes the masses) what certain words mean to them. Usually, they can divine the meaning but seldom can explain why. For example, my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=578"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":584,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578\/revisions\/584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}