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conulyNo, that's a little inaccurate - everything amazes me about language because the ability to speak is inherently amazing. I mean, you have an idea in your head, and you make mouth noises, and some other person hears those mouth noises and now the idea is in THEIR head. And they make mouth noises back at you about your mouth noises! Automatically, without at any point pausing to translate, just as easy as breathing! And sometimes you make squiggles on a surface and other people look at those squiggles and connect them to mouth noises, just like if they heard you talking!
But there's so much more, and something else that amazes me about language is the fact that we're constantly making new conventionalized expressions and idioms and phrases. Every day we expand words from the literal to the figurative. Every day we take sets of words and start using them as units of their own, units that are somehow more than the sum of their parts. Every day it's like people wake up and say "Here's this thing that's been going on forever, and I need a way to talk about it without explaining it all the time" and then find a consensus on how to say that thing.
Obviously we need new words for new inventions like "computers" and "email", but who knew we needed the phrase "ripping the bandaid off" before it was a phrase? How did people even talk about that before they had that easy metaphor?
Every single day, there's a new phrase entering the lexicon, not as a one-off, but as another lexical unit, and people don't even know it's happening as it happens.
Language is freaking amazing.
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But there's so much more, and something else that amazes me about language is the fact that we're constantly making new conventionalized expressions and idioms and phrases. Every day we expand words from the literal to the figurative. Every day we take sets of words and start using them as units of their own, units that are somehow more than the sum of their parts. Every day it's like people wake up and say "Here's this thing that's been going on forever, and I need a way to talk about it without explaining it all the time" and then find a consensus on how to say that thing.
Obviously we need new words for new inventions like "computers" and "email", but who knew we needed the phrase "ripping the bandaid off" before it was a phrase? How did people even talk about that before they had that easy metaphor?
Every single day, there's a new phrase entering the lexicon, not as a one-off, but as another lexical unit, and people don't even know it's happening as it happens.
Language is freaking amazing.
The Devilishly Difficult Locks of Dindigul
This Artist Collects Rocks And Arranges Them Into Mesmerizing Patterns (30 Pics)
Miniature Book Nooks Belong on Every Bookshelf, It’s Just a Matter of Time
Brain melting optical illusion. Click at your own risk.
A Huge Discovery in the World of Viruses
If your cash gets damaged, this Treasury team will make sure it’s not a lost cause
In rough US flu season for kids, vaccine working OK so far
How Hollywood movies saved a gay Russian teenager
The hobby scientist who discovered global warming
5 Years After Indiana's Historic HIV Outbreak, Many Rural Places Remain At Risk
The 19th-Century Nurse Who Was Secretly a Serial Killer
Stress, rumors, even violence: Virus fear goes viral
Her children were dead before she realized she’d stabbed them. Does she belong in prison?
As a kid, America sent him to live in barracks with 18,000 others. Now, decades later, he's getting an apology
'Will they take my kids away?': the immigrants refusing food aid amid Trump crackdown
‘What Part of Illegal Don’t You Understand?’
Convicted criminals are among the special police terrorizing Venezuela
Afghan deal will be hard to assess, fraught with pitfalls
