@mtgreenee Wear your mask to keep COVID from spreading. Trust the Science!
— Charles Ray (@charlieray45) February 25, 2021
This is in response to the sign she put outside her office:
There are two sexes
A Man and a Woman
Trust the Science
or something to that effect.
On Feb. 14, people around the world celebrate Valentine’s Day with flowers, candy, gifts, and professions of love. Few people, though, know the true history behind this holiday that has almost as much universal appeal as Christmas.
You might be amazed to learn that the holiday we know as Valentine’s Day, though thought by many to be in celebration of the death of Saint Valentine in A.D. 270, is actually believed by scholars to be a holiday set in the middle of February by the Christian church in an effort to ‘Christianize’ the pagan celebration of Lupercalla, a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture.
One of the rituals of Lupercalla involved young women placing their names on slips of paper in a large urn. Village bachelors would pick a name and be matched with their chosen woman for a year. Marriages often resulted from these matches. Cupid with his little bow and arrow is based on the Greed god of love, Eros.
Valentine greetings were common during the middle ages, with written ones popular after 1400. In the 1840s, American artist and business woman Esther Howland designed and began selling mass-produced Valentine’s Day cards, popularizing them in the United States.
No one is actually sure who the mysterious St. Valentine was. The Catholic Church recognizes three Saint Valentines, all from different periods, making it possible to celebrate St. Valentine’s Day in February, November, January, or July, depending on your preference. In fact, in some cultures, there is actually two different holidays.
One other juicy tidbit that not many people know is that Valentine’s Day hasn’t always been a holiday about love and affection. In the 1830s and 1840s, it was also a practice to send cards to people one didn’t like, with sentiments that were the opposite of liking. These were called Vinegar Valentines, and some of them were scathing. Something to think about if there’s someone in your life that you’d like to unload on but would prefer not to do it face-to-face. I can just picture it. You send a card to your landlord who has refused to fix the cracks in your apartment’s ceiling that says, ‘Roses are red, violets are blue. Fix my ceiling or no rent for you.’
I remember Valentine’s Day when I was a kid. In my little country school we would all make crude valentines and send them to the person in school that we had a secret crush on. A naturally shy kid, I never signed mine, so my secret crushes remained secret from everyone but me. In the digital age, paper cards are becoming passe. Far too easy to go to one of the Internet e-Card sites, pick one out, and email it to everyone you like. Most of them even let you know when a recipient opens your card; something you don’t have when you put one in the mailbox.
I hope I haven’t spoiled what might most of you readers favorite holiday. Then again, maybe knowing the true origins of this day of days will make it even more special to you. After all, if you celebrate it you’ll be carrying on a tradition that dates back almost to the beginnings of what we know as recorded history – keeping the ancient traditions alive. Now, isn’t that something to warm your heart? – NWI
Pronounce the following word: Ghoti. Back in the 1970s, when I taught English in Korea, I used to start each term by writing this word on a chart and challenging my students to pronounce it. It might surprise you to know that no one, absolutely no one, ever got it right. It’s not, as you might be thinking, ‘Gotty,’ or ‘Goaty.’ The pronunciation I was looking for here was ‘Fish.’
Okay, pick your chins up off the floor, and let me explain. I used this old exercise that I learned many years ago to illustrate to my students just how irregular the English language can be, and to stress upon them the need to be flexible as they approached learning it. Why, you might ask – or how does ghoti spell fish? Permettez-moi to explain.
‘Gh’ is pronounced like the ‘gh’ in enough, or ‘f.’ ‘O’ is pronounced like the ‘o’ in the word women, and ‘ti’ is the ‘ti’ in the word nation, ergo ‘fish.’ Get it? Unlike many languages, the spelling of words in English does not follow a fixed pattern. Each word’s spelling and pronunciation must be learned individually.
I’ve studied several languages other than English, and for a long time I believed – because I’d been told – that languages like Chinese, Japanese and Russian were the world’s most difficult. I should have been suspicious since none of the people telling me this were Chinese, Japanese or Russian.
When I went to Korea in 1973, after my last army tour in Vietnam, I began teaching English at night at one of Korea’s cosmetics companies. Preparing my lesson plans, I had a startling revelation; of all the languages I’d been exposed to, English was the most nonstandard and illogical. Spelling rules have more exceptions than cowards got draft deferments, and pronunciation is so hit or miss you have a 50 percent chance of saying a word wrong.
There is no rhyme or reason for this, other perhaps than the fact that English has so many words borrowed from other languages. English is like a hoarder’s closet; it has some of everything.
We have some of just about everything. From French we get café, and restaurant, from Italian we get macaroni and cappuccino, and we get okra and gumbo from some African dialect. And, that’s just in the food and drink category.
And, you don’t want to get me started on spelling and pronunciation. Take this sentence, for example: I went through enough books, though, I sat against the bough of the tree to read one that I bought at the store. In every one of these words the ‘ough’ letter combination is pronounced differently.
Why do so many English words have a silent ‘e’ at the end—‘have’ being one exception? Why are some words spelled with ‘sion’ and others with ‘tion’ but both are pronounced the same way? Here are some other ‘things that drive you crazy about English. So, a will sew a silk purse from the sow’s ear. So and sew are pronounced the same, but so for sow unless you plan to sow some seeds, in which case it joins so and sew.
Are you totally confused now? Don’t be. Millions of kids learn this darn language and get by just fine. True, in the United States we have a problem with some people who can’t read well, and, as I can attest from running a writing workshop every summer, even more who can’t write their way out of a paper bag, but people manage.
So, I’m not trashing English, but I do want to set the record straight. You’ll get a lot of English speakers who get very defensive when you say that English lacks logic. Hey, it is what it is, so get over it. We have the zaniest language I know of, except maybe languages like Khosa with those tongue clicks which I have never been able to master.
But that’s another subject I’d rather not bother with at the moment. – NWI
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