I love words. Sounds silly I know but I really do.
I did my Bachelors degree in English and a major chunk of my 1st and 2nd years was The History of English Language (sounds ugh I know!). We studied etymology and how English is such an unoriginal language 
and is derived from various sources. It was interesting but for the most part it bored me.
Photo by jontangerine
So no that’s not the sort of passion I have for words. I just love words for their sounds, inflections and meanings. I know lots of words. Even if I have never heard of a word before, I’m usually able to understand what it means in the context of the sentence. I’m not boasting, it’s just a quirk about me I like. My friends call me their dictionary. However, even though I know all these words, when I write I tend to always keep it simple. Sometimes I wish I would use more “fancy” words in my writing but such a writing attempt is usually very contrived so my writing suffers.
I like certain phrases too. I like the way they sound. I don’t necessarily like what they mean, but I love the way it sounds when someone says it, or even when I read it in a book.
For example, I love the words “vagabond” and “silhouette” .I love the phrases “willing suspension of disbelief” and “reflected glory”. I can’t think of a word I hate right now but there are plenty of those too, I assure you.
I think more than anything, it’s the sound that makes words attractive to me. That is why I like my mother tongue Bengali but don’t have any particular fascination for Hindi. I like Urdu though because of how poetic it sounds. I don’t like German because of how rough it sounds but I love, looooove French; Spanish doesn’t elicit love or hate.
But English is different. There is no blanket love or hate for the language and that I’m sure is because English grew out of so many other languages. That’s why when it comes to English I love and hate words and phrases.
P.S. If you don’t have a healthy appetite for randomness, opinions and objectivity maybe this blog isn’t for you. I appreciate comments, really, I do; but this blog is about me, my thoughts, my life so I think I’ll write pretty much what I feel like. Thank you very much.
I love the sound of words too. Sometimes i just think and say ‘relax’–well that word actually makes your feel relaxed in the mouth while u say it. Or say clickety click click! LOL. its silly but its there somewhere in the head!
clickety click click. i like!!
Totally get the soundophilia….I love the sound of French and Spanish and am quite indifferent to the celt/gaelic side of things (which means I’m unable to appreciate books that deal with the celtic legend/myth stuff, aka random Nora Roberts shite). I still don’t like the sound of Hindi despite being forced to study it for thirteen years (maybe that’s why), and Bangla always sounds better to me. And I can’t make myself sit through TV shows or anything in Mandarin, but Japanese and Korean are just fine.
I’m a scriptophile too. I find Hindi/Devanagiri script deathly dull to look at, but the Bengali alphabet always looked really pretty to me, which is why it sucks not having a nice handwriting in that language. And I can’t read a thing of them, but I love the Cyrilic and Greek scripts, they’re fascinating stuff.
eh, I babble. Don’t mind me.
N, I know you get this. Where have u been? Might sound strange, but i have been thinking about lately. I’ve even written you a letter. How did you find me again?
I agree with you about Mandarin. I prefer Japanese too.
I like your babble. Thats exactly what I do too.
You left a link on your old blog…which I had a link to. I’m going to be knocking around between places for a while, and as for that letter, have you posted it? I want it ^_^. I covet correspondence.
I had mad amounts of language lessons as a kid/early teen, but don’t seem to have remembered them as anything more than extremely vague. Though they were fun (we took French together, remember?).
Yes. That was my first brush with French. Fell in love then. I have to find that letter and post it to you.
I love the English language and like you even though fancy words can grip me, I prefer to keep my language simple. I can be extremely pedantic though when it comes to the English language…people making mistakes especially grammatical and spelling irks me. So I guess I’m not much of a sound-o-phile but love the language. I read the above comment and I think that Mandarin and Cantonese are horrible sounding — too harsh for my liking. French does sound good although 3 years of studying it didn’t make me any better at it. Must say I don’t know many languages apart from English and Bombay-Hindi. Learnt a bit of Marathi through school and hated it. Tamil is my mother tongue but I can’t speak it although I understand it. FYI, I don’t like Tamil.
Oh Psych, the similarities just keep coming don’t they? I’m so pedantic about the language too. That could make such a long rant that I’m too scared to even start writing about it!!
I love French. I’ve taken a few stabs at learning it but somehow never managed to finish it. That’s right on top of my list of “to-dos” after I graduate this year.
Marathi sounds pretty harsh to me too. I really have no idea about any of the South Indian languages so I don’t have a love or hate for them.
Came across your blog via another, and this is definitely an interesting post. The beauty in a language to me is in the way it’s presented – and sound is so much to do with it. And I’ve found many times that the packaging, aka the person’s mouth that it’s coming out of makes a huge difference. For instance any language in it’s very street form turns me off – always comes off harsher, rougher, and chopped up.
That said a nice voice (not too loud, shrill or nasal), proper annunciation etc can really make a language sound 10x better.
Hi Archana! Thanks for stopping by.
Come to think of it, the nice voice is very important to me too. Too loud or too shrill voices annoy me too.