Episode 14: Words Mean Things (10/15/2020)

Hey y’all. Welcome to Fast Facts for Gen Z. I’m your host, Callie, and I don’t know anything about anything. Join me while I explore the world, and I’ll tell you everything you ever, and never, wanted to know, through the eyes of Gen Z.

Today’s episode: My fascination with language and etymology, and my constant realization that words do, in fact, mean things.

American public school education is… not ideal, to say the least. There are some private and alternative schools in the area that teach a second language from a young age, or have immersion programs so kids grow up practically bilingual. I, however, went to a little public elementary school, where we had Spanish lessons for an hour a week and all I knew by the time I was ten were colors and the days of the week. So basically, I didn’t learn any Spanish.

In middle school, we had the option to pick from French and Spanish, but we didn’t have to take a language if we didn’t want to. If we wanted to take Chorus or Band (like I so badly did), we couldn’t commit to a language. That’s just how the scheduling worked out. My sister went through the Spanish program, which was excellent at my middle school, and was able to visit Nicaragua with my grandmother, and I believe they functioned quite well. I, however, stuck to Chorus.

In my high school, the language programs were atrocious. Really, terribly bad. My sister knows less Spanish than she did in middle school, despite making it through Spanish 3 before she gave up on the program’s ability to help her learn. The French program is considerably worse. I didn’t take a language my freshman year, so when I was 14, because I wasn’t sure which I wanted to choose. Watching my friends in their respective language classes didn’t make me feel more optimistic. But I needed the language credits to graduate, so I turned to the only other option we had: Latin.

I had heard mostly bad things about the Latin program, but a few good things as well, and the comment that stuck out to me the most was that the way it was taught worked really well for some people, and not at all for everyone else. That, while not exactly promising, seemed better to me than the other language programs, so I decided to take my chances and give it a shot. If I didn’t like it, oh well. I could always change my mind and sit through Spanish.

Lucky for me, I was among the few who actually loved Latin. Not only was the class pretty fun, but it awakened in me a furious curiosity about language and the way words travel and morph and shape our understanding of the world without us even noticing. In short, I realized that words mean things. Let me explain a little more of what I mean.

One of the most memorable times when I clearly realized that words mean things was when we were learning some verbs in Latin 2. We learned the verb trahere, which means to pull. My whole class was having a really hard time making sense of that word, since we usually tried to remember and understand new vocabulary words by relating them to words or concepts we already understood. We couldn’t think of any similar words or concepts until my teacher suggested, “tractor?” And that sent my head for a spin. Of course! What does a tractor do? It pulls. Trahit, it pulls. Play around with trahere, take it through some conjugations and some tenses, and you end up with words like tractum and tractus, which isn’t a far cry from tractor. I had never thought of words like that as really meaning anything. To me, the word “tractor” didn’t mean anything but a big green farm machine, but it’s a big green farm machine that pulls.

Of course, when I mentioned this realization to the person sitting next to me, she was typically unimpressed. Duh, words mean things, Callie. But I think it’s fascinating! It’s fascinating how words can come together and change meanings over time, to the point where we don’t even associate the words “tractor” and “pull,” but they’re still there, traces of other languages and cultures hidden underneath every word.

Quick tangent about my unimpressed Latin classmate: I’m not sure she was actually unimpressed with me, or with the class in general. She had little to no patience for the antics of that class, and I don’t blame her. I’m lucky she tolerated even my antics, to be honest. I know she listens to the podcast though, so I do have to point out that she was weird in her own ways as well. Not military-marching during fire drills and chanting Latin endings like zombies level of weird, but she was particularly attached to that one George Bush quote about Tennessee, and fool-me-once, fool-me-twice. So, you know. No one’s perfect.

Let’s take another word, one I was curious about recently: procrastinate. What does that mean? Well, we know what it means: to put off something you should be doing because you don’t want to or you’re scared that you’ll fail. Sure, but what does the word mean, like the actual word in all its parts? We’ll start with the first syllable, “pro,” which is fairly easy, since it just means “forward.” Think progress, which combines “pro” with the Latin verb “to walk.” The next part of the word, “cras,” means tomorrow. The possessive form of cras, meaning “belonging to tomorrow,” is crastinus, which, combined with pro, forms a brand new verb, procrastinare. This is where a familiar definition starts to appear. Somehow, this ended up meaning “to defer until the morning,” or a similar translation, since Latin is weird and doesn’t always translate nicely. Tack on a different ending and we’ve got “procrastinate.” I don’t know about you, but I find it quite reassuring that we’ve been putting off things we should be doing since ancient Rome.

Okay, okay, so I know what you’re thinking. First of all, nerd, to which I say, yes, when did you notice? Second of all, Callie, why does this matter? We know that words mean things! Where are you going with this?

Language is ever changing. That’s one of the beautiful things about it, that new words are being coined every day while others fall out of fashion. If you’ve listened to another episode, “Podcasting in a Visual World,” which I highly recommend you go to after this one, you’ll find that I somehow managed to skip an incredibly interesting language fact while talking about the word “podcast.” “Podcast” is a combination of a fairly new word, iPod, and an older English word, broadcast. iPod, obviously, means nothing and so the only connotations it adds are those of audio listening. This makes sense, given what an iPod is, but I find it fascinating that in 19 short years since the iPod was released, it created its own meaning and lent it to a new word. This is a prime example of how language can shift. I’d talk about the history behind “broadcast,” but it’s one of those English words that stole a Germanic word and a Norse word and squished them together and made it about farming, and then it got repurposed for technology. Basically, it means what it says.

Language also has rules, and those rules are there for a reason. The rules of language enhance and clarify meaning. We’re finally learning grammar in school again, so hopefully some of us can turn into decent writers before we’re thrown off into higher education or the real world without a solid understanding of what words do and why they mean things. I think it’s important to know why a particular headline makes you mad. I think it’s important to catch words that display your bias and erase them, or use them more effectively. I caught a sign of my political bias in my homework today, which isn’t bad, just something I noticed. I think it’s important to watch the way words make us feel or favor certain things, because it can be subtle, and we can easily slip in to a place of assuming that everyone feels the way we feel, and the words we use are right simply because they are ours. And that, despite what we all want to believe, isn’t true.

I have Latin 3 next semester, with a new teacher, and I’m mildly afraid that I actually don’t know any Latin at all and I’ll fail miserably, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. I’m hoping to learn Spanish in college. Both my parents studied abroad in Germany at separate points in their life, so it might be fate that I or my sister will learn at least a little bit of German. Who knows. Regardless, I still think language is fascinating, and even if I never learn any other language, I expect I will still marvel at its history.

Thank you for listening to Fast Facts for Gen Z. New episodes are released every Thursday, but sometimes Friday, so be sure to follow this podcast to make sure you’re notified whenever I post a new episode. This is Callie, signing off.