He asks me, my earnest 11 year old student, "If blunder means the same as mistake, why are there two words for the same thing?"
I have to think fast. "Well, I was wrong. They aren't the same thing. If I say that I committed a blunder, that would be a more formal way to say that I made a mistake. Words are nuanced."
This puts me into a deeper hole out of which to explain myself.
He asks, "Why do there have to be so many words that mean the same thing?" This is an honest question. I start in on my story of the 1600 years of English, all the tribes and countries that shared language between them, continuously adding words that are marvelously specific. This only makes my young student look at me quizzically.
"What is formal?" He asks.
Now I have to think. How would you describe 'formal'? It means many things, and has several connotations as well as denotations. Words are not cold stone, they are molten lava.
I give it my best, describing what I would wear if I were dressing up to be formal. I ask him what he would wear to be formal. He doesn't know. He doesn't have anything to dress up for yet. I try another analogy, of how people talk or write in order to sound formal. I think he gets this one.
There are over 250,000 distinct words cataloged in the Oxford English Dictionary. This does not include some technical jargon terms and slang. For me, as a writer and speaker, this is impressive and makes me proud of my native tongue. On the teaching end it is a huge challenge to keep new learners from feeling rightfully overwhelmed.
It remains a privilege to be able to spend the better part of an hour discussing words with young minds, even with all the ambiguities, varied synonyms and cultural connotations which are included in the process of understanding how to actually use a word in a sentence. Somehow I feel as though I am influencing the future in a lovely way. I imagine the words we cover to be little lights, stars to see the future by, to describe mysteries, to tell of love and loss and all that goes between. At some point in time this young man will know the difference between love and romance, nuance and difference, formal and casual, blunder and mistake. For now we navigate the strange vast land of Words on a cool fall evening in October, as the light gives way to some softness a word might aptly describe, if I could find it.
