Random thought of the day

I’ve been hanging out with my great-nephew Jared (nicknamed Jar Head) who has recently mastered the word, “No!”.

I am tempted to believe that if the word meaning “no” were three symbols long the parenting of children would be dramatically different.

Share

2 thoughts on “Random thought of the day

  1. Likely not. Kids first learning to talk use monosyllables regardless of concept or word. Language evolves in major part because we are lazy. Long words and phrases with short concepts get used a lot, and shorter equivalents get substituted. To whit: IIRC, TWOTWAWKI, IYKWIM. In fact, the whole point of the apostrophe is to shorten stuff up, kill letters, let our mouth/fingers do less. Hardly anyone says “can not,” but lots say “can’t.” Few people named “Joseph” are not called “Joe,” for another example.

  2. Regardless of the word, my boys know that “No” is worse than a 4-letter word. If that word is uttered as a response to any request (other than “Do you want XXXXXX item?”) then their day is about to get a LOT worse.

Comments are closed.