Procrastinating

I haven't finished my post on the AAR poll and how my ballot compares. I've been procrastinating. Instead, I've been thinking about words. Not about writing, just words and language in a larger sense. Have you ever repeated a word so many times that it starts to sound like babble? Which then moves to my next random thought -- how did humans ever develop the ability to communicate, and how did that turn into languages that are not only spoken but also written? Given the infinite variety of sounds that the tongue, glottis, etc., are capable of making, what led different language groups to utilize the sounds that they do? I've got a couple of books in the TBR mountain about the development of language in individuals, but I don't think I have any about the development of language across cultures. After I finish this post, I'm off to the library's website to see what they have.

Back to the random word thoughts -- do you have a favorite word or phrase, just because of the way it sounds, without regard to what it actually means? In English, the word I like is impermeable. And coagulate. And gunwale. I just like the way they sound. In Russian, I like ideosh, matreoshka and shto sluchilas, which mean you go, nesting dolls, and what's going on, respectively. I like the sibilance. In Spanish, I like paraguas, cacahuate/cacahuete, Aconcagua, Aracataca, Malinche, dulce and digame. Umbrella, peanutbutter, the name of a lake, a town, Spanish translation of the name of Hernan Cortez's guide/translator/slave, sweet or candy, and the command tell/speak to me (also used as a telephone greeting colloquially). I like the vowel sounds and the way the syllables roll off my tongue.

Is that weird?

Comparison to AAR's poll

I’ve started and stopped writing this post a couple of times because I’m not sure exactly what I want to say. Yes, I voted in the AAR annual poll. Some of the books/characters that I enjoyed won and others did not. The annual poll often makes me wonder about my taste and where I fit on the continuum of romance readers, because often the books that are big winners were losers in my reading journal. Most of my votes will be predictable if you read my list of the Best of 2005. I voted for a couple of those books in multiple categories. I don’t think that anything I voted for matched the winner in any category, except one Worst category, although several that I voted for were runners up. And in several cases, books that were runners up to the books I voted for were books that won the category.

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