Episode 63 Original scent

Photo by frank mckenna

Here’s how to get fascinated by language if you’re not already. This might even feel a little bit like a transcendent, or mystical experience.

1. Find a window and look through it.
2. Focus first on the scene outside the window.
3. Then focus on the windowpane itself.
4. Toggle your attention back forth between the windowpane and the landscape outside.

Now think of a word, like cake. Thinking of the meaning of cake is like looking at the scene through the window. Thinking of the form of the word cake (the sounds, if it’s spoken, or the letters, if it’s written) is like looking at the windowpane.

When we toggle between form and meaning, we can play with words or phrases that have more than one meaning.

So you can play with phrases printed on ordinary objects, like a stick of deodorant. ‘Original scent’. What was the original scent? The big bang? The Garden of Eden?

What about ‘the first person’? What does that phrase conjure for you? A 3.2-million-year-old ape named Lucy? Or that guy in Eden called Adam?

Or maybe you’re so fascinated by language that you thought of grammatical personhood. First person: I, me. Second person: you. Third person: he, she it. Can a language have more than three persons?  

Yes! The Blackfoot language has five.

Read my short story ‘The first person’ on grammarfordreamers.wordpress.com.

Find me on Twitter: @jodieclarkling

And on Instagram: @grammarfordreamers

Listen to Episode 63: Original Scent