Canter Bridge

Speech is an amazing thing.

The sheer computing power that would be required to match the human mind’s ability to decipher, manage, and create language on the fly is impossible to imagine. Yet we do it every day, effortlessly for the most part.

In fact, most human beings handle this astonishing feat in more than one language, simultaneously mastering two or more complex codes that are as much about culture and context as they are about language and linguistics.

To speak well is to respect our fellow human beings by making ourselves intelligible to them and eliminating the guesswork. It is also to honor the language we speak as a legacy handed down to us, to say nothing of our attitude towards the Mind that designed us to be able to pull this all off and chew gum at the same time. Well, hopefully not at the same time. In fact, what is gum for?

English speakers might be interested in a little help along the way. A little nudge towards speaking and writing well comes courtesy of the Oxford English Dictionary on-line Word of the Day (www.oed.com).

I have elsewhere fawned-quite deserved, I assure you-over the ‘OED’, as she is known; see http://www.amazon.com under ‘Oxford Shorter Dictionary of the English Language’. If you sign up at the OED website, they’ll send you an entry each day by email and you’ll soon be building your vocabulary incrementally and largely painlessly. Oh, did I mention this is all free?

Behold, a sample entry:

track pad, n.

DRAFT ENTRY Sept. 2004 Brit. /trak pad/, U.S. /tr¾k p¾d/ [< TRACK n. + PAD n.3]

1. A protective pad of rubber, polyurethane, etc., fitted to the tracks of a vehicle. Usu. in pl. 1914 Wall St. Jrnl. 5 Mar. 7/2 The Public Service Commission has authorized advertising for bids for track pads, tie plates and ballast. 1946 Times 5 Nov. 3/5 (advt.) Dairy and antimonial watering hoses,..tractor track pads, rubber boots,..and many other BTR/Silvertown products play an important part in reaping the harvest of the soil. 1991 Better Roads Nov. 37/2 Two new track pads have been introduced for the..Commander 3 slipforming machines. 2002 Jrnl. (Newcastle) (Nexis) 2 Aug. 7 The adaptations [to the tank] which include special ’skirts’ to keep out the sand, a cooling system to combat heat and the modification of the track pads only take a short time to install.

2. Computing. A pointing device in the form of a touch-sensitive pad. 1989 Business Wire (Nexis) 26 Sept., TrackPad is a 3««_2.5«« pad that fits directly into the Portable’s keyboard and allows the user to control the screen cursor..with the touch of a finger. 1994 MacUser July 80/1 The trackpad is velocity-sensitive, so a quick flick scoots the cursor across the entire screen whereas a slow trace allows you to make very small, delicate cursor movements. 2000 Times Educ. Suppl. (Nexis) 14 Apr. 27, I hate these things so it’s not a criticism of the Sony to say that I would have preferred a track pad.