--- How complicated is language? Try speech synthesis ---

We take language for granted until we try to learn a new one. I don't think anyone would say that Spanish is more difficult than English, in fact, there are a lot of similarities. There's a lot more that you have to match up between nouns, verbs, modifiers and other word forms, and modifiers tend to follow the words they modify, unlike in English ("Little Red Riding Hood" instead of "Hood Riding Little Red") but the differences aren't huge.

I had little trouble in my 20s learning German and American Sign Language, but Spanish, I find unaccountably hard. But I'm having fun anyway.

Consider, though, the problem of computer language recognition and speech synthesis. They've come very far in the last 20 years. This century has seen some huge breakthroughs. In the 1990s, computer speech was still pretty much science fiction. What there was, was pretty clunky. But now, I routinely let my computer read books to me, a God-send given my dyslexia.

My computer still has a few problems though. Consider the word "read". Should it be pronounced "reed" or "red". It depends on it's context. Words exist in context. In fact, there are four things that have to be considered when you are parsing out words. It's amazing how easily a human does all that without breaking a sweat.

The meanings of any particular words are usually many. Just choose any word you thought you knew well and look it up in the unabridged Oxford Dictionary of the English Language. Then words exist in relation to the words around them. How you pronounce "read" has a lot to do whether you read a book yesterday or where you will read it today - tense determines the pronunciation. But "read" can be an adjective since a book can be a "read book" (or one that you have already read and, so, can mark off your reading list). Where words appear in a work also has meaning. One reason "It's was the best of time. It was the worst of times." is so well known is that it was the fist statement in Dickens "A Tale of Two Cities." Everything else being equal, first and last are most likely to make an impression. And other things can strongly influence how words are understood and pronounced. Intonation is one. Read "You are a fine one," out loud several times,placing emphasis on different words and see how the meaning changes.

I use a screen reader called NaturalReader, produced by NaturalSoft Ltd. It does a great job but, when I first started using it, I noticed a humorous snag. Frankly, I don't know if it was in the screen reader, the Windows dictionary or what but, when it came to the word "Nazi", it said "ne'er-do-well". "Appropriate" maybe, but not accurate. Today, my screenreader just boringly announces "Nazi". The older way was more entertaining.

--- Language and me ---

Me and language? Language and I?

(Head slap) It's not even a sentence! Forget it!

What do you expect. I'm an animal. (Movie reference)

I'm dyslexic, I think in images, I stammer, I occasionally can't pull out the words I want to use, and, yes, I talk to my self.

Verbal language is not my first language.

But, then, my contrariness has served me well more than once. I have always been fascinated with and have enjoyed those things that I am not supposed to be able to do. That's why my favorite x-sport is rock climbing (or, it was until I clocked up so many hand injuries that my grip has gotten weak. A rock climber climbs with their hands, not their feet.) and rappelling.

I was not good at language so I was in two gospel groups and two advanced church choirs for many years, have two minors in world literature, joined the speech troop in college, and have spoken publicly....a lot. If you can find the Auburn Circle from the 1970s, I have stuff published there. The Circle is the Auburn University literary magazine.

I can tell you stories...and I probably will.

I'm not much for board games (they bore me), but if you can drag me into a game of Scrabble or Pictionary I will be ecstatic. I love crossword puzzles, Cryptoquotes, puns....people say that puns are low brow. They're wrong. Puns are perpetrated by people who love language and, consequently, love playing around with it.

Double talkers slay me - luckily there aren't that many around any more. The last two I can think of are Archie Campbell (if you haven't heard his "Rindercella", you must find a copy and listen to it.) and Norm Crosby. I'm sure there are others around, I just dropped TV when they went to high definition.

My favorite linguists are James Kilpatrick and Bill Bryson. Kilpatrick was actually a journalist. Wikipedia calls him a "grammarian" - I beg to differ. A grammarian would never say, "If you understand what I'm saying, then I'm using correct English." A linguist, on the other hand, would. He had a popular newspaper column on the English language for many years.

Bill Bryson wrote a book about an attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail (A Walk in the Woods). He's a professional author. He also wrote The Mother Tongue, Made Here in America, and Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words.

I can speak a little German (a very little and very slowly) and can read considerably more. I still have a little American Sign Language left. I'll probably brush up on them some day. Just now, I've started a last ditch attempt to learn Spanish. The MIT OpenCourseWare course I'm using is fun - I'll see if it's effective.

As you get older, it's harder to pick up new languages. I have a friend who is my age that makes it a hobby. I think he's got 20 or more that he can speak conversationally, but he does it constantly and has been learning languages for many years. I still have hope.

How about you? Are you a "language person?' What's your story?