The English language has, by far, more words than any other language. In fact, it has upwards of four hundred thousand words, a few of which I happen to know and can use with fair accuracy. Actually, I know lot more than a few but I don’t think I know how to spell some of them. I began to learn words when I was very young. In fact, I was so young that I don’t even remember when it was. I can only remember from when I already knew some words and was speaking them. At that time, I probably knew only about fifty words or so. I was blissfully unaware that I had three hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred fifty words to go. There are some things you are better off not knowing.

Words were not that easy for me to come by (neither was grammar as you can tell by the way I ended the non-parenthetical part of this sentence.) I began, as did so many of my peers with words of one or two syllables, like “mommy,” “daddy,” or “feed me.” While many of my peers went on to master words of more syllables, I remained implanted at the two syllable level for a major portion of my early life. Eventually I did learn some words of three or more syllables but they did not come easily. By the time I got to kindergarten I guess I knew enough to make kindergarten’s entry level. At least I managed to get in.

Kindergarten was a mind-blowing experience, thanks to my kindergarten teacher whose name was Miss Dishler (I think.) She was a very sweet lady who taught us to use crayons and lie on straw mats that made my back itch and kept me awake when I know I was supposed to be napping. I don’t know why we needed a nap since it was morning and we had not been up long enough to get very tired. After our naps we would draw pictures. Actually, we all only drew one picture: a fireman laying in his bed.at the fire station. The reason for this is that at some point, one of the kids has drawn such a picture and got rave reviews from Miss Dishler. After that everyone in the class tried to come up with the same picture. I must have done all right in kindergarten since I was passed to the first grade at the end of the year.

Getting back to the English language, I must admit that an extremely small percentage of its words are known to me, although the ones I know I overuse pathologically. This practice is sometimes known as “showing off.” I had a friend who was a born show off. He was very good at finding big words, especially ones that could be enunciated with animation and enthusiasm, like perspicacity and perspicuity and others that would impress strangers and walkers-by. Most of the fellow sidewalk users gave him a quizzical look that indicated disbelief rather than admiration. However, I was impressed. Of course, nobody, including the two of us, knew what those words meant. We didn’t care much about their definitions, it was using them that counted.

As I aged, my enthusiasm for using big words waned as did my research efforts in hunting them down. It’s not so much that I forgot the words. I just did not get excessive pleasure out of using them. Now, don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t any wiser. I was simply growing lazier, a condition that I pursued with a passion, and, in fact still embrace.. In spite of my indolence, I still love words. In fact, I am abulge with delight that I speak, read and write the English language, which features a superabundance or words. I am convinced that our outrageously rich language not only hosts the words we speak and write but even improves our efforts to think, since we think in words. At least I think in words and I wonder what difference it would make in our thinking if we had to think in another language. Frankly, I don’t even want to think (in English, of course) about it.

In the exhilaration of my delight in words, I recently wrote a short essay about words and have taken the liberty to attach it to this effort. See “Words”.