Wednesday, May 6, 2020
Desplomarse free essay sample
I hold little more sacred than words. They are the blood of my life; yet I did not fall in love with them because ââ¬Å"they mean something.â⬠It is their vitality which seduced me. The way ââ¬Å"correrâ⬠and ââ¬Å"joyâ⬠use the tongue as a ski jump. It is their history and formation of syllables. How the word ââ¬Å"aphrodisiacâ⬠wouldnââ¬â¢t be here if not for that goddess born of sea-foam. My favorite word, desplomarse, is Spanish for my least favorite meaning, ââ¬Å"to collapse.â⬠But taken literally, much of the wordââ¬â¢s art will be lost; the history condensed to four syllables. Desplomarse was born from Latin explorers who first named lead ââ¬Å"plumbumâ⬠and in its journey towards meaning, ventured into the Mediterranean. Sailors, amidst the spraying surf, would tie lead to a line and let it plummet straight through the water; the antiquated manner for measuring depth. Decades passed and over in the land of the English, the word ââ¬Å"plumbâ⬠became a technical term for engineers to describe a straight line. We will write a custom essay sample on Desplomarse or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Then these fermenting syllables returned to Europe, to Spain, and with the negative prefix, ââ¬Å"des,â⬠and the reflexive suffix ââ¬Å"se,â⬠the word meaning to ââ¬Å"un-straighten oneself,â⬠reached adulthood. Now the point of this mini-etymology lesson? Desplomarse only exists because of the English and Latin languages. It serves as a blatant testimony of how languages are not separate entities. Although I love the wordââ¬â¢s sound and its history, most of all, I love how it suggests maybe the Tower of Babble never existed. Maybe a monolingual tongue is all there is just with a more expansive vocabulary.
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