Homonymy

I had an appointment with the head of the Chinese department to plead for her to sign off on me having completed a minor in Chinese. By all my calculations it should have worked out, but I was nervous since none of my other calculations about credit transferring had summed to the Chinese department's standards.

And again I was thwarted. I have the number of credits for Chinese, but apparently, they have a new policy this year that six credits of the minor (not including first-year Chinese) must be taken at UF. I have five. So they want me to take one more Chinese class, which I will do before I graduate but don't have the endurance for this term.

But in my Medieval Literature class later today, our teacher was talking about how he might reference books we've read earlier this semester. We should bring them to class, therefore, but no points would be deducted for not bringing our books.

"I am certainly not that kind of--" he said, pausing to find an appropriate adjective.

Draconian, I said to myself. That's the perfect word.

"--draconian taskmaster."

I grinned smugly for the rest of the lecture on Beowulf and the decline of the Anglo-Saxon expert.

That leads me to a topic that I hope will cheer me up before I start an essay for my Joyce class: reverse homonyms. Here's the idea. When you hear a word and don't know how to write it, it's a homonym (or homophone; Wikipedia confuses more than helps here, but introduces the fantastic word "homonymy"). For example, to, two, and too all have the same pronunciation. Or awl and all, rye and wry, licker and liquor. There are words that sound really, really close: eminent and imminent; our and hour.

But in rare cases, you can see a word written and don't know how to pronounce it. Read and read. (I'm about to read the book I read yesterday.) Bow and bow. Present and present. (Present your present with a bow on top and then take a bow.) These are reverse homonyms.

I thought of this idea when I encountered them in Chinese: 了 can either be le or liao. 地 can either be de or di. Some characters have four pronunciations! You just have to judge it by the context. In English, I think reverse homonyms are pretty uncommon, which makes it a challenge. Marian and I had a game coming up with reverse homonyms until I was ahead by so many she couldn't catch up.

Just last week, I realized in class that pervert is a reverse homonym. If you pervert my intended meaning, it's very different from being a pervert who has aberrant sexual practices. On a more mundane level, I also noticed from a girl's shirt that object and object is one, too.

I don't think reverse homonyms are really deep, but they can be a fun diversion. It's like a deer walking around in the woods, and his dear friends come up and are like, "What's the matter? You're just walking around doing nothing."

"Oh, no," he says. "These woods are where I would wear the fabric of nature for all four seasons if I didn't have to worry about deer life."

"Deep," his friends say. "I guess if you want to frolick in the middle of the forest, that's your deal."

"Deal. Really, though, it's important to me. You might even say it's the hart of the matter."