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Wednesday, November 06, 2013

Overcorrection

When we went camping in the Appalachian Mountains last month we learned that, if we wanted to blend in with the locals, we were in App-uh-LATCH-uh and not App-uh-LAY-shuh. Rachel really took this lesson to heart because she was genuinely terrified of someone spitting at her for saying it wrong.

During scripture study this evening, we read Alma 51 and Rachel happened to read verse 21, which happens to have the word 'appellation' in it.

"And thus Moroni put an end to those king-men, that there were not any known by the..." she trailed off, having come to her first difficult word. "App-uh-LAY-shun," she sounded out. Then she shook her and said firmly, "App-uh-LATCH-uhn. There were not any known by the app-uh-LATCH-uhn of king-men."

We tried gently correcting her but ended up laughing about it until everyone was in tears.

Eventually we all calmed down enough to continue and I was reading the next verse when Rachel broke into laughter again.

"...while Moroni was thus breaking down the wars and contentions among his own people, and subjecting them to peace and civilization," I read.

"Subjecting them to peace!" Rachel guffawed, and then I couldn't help but laughing, too, because I didn't expect her to pick up on that little paradox. In fact, the two of us were being so terribly irreverent that Andrew had to finish reading the verse for me.

In this instance of the word, however, I think 'subjecting' is less along the lines of 'forcing' and more along the lines of 'predisposing,' but I think that, typically, people automatically denote the verb 'subject' to mean force, just as I typically associate the noun 'sock' with cozy footwear and not with a violent punch.



1 comment:

  1. I JUST noticed that Ira Glass said Appalachian that way on TAL the other day and I was like, whaa? So thanks for enlightening me. :)

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