Extended Metaphor

I was in my room a few days ago, trying to figure out how to explain The Book Thief to someone I know who liked The Hiding Place and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. This was my inner monologue:

Well, If The Hiding Place and Guernsey had a baby together, it would be The Book Thief. But that doesn't sufficiently explain the style of Book Thief. Oh I've got it! Then the baby was given up for adoption and adopted by My Sister's Keeper and The Elegance of the Hedgehog. But wait! The Elegance of the Hedgehog and My Sister's Keeper would NEVER get married...

Besides, which couple would be the biological and which the adoptive parents based on the nature/nurture info I've learned in Psych class?

Another lovely metaphor, from a conversation I was having with Melody:

"Don't you hate it when you have a pregnant idea... (I want to express that I hate it when I can't accomplish an idea with so many possibilities) and it gets aborted?"

I should probably start speaking plain English. I haven't quite mastered figurative language, apparently.

Meaningless Hyperbole

It seems like everything is exaggerated today. When someone is sad, he says he is "depressed." When another person goofs off, she's called "insane." "Epic" is a popular adjective for anything remotely funny or interesting.

In actuality, "bipolar" does not mean someone who is in a good mood one day and a bad mood another; it is a very real psychological disorder. Most teenagers who use the word "depressed" fail to remember that depression refers to a persistent, unreasonable low mood, and not merely being sad for a reason.

Almost everyone I know exaggerates when they tell stories: "And then my mom yelled at me for an hour" "My friend gave me, like, a 5 dollar Ross card for my birthday" "Everyone on the street was laughing because I screamed and jumped a foot in the air"

The problem with hyperbole is that when it is overused, it becomes meaningless. I can't just say something is funny. If I want to convey its humor I have to say it is the "funniest thing in the world!" Then what do I say when something actually is the funniest thing in the world? It's like "lol." Now, if you actually laugh aloud, you have to type "alol." When meaningless hyperbole is tossed around, there is no way to convey shades of meaning.

I've been trying to avoid hyperbole. I've never been one to exaggerate stories--if something is funny enough for me to tell other people than I tell it the way it happened. If it needs to be exaggerated a lot to be funny, then it just isn't worth telling. What I've been working on is not exaggerating when describing things. So please, don't be offended if I say that something you do is just "pretty cool" and not "the most awesome thing I have EVER seen in my ENTIRE LIFE!"

Why English is Weird

My mom teaches ESL (English as a Second Language) and it is often difficult for her students to learn tricky English grammar and pronunciation rules when they have spoken Spanish most of their lives. Native speakers often don't realize it, but English is a really hard language. Studying orderly, precisely organized Latin in seventh grade made me realize just how bizarre English can be.

Plural of knife is knives
Plural of life is lives
Plural of strife is strifes. or just strife.

Read this sentence: "I had a tough day; though I tried and tried, I could not get through the required reading for Moby Dick." How do you pronounce these words: "tough," "though," and "through"? (I start to feel like I have spelled them wrong after typing them all in a row.)

How do you pronounce "pay" and "say"?
Then how do you pronounce "paid" and "said"?

What is the plural of tooth? What is the plural of booth?

Saying "slim chance" or saying "fat chance" means the same thing, but a "wise man" is different from a "wise guy"

Teachers teach, and preachers preach. The teacher taught. The preacher... praught?

"overlook" means something completely different from "oversee"

A house that "burns up" is the same as a house that "burns down."

To "fill in" a form is to "fill out" a form.

"Quite a few" = "quite a lot"

We turn an alarm on so that it will "go off" the next morning.

I say: Why don't we all just learn Esperanto?