Wednesday, March 12, 2008

OK, So I Don't Know English?!!

Today, while calmly puzzling over an algebra problem, (in case you're interested, the problem was 9x2-49y2 , and, in case you furthermore care to know the answer, it is (3x+7y) (3x-7y)) I was interuppted by my sister, who was doing math in the other room. The conversation proceeded something like this:

Her: "Hey can you go to dictionary.com and look something up for me?"

Me: "Sure...what is it?"

Her: "Sphygmomanometer."

Me: "WHAT???????"

Her: "Sphygmomanometer!"

Later, after she has spelled it out twice to me and we have been enlightened as to what the thing is, (by the way, in case you care to know, "a sphygmomanometer is a device used to measure blood pressure, comprising an inflatable cuff to restrict blood flow, and a mercury or mechanical manometer to measure the pressure." That's Wikipedia.) she calls out another word for me to research.

Her: "Can you look up 'tacometer'?

Me: "Taco-WHAT? What in the world is a tacometer for? To measure how hot your salsa is?!!"

(By the way, dear readers, the correct spelling for this queer instrument is "Tachometer.") Yes, the world of language is a big place and even the native speakers can't learn everything there is to know about their own language.

Seize The Day!
-StrongJoy

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

OH haha that is funny. :)

Love
MJ

Anonymous said...

Haha! How funny! And she needed to know the definitions of those words when she was working on math?? Oh my. :-)

Anonymous said...

I like your definition of "tacometer". *grins*

And thank you very much for your comment on my blog... it made a lot of sense to me, perhaps because I so much understand the entire screaming by writing it out thing... I do that so often it's insane.

Take care! :) Watch out for the really hot salsa! Oh, and for what it's worth, we usually just call sphygmomanometers "blood pressure cuffs" or something of the sort. ;)

Anonymous said...

And... I can't believe I forgot to say this... I have heard Tears of the Saints. It's an incredible song... very haunting. It is, very much, an attitude we need... not to grow calloused to the pain of the world.

Becc@ said...

HA! That is SO funny! (Must be so fun to be working on an Algebra problem... I'm in it right now and loving it ;))