Today I will tell you about the sudden evolution of one of the words in our RVA dialect. The word is “conch”. What is a conch in normal English you may ask? A conch (pronounced “konk”) is “any of various large spiral-shelled marine gastropod mollusks”. You can see a picture of one to the top left. You may also be wondering how a word could evolve in a single event, since evolution takes millions of years. Well, let me tell you.
It was a warm and dry afternoon in my 9th grade English class on the momentous day in which the word conch took on a whole new meaning. We were taking turns reading “The Lord of the Flies” out loud this particular day. One of the guys was reading the part where Ralph and Piggy discover the conch shell on the beach. As he was reading he came to the word and knew instinctively that here was a word which he did not know how to pronounce correctly. He did what anyone may have done in his situation, he tried to say it phonetically… “konch”. His mistake was in his lack of confidence. Despite the vast vocabulary known to 9th graders, most of us had no better idea how to pronounce the word. His hesitant tone inspired our teacher to provide the correct pronunciation of the offending word. And thus his shrubbery was brought to the forefront of our awareness.
Something about the situation was absolutely hysterical. It was probably a combination of the funny sounding word, along with the sheepish way in which he tried so erroneously to say it. Our laughter served to cement the event in our memories. Word spread quickly and soon our entire class knew of the shrubbed conch. We very quickly began to use “konch” to describe other difficult words to say. For example: “dang, Belteshazzar is a konch word!”
In not much more time, konch came to mean difficult or hard. We also remembered the correct way to say the word, and so both pronunciations were used. In fact, they were both used so often that we soon forgot which was the correct way to say it.
And so you see, a simple shrub, combined with the right amount of laughter, and provided that the shrubbed word is sufficiently fun to say, could result in the creation of an entirely new word.
It was a warm and dry afternoon in my 9th grade English class on the momentous day in which the word conch took on a whole new meaning. We were taking turns reading “The Lord of the Flies” out loud this particular day. One of the guys was reading the part where Ralph and Piggy discover the conch shell on the beach. As he was reading he came to the word and knew instinctively that here was a word which he did not know how to pronounce correctly. He did what anyone may have done in his situation, he tried to say it phonetically… “konch”. His mistake was in his lack of confidence. Despite the vast vocabulary known to 9th graders, most of us had no better idea how to pronounce the word. His hesitant tone inspired our teacher to provide the correct pronunciation of the offending word. And thus his shrubbery was brought to the forefront of our awareness.
Something about the situation was absolutely hysterical. It was probably a combination of the funny sounding word, along with the sheepish way in which he tried so erroneously to say it. Our laughter served to cement the event in our memories. Word spread quickly and soon our entire class knew of the shrubbed conch. We very quickly began to use “konch” to describe other difficult words to say. For example: “dang, Belteshazzar is a konch word!”
In not much more time, konch came to mean difficult or hard. We also remembered the correct way to say the word, and so both pronunciations were used. In fact, they were both used so often that we soon forgot which was the correct way to say it.
And so you see, a simple shrub, combined with the right amount of laughter, and provided that the shrubbed word is sufficiently fun to say, could result in the creation of an entirely new word.
3 comments:
this is incredibly fascinating, Matt! Thanks for blogging more often. Though Allison may have been the one who was vocal about not hearing from you, others check your blog daily :)
apparently Abe says in the movie of The Lord of the Flies, all the kids pronounce it "Konch", so maybe you weren't so far off!
Matt! This post is dated December 14 - I need some new laughs.
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