Words

Had a guy tell me to use BIGGER WORDS when I write, explaining these BIGGER WORDS will make me more credible, because I will appear smarter to my audience.  Smarter??  Yeah, I realize the BIGGER WORDS weren't about ALL CAPS or a larger font, and the intent was appreciated.  Perhaps expanding my vocabulary would indeed be more impressive, but my philosophy is simple. I want anyone and everyone to not just read something I have written, but also to understand it.  If there is a single word a reader doesn't know the meaning I feel I failed to convey what I intended.  Suppose I split my writing into three segments, English, Spanish and say Hebrew or Chinese.  While I suspect there are some who could read all four languages, but those folks are few and not likely a reader of this blog or anything else I might write.  And, if they are multi-lingual they too will surely understand my simple writings.

Now what on God's green earth does this have to do with genealogy and more particularly Bell Genealogy, as my blog title suggests?  Nothing I suppose.  Oh, I can twist, turn and reshape it a bit and tell readers, like they exist, that in doing research, one must be prepared to interpret a wide and often not easily read writings and the language may not be familiar.  Latin was used in some legal documents.

I had two years of Latin in high school, learned more than I should have considering . . . well, I remember a quote written in my Latin I book.  "Latin is a dead language as you will plainly see, it killed all the Romans and now it is killing me".  To give some inside of my desire to learn Latin, I remember than quote better than anything else I learned in the two years of Latin I & II.  I did find it sad, my son, thirty years later did not have the opportunity to take Latin!

Okay, I have veered way off this time, but so what few read my words and NO ONE (big words :), did I appear smarter?) comments on anything I've written!  I am considering either starting another blog and not being limited to one surname or expanding this one, but keeping the name the same.  Just a warning to my dedicated readers!  Yes, I've already established I have no "dedicated readers", so am I writing to myself and then answering myself?  Gee, I'm going to stop here before I appear to be crazier than I already do.

Stay cool!

T.Bell