Huh? Do you hear what I hear?

One can hear and not understand. One can memorize but not know what the phrase committed to memory means. And, truly, one can see and hear but not comprehend.
Such a lack of true understanding happens all the time with adults. We can be talking with each other and have different understandings of what we mean to say or different definitions for the same terms. And such misunderstandings have nothing to do with things that are true or provably true or lies or statistics.
If we pay attention to the look on someone’s face, many of the problems caused by wrong words or misunderstanding can be worked out. Sometimes, the adult listener is experiencing uncorrected hearing difficulties or has drifted into another thought from a slip in an attention span or is paying the price for being at too many rock concerts when younger. Or maybe the speaker isn’t clear or is too close to the microphone.
All of this, dear readers three, happens to all of us. However, the trouble starts when we are children. When children are learning words and their vocabularies are growing by the minute, sometimes the child gets only part of the picture. And if they do get it all, sometimes the words are slurred. Diction is not an American standard.
And children have to memorize many things that may make little or no sense to them. The words are big, they haven’t been defined. And some words – lots of words in the English language, just sound like other words.
Whether or not you think students should recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day in school, the words of Pledge are sometimes recited in many creative ways.
It starts: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands…
We’re in trouble in the first dozen words. What kid knows allegiance? It could be heard as “a league just” (understandable from baseball or t-ball) or the first 12 words could come out as “I led the pigeons to the flag” or “I pledge a legion to the flag.”
And then we come to “for which it stands.” Now those four little words make sense but if you are listening to others in a group reciting the pledge, it isn’t quite as clear. In fact, those words sound more like two words: “Richard Stans.”
And more trouble greets us with “one nation, indivisible.” Some hear it – and then say it – as “one nation, invisible” or “one nation and a vegetable” (perhaps corn). And then there’s “one naked individual.”
Isn’t English fun?
Happy Flag Day Tuesday. It is a grand old flag, a high flying flag. We’ll pledge our best regions, always.
Jan Mittelstadt Tippett is a retired newspaper publisher who lives in Owatonna.