Drowing a Verbal Death

My little friend, W, has a preoccupation with words, letters and sounds. He is a shy and intent little four year old who really finds it a fun time to sit down with markers in hand and practice his letters. I could read a library full of books to this boy and he wouldn't move unless he got hungry, and no, not even for bathroom duties. He often looks at me and says, 'Why do they call it....'. And what follows are things like: pen, or cake, or monkey or fat or happy and on and on and on. Usually the word in question will be the actually thing he is seeing, feeling, touching or tasting. When he looks up at me with those innocent and admiring blue eyes its hard to admit that, to be honest, you're not sure. Usually I reply with, Somebody a long long time ago made it up and now we use it all the time'. Which is pretty much accurate, right?

The fact is, language is such a massive force in our world, it affects(controls?) pretty much every aspect of our modern lives. In all the languages in all the world, it's said that the English language is the most difficult to master. I've read that the English language possibly has upwards of 3 quarters of a million words including nouns, adjectives, verbs, prepositions slang, and words that have become obsolete. Our language is derived from German, Dutch, French and Latin languages, and in all accounts, a very universal and culturally influenced language.

We have words to describe the things we see, and how it affects our senses;sun: bright, hot yellow, intense. We have words to describe our emotions and how we feel; happy, sad, angry, silly, anxious, curious, jealous. We have words that explain objects around us and even words to describe how those same objects look, feel, sound, and taste. When little W asks his questions I encourage his curiosity and try to increase his vocabulary daily, in hopes that he can master this language more accurately than most of us, and feel confident in his ability to convey his thoughts and feelings and understand they are relevant. Because when I dive into this ever growing sea of words and try to choose my own, I seem to drown amongst them instead of grabbing them and using them to get back to shore.