Thinkage 3

Cheshire…

That’s a nice word. I don’t know what it is about Cheshire, but I am automatically drawn to whatever it is. Maybe it’s the connotations of Alice in Wonderland that I like, or maybe it links back to a pair of socks I once had that I called my Cheshire socks (they looks like the Cheshire cat’s tail). The tale of the Cheshire’s tail… Of course I may just like that word because I like the sound of the ‘sh’ in the middle. It’s not as harsh as the average ‘sh’s you find in common day English. It is a nice word nonetheless; regardless of the reason why I should find that word particularly attractive.

I don’t think I like Cheshire because of the socks, though. I have a fine pair of socks to which I refer them as ‘marshmallow’ socks. Marshmallow is a fantastic word, though I prefer Cheshire. So if it was because of the socks, surely I would prefer the word marshmallow, since I prefer those pair of socks? To back up my theory of the reason of my love of Cheshire (isn’t Cheshire a cheese? No, hang on, that’s cheddar. There may be a Cheshire cheese, though I am not aware of it) is the way the ‘sh’ sounds, say Cheshire and marshmallow… The ‘sh’ doesn’t sound the same! Marshmallows are harsher (though if there was indeed a Cheshire cheese, then I suppose realistically, that would be harsher than a marshmallow). They are spelt the same, but they have different sounds. Subtle as that difference may be, it is a rather important difference. I have just noticed that I am beginning to develop a distaste for the general ‘sh’ found in many everyday words. It is far too harsh; it looks as though it should be friendly, but it rarely sounds it. It is much like a tiger, or a polar bear. Or a friendly looking German. Hmmm… German doesn’t have many friendly sounding sounds, do they? If you think about it, normally the foreigners that sound harsh, such as Serbians, for example, only sound harsh because of their tone of voice (they sound rather argumentative – though that may just be my family), NOT the actually sound of the word itself. If you break down words in Serbian to their sounds, they sound rather nice (even the č, which sounds as though it ought to be harsh, but it really has a deeper soul than originally thought). Whereas if you break down the sounds of German, it still sounds harsh, no matter how nicely you say it.

The ‘sh’ is rather German (but a friendly one). Actually, it may even be Austrian, if one is going into detail about the matter.

I wonder if the general sound of a language has anything to do with the personalities of its creators (I know that nowadays language have molten into each other, but we must look at the base of the sound of a language if we are going to make any sense of anything). For example, the German’s ancestors were rather large men with bushy mustaches and the last time they laughed, it caused a domino effect which resulted in the neighbour’s cousin’s dog’s death; which consequently created a large amount of tension to the once friendly ‘can I borrow your furry boots’ neighbours.

The next time the German asked for a lend of his neighbour’s furry boots, he politely declined, which just caused that tiny bit more tension required to create a blood feud lasting several centuries.