A New (WEnglish) Twist on L-O-V-E

What is love, actually–(besides a movie I watch every Christmas)? Thousands of books, songs and movies address it, try to define it, analyze it, and tell us whether we’re in it or not.

As a linguist, I like to find clues to meaning within actual word spelling, to see if there’s a deeper meaning hiding inside. LOVE is no exception.

Typically I start by splitting a word into syllables, but LOVE has only one, so that’s no fun.

I’ll also conduct word twists, taking letters of a word apart and rearranging to see what other words can be created. With LOVE, I found only two, if you’ll allow a man’s name ‘OVE’, which is a good but sort of sad movie.

Then there’s ‘VOLE’, a mouse-like creature that’s very hard to appreciate as my sister will attest to, because they love to burrow and chew through roots of living plants, even trees!.

In desperation, I finally spelled LOVE backwards and OLÉ! I was stunned and delighted. LOVE spelled backwards is EVOL, which is not quite a word— however, my rule with word play is that I can use letters in words more than once. With that in mind, I could spell ‘EVOLVE’. Isn’t that wonderful?

Yes, LOVE EVOLVES, doesn’t it? (Some of you are probably saying, “Yes and it DISSOLVES, too”), but isn’t it really we who evolve?

Being ‘in love’ allows us to be INVOLVED.

Wherever or not you find yourself in a love relationship with another person this month, make sure YOU are at tha top of that list! Loving yourself is essential to loving others. If you’re not sure how to love yourself, check out my memoir, ‘I Was A Yo-Yo Wife…Until I Learned THIS’. Once I got THIS, my love relationship changed in about ten minutes and has lasted more than 36 years!

Vivian Probst

Author, Linguist, Creator of WEnglish for WEquality

Does Vivian not like men?

Is that why she’s working to take ‘he’ words out of English?

Dear friends:

I understand your question and let me put your mind at ease. I like men; I like all of us, generally speaking. What bothers me is that English prefers men and doesn’t have any real or even nice words for those of us who aren’t men*. We’ve talked about that in prior blogs.

It’s English that needs a little tweaking because IT has thousands of words that celebrate men, but we might as well not exist. English ignores us. I know of no other language that so disregards us!

Besides, it’s so easy to fix that I want to launch a campaign to change a few words, especially ‘THE’. It’s our most common word, used far more than any other words in English and it’s always spelled with an ‘he’, which is really an incorrect spelling. All of us most commonly say ‘THA’. Wouldn't it be nice to take one ‘he’ word out of English and make it neutral?

*******FAVORITE ENGLISH WORDS

Now, I’d like to take a minute to share some of my favorite English words because words can also have uplifting power. We could all use more of that! Here's a short list:.

ALL (Even if it’s spelled with only one ‘L’) because it includes everyone/everything. For instance, ‘magical’. Isn’t that a wonderful word? If you put it through a ‘word split’ in our Word Collider, you get ‘Magic-al’ or Magi-call. I believe we all have a magical part inside–we just need to be willing to share it!

US: Whether it’s spelled as ‘-us’ or ‘-ous’ we again have lots of wonderful words: wondrous, marvelous, stupendous, hilarious, etc. These ‘us’ words draw us together which is where I’d love to focus English to make it more inclusive..

WE Very similar to ALL. WEL-COME; WE-AL-THY: WELL; and WELL-NESS.

If we take time to study words that we speak and choose more uplifting ones, I believe we can change our experience of life.

E-mail: vivian@vivianprobst.com

wenglishforwequality.com

*Those of us who aren’t men by birth or preference