I am the second child (of five) of Dublin Irish immigrants to NY. Neither of my parents had very much formal schooling, my mother was chronically ill, and never completed a year of school after 3rd grade, my father was an orphan, and had learning disabilities, and was sent to trade school at 14 or so.
Both of them are extremely bright people, and learned to overcome their lack of formal education.
I don't remember not being able to read. Very early in life– I caught on to the idea of written words having meaning– but I wasn't taught to read by my parents, or even read to, very much. I was very lucky, and lived a few blocks from the Central (main branch) Bronx library. Also with in walking distance, the Rose Hill campus of Fordham University, Hunter College (later, Lehman college) and the uptown campus of NYU (now, Bronx College, part of the CUNY system) so, my neighborhood had lots of bookstores. As a teen, I took to hanging out on the campus's – our working /lower middle class neighborhood didn't much value education.
I read–and was interested in ideas beside the narrow ones my parochial school exposed me to, and I had access to wonderful books, and lots of them. My mother also read a lot, but I grew up in house without a complete dictionary, and the one bookcase in the house was about 3 foot high, by 3 foot long.
Like bingsley– I caught on to things quickly– and then lost interest– but language was never my forte.. What I wanted to know was– what makes things work.. How do suspension bridges work? How are sky scrapers built? How come there are hills and valleys? Why do we use the words one, two, three to express a single entity, or double that quantity? Or the sum of a single quantity and the double?
I always wanted to know what was going on under the surface.– actually, I was compelled to know.. So– over time I have learned a little bit of geology, chemistry, engineering, biology, grammar, etymology, electronic, – in an attempt to understand the world.
No one subject was more important than the other– I needed all of them to understand the world. I was very anxious as a child not knowing how things worked.. And when I asked, the simple first level answers left me feeling cheated, and insecure– as if people were holding out on me.. By the time I was old enough to realize, that most time people gave first level answers, because that was all they knew– I was crazy..
Well, to be truthful– my family is a bit crazy– and I was just crazier than then generally accepted.. By 17, I was living on my own– a year later, I was married to man 7 years my senior– a graduate student in English Lit, (hanging around Fordham had its uses!) and I had dropped out of HS. I went to college as an adult.. But my real education came from reading.
My idiolect is a reflection of all these factors.. I have a form of dyslexia– and transpose words, letters, and numbers.. I never knew the word anastrophe– but my sentences often are..and as I realize this, and try to recast them into a more orderly format.. Words get dropped, tenses and cases are mangled.. Getting a clear sentence is as difficult as getting blood from a stone!
I have several vocabularies for speaking, from formal english, which I can do quite well, to every day speaking, to low class english, and this can be crude. Growing up in the a working class neighborhood in the bronx, there were very few crude words I didn't hear as a child. There have been times, when someone has slipped in a formal setting, and used a vulgar word– and since they only knew me in a formal setting, were sure I would be offended–hah! I've use words that would make a sailor blush!
my written vocabulary is limited, since there are masses of words, that I have so little idea how to spell, and my attempts at them, leave even the spell checkers stumped! But I love spell check, since there are now words I try for, and some I have even learned to spell..
My reading vocabulary is the best– there is many a word I haven't a clue how to say–and couldn't spell properly if my life depended on it, but I know what it means.. I understand the meaning – an now, have a better understanding of how the world works.. And along the way– have acquired enough knowledge to be a pretty good generalist..
I love this board, because there are so many word experts– I have learned so much about the workings of language..– on so many levels-- letters, (thorns evolving to d, thorp to dorp) words, grammar, phrasing, style, regional vocabulary.. And, last but not least, a lifetimes worth of puns! I have also manage, to complete this little essay- with out an of course, a phrase that all too often creeps in– a marker of my idiolect!
