Do you enjoy playing word games?
When it comes to word challenges like Bananagrams, Wordle, and Scrabble, I’ll wholeheartedly say yes to a friendly competition.
Playful language is also part of my entire family’s DNA. I have a reputation for making up rhymes on demand. My husband has bestowed affectionate nicknames on each of us—animals, too—that stick for life. Joining in, our children and their close friends rarely call one another by their given names.
When they were little, our son and daughter further loved making up their own words. Rooted in humor, a selection of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and interjections so perfectly hit the mark in evoking vivid, lively meanings that the inventions have been ingrained our family’s lexicon.
When the kids were young, we also made a game of naming real words that sounded silly to our ears. (Take banana, for instance). To note, asking, “Who came up with that word?” is a wonderful way to spark children’s curiosity about the etymology of everyday language as well as to inspire them to broaden their vocabularies.
Another game we created toyed with the question of what would happen if we traveled to a distant land where the natives generally spoke our language except for some similarly sounding words (homophones). Imagine, for instance, if we went to a restaurant and ordered spaghetti with the chef’s special sauce, and the waiter, who didn’t want to offend us by questioning our taste, brought us a chocolate cake (spaghetti in his language) smothered in a Bolognese!
Ultimately, our words games prompted conversations about the importance of clarity and the good habits that support mutual understanding:
- looking up unfamiliar words in a dictionary (not a thesaurus) to use them correctly
- enunciating words (no mumbling)
- using concrete nouns (e.g., book instead of it; Mary instead of she)
- speaking in complete sentences (e.g., restating a point rather than beginning a sentence with because)
- politely asking others to repeat confusing questions or statements
- taking care to explain oneself without exhibiting impatience
- establishing eye contact (if possible and when culturally acceptable)
Casting much of the blame on technology, I am not alone in noticing how many children today lack the basic skills. One of my friends contends that in a few generations, no one will know how to communicate without AI. If stranded without their devices, tomorrow’s humans will be back to grunting and gesturing like cave people. Oh, let’s hope not!
I have legitimate concerns, but my elementary-school-aged neighbors are telling me that meaningful face-to-face interactions are alive and well.
I occasionally write about walking my dog, which is something we do almost every morning. If we time our rounds through our neighborhood just right, we encounter four sets of children on their walk to school. While pausing to play with my dog, who adores kids and considers such moments highlights of his day, the boys and girls are wonderful conversationalists. Whether with an adult or on their own, they engage with me in ways that reflect how well they’ve adopted all or most of the practices listed above.
Without question, their parents and grandparents have been excellent role models. In a small way, my brief exchanges also reinforce what they’ve learned and present opportunities for my young neighbors to hone their conversational skills.
And that’s my point: if we want the tech-immersed generations to be more articulate, we must employ the time-tested rules of engagement when interacting with them. Children and young adults need us to show them—by example—how to master the art of communicating.
Finally, students must grasp a universal rule: manipulating the language to conceal their limited knowledge of a subject or to obscure facts might win them a round, but it’s a losing strategy in the game of life.
That said, Scrabble anyone?
Sallie W. Boyles, a.k.a. Write Lady
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