Enunciation

She plays this little game in her head. It revolves around mispronouncing syllables within words deliberately. For example, “agape” would become “aja-pey” (after all, if the “g” in “agile” can sound like a “j”...); “”nutrition” would turn into “nut”(pronounced how the hard-shelled seed is pronounced)-try-shun.”

There was a reason why she invented this game. It can be traced back to her tryst with the printed letters. It’s incredible how much of her thoughts, principles, ideologies have sprung from or been inspired from the books she read, much more than from the people she met or the experiences she garnered. Therefore, it’s reasonable to construe that her encounter with a lot of words had been through the printed alphabets. The first time she came across the word “ricochet”, she marvelled at the wondrous way the syllables seemed to arrange themselves to convey the exact meaning. She felt an odd respect for whoever coined the word. It was perfect and no other word would come close. And then, one fine winter afternoon, as she watched her first George Clooney movie and her eyes glided across his sweet jawline like a butter knife, her ears stumbled and struggled when out of Clooney’s carmine lips came out “ri-co-shate”.  The “h” had not been silent all this time! Suddenly her affinity with this word ended; it seemed alien like a friend who would pick on your weak spots in public.

English language is baffling, she understood. And her interest grew. She began to listen more and as the letters turned into sounds, she was disillusioned often. It was a beautiful process and she was a little envious that her cousin has now become a student of phonology; he would now know the reasoning behind the systematic organization of sounds. But she consoled herself. That would take away half the fun of learning new words, she thought. 

When he stumbles upon a new word, he would probably do the math, while I can admire the poetry.