Youth: Communication

52x52: Learn and/or Use a New Positive Word.

52 random acts of kindness that each take under 52 seconds. One action each week, over a year takes less than an hour of your life.

Looking at language over the past week, I realised that the right word at the right time could make all the difference. And  how language can turn a situation towards the positive or the negative, and can be the smile or frown of vocabulary. 

Here is a positive word list from Enchanted Learning, a great resource website for working with children and another from Positive Words Research.

You probably know all these words but how ofter do you use them? And how often do you use such positive words? It wouldn't take long to think or look at the list and find a word you haven't used before about a person and then tell them that they are ________ ,  or your life with them is _________ ,  or they make you feel  ___________ .

Our children learn from us and if we teach them positive words the world might be a better place for them or at least they may perceive it as more so. 

And if nothing else, as the saying goes : You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

The Right Word

In The Blarney Stone and The Gift of the Gab I talked about the gift of eloquence and the difference between the right and almost right word. Visiting Ireland with two Britons I was aware of the differences in our languages. Of course we have the Irish language Gaelige or Gaelic but we also have our version or dialect of English. Here are some of the differences:

• eejit = idiot
• press = cupboard
• craic = fun
• yoke = thing
• haymes = mess
• runners = trainers
• gowl = silly person
• banjaxed = broken
• give out = tell off/chastise
•  sliced pan = sliced loaf

While some of these words like 'craic' have been derived from English words other words in the English language have been derived from Irish such as 'boycott' and 'bog'. However my favourite one is the word 'Tory', considered by the Oxford Dictionary to be derived from the 17th Century Irish word toraidhe meaning outlaw or  highwayman.

There's no more to say.