Metaphorin'

“Why do you pronounce it toos-dee?” the son asked.

“For the same reason you pronounce it toos-day,” his father replied.

“But toos-day is the correct pronunciation. There’s a difference between a day and a D,” he retorted.

“Fur sure. Is there a difference betwixt a tomato and a to-mah-toe? Can you eat both? They’re called accents and while you recoil in horror at your old man’s pronunciation of Tuesday and wash with an r in it and Hawaii, I rejoice in accents. You ever hear anything better than a Pittsburgher pronounce shower without a w sound? It doesn’t get any better. Shauer.”

“I guess. But how long till it becomes un-intelligible?” he sheepishly asked.

“Puh-shaw. You put the cart before the horse. The abstracted words didn’t exist before the pronounced words my son. We kooky humans were talking well before we were writing. The alphabet and the writing of words follows the spoken language, not the other way around. What matters is the upshot of the communication. It’s why we understand someone who uses a double negative and says ‘I ain’t got no money.’ We know that cat is broke. And while you’re at it: notice the slang. Our language is full of metaphor and slang. Your mother says that after meeting me, I hung the moon. I think it is fun to parse that out and imagine it…but you want to get upset because I say warsh the clothes.”

“Ouch that r in there; it’s like nails on a chalkboard,” he shuttered.

“Nice simile…but could you make it a metaphor?”

“Putting an r in wash is the intellectual cancer in western civilization we didn’t know we needed.”

“Nice hyperbole in your metaphorin’ son.”

“Twasn’t hyperbole.”