Words are Important

I study words. Every day I hear hundreds of new words. Language is about words: subtle differences of meaning, connotations, power, intonation - words carry meaning. It's okay to understand the meaning of a word in generalities at first, but the actual specifics of the meaning of the word are important. Words are power.

"I don't understand why you used the word jihad in that sentence..."
"Oh! I didn't say jihad, I said jihat...you know, (english:) minimal pairs..."
[hearing a familiar linguistics term that I fully understand made me want to stand up on the table and shout for joy! But I didn't.]

Not only specificness in sounds, but in meaning. For example, today in Prof NagiH's class, we went over the difference between "bad" and "not good." We talked about euphamisms and "diplomacy" in words - as in, politically correctness. Specificness.

An obvious example is going to the bathroom. Every language has polite ways to express the need to go, and crude ways. It is important to know both so you can use them properly to get your point across. In English, you can say, "I need to go to the restroom." In Arabic, one equivalent of that is, "I need to go wash my hands." Interesting.

In Arabic, the political phrase for "American Government" is not hakooma amriki, it's idarat amriki, or "American Administration." In some contexts they are the same, but in others they have vastly different meanings: "the School Government" is usually a group of students elected by students to make decisions for students, whereas "the School Adminisitration" is usually a group of adults who are in charge of admissions, facilities, and employees of the school (etc).

I volunteered that the main difference between "government" and "administration" is the first is a word that describes something that does not change (even if there is a coup and your country goes from a Democratic government to a neo-theocratic-totalitarian-dictatorship government, it remains a government. I suppose the exception would be changing to anarchy - but even "governmentless" is a form of government, in a way. It is a description of the state of the government), while the second is something in a continual state of change.

I also ventured a guess towards the etymology of the word: the United States has the most political leverage in the world. It is powerful. When you describe an action taken by the United States, it is important to acknowledge that it is not necessarily the fact that it is a Democracy, or that we have the Constitution and the Bill of Rights etc. that makes the political decisions, but rather the people who were elected to power that are responsible for making them. "American Government" implies and connotes something altogether different from "American Administration."

"Impossible" and "unlikely"/"improbable" are worlds apart in meaning, and that difference is important to understand. You know?