I am a blessed individual. I've been blessed to be brought into existence in the United States of America. As such, my native language is English, which is not as simple as it may sound. The English language, as I'm beginning to understand the more I read, is a very complicated language. Even as a native born speaker I know how and when to speak the language, but if I had to write down the rules and exceptions to those rules I'd never be able to come up with them all. There are simply too many to count (i before e except after c...anybody remember that one?), and way to many to even know about until you come across a situation when you'll need to know it.
On top of that, you then have to consider the base (meaning foundational) languages of ancient history, Greek, Latin, Romance languages, and take into account their impact on the development of words within the English language. Take for instance the word hemiparesis. I recently came across the word in one of my counseling textbooks. For the life of me I had no clue what it meant. After looking it up, which you may have already done, I discovered it means pathology (my paraphrase=or what one considers to be wrong with oneself). I'm convinced some textbooks writers use such big words merely because they either want to lose their reader, or they want to impress them with their grandiose use of the English language. Why couldn't the author just have said, "here's what's wrong with them"? No, he had to go and use some stinkin' huge word that I had to go and look up if I wanted to keep from getting lost. Anyway, I haven't done a thorough examination of the origins of this word, but I'm thinking it is probably not found within the English language, but in some other base language.
Still, the English language is fascinating to unpack, even if it is only one word at a time. I guess the author succeeded in another potential goal. Now I know what hemiparesis means, and so do you. You may now go use it to wow your friends.
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