Blogpost of Blogposts

I was reminded yesterday of my favorite speech pattern in Jewish thought. It's the repetitive double phrase. You find this speech pattern sprinkled throughout the entire Bible:

* The temple is the "Holy of Holies"

* Jesus said, "Truly, truly I say to you..." ("Amen and Amen" or "verily verily")

* Revelations warns, "Woe to you, Woe to you"

* Isaiah talks about the "King of Kings, Lord of Lord's, For Ever and Ever"

It was explained to me once that the early Hebrew language didn't have punctuation, per say, or a way to emphasize speech through exclamation marks. The only way to really get your point across, when you wanted to emphasize something, was to repeat it twice. Also, Bible times predated Berringer amplification systems, so you couldn't just turn up the volume when you really wanted people to listen to your talk. Sometimes, in reference to God, the pattern would be repeated three times:

"Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty..." (Rev. 4:8)

All of this has gotten me to thinking that the Jews were definitely onto something. Why don't we incorporate the same repetitive patterns into our speech and language today? Why don't we say:

"I am angry - angry" (when we are upset), or

"I am hungry - hungry" (when we really want food) or

"I am pissed off - pissed off" (when we're really upset) or

"You are a moron - moron" (when we want to describe someone who bugs us) or

"I love you - love you" (saved for special days like Valentines day, or when we get in trouble) or

"We have budget problems - budget problems" (if you work in government)

This double speech pattern would save us a lot of time and energy from having to come up with elaborate words to describe how we feel, that most likely will go unappreciated anyway. Instead of saying, "You are minimizing me" you can simply say, "Around you, I feel tiny, tiny...". Also, by using this pattern, we may lead others to believe that we have Turrets Syndrome, which will really throw them off (sorry, sorry to my readers who have Turrets)

All for Now,

All for Now,

GB