I figured it was finally time to bring the “wordly” part of this blog’s name into practice, and a recent Globe and Mail article has provided me with the perfect opportunity.  In his piece, Bruce Kirkby recommends bringing home a new word as a souvenir from your next vacation.  He states that “of all the gifts and keepsakes one returns with from abroad, words are often the most lasting, and the most meaningful. Words have the power to return us, in our minds at least, to the voyage on which we first learned them.”

I have to admit, when I read this article a few days ago, the idea intrigued me immediately.  Particularly because it combines two of my main passions – travelling and language.  A worldly wug, that’s me.  But upon further reflection, I realized that, for all the travelling I have done, a word is never something I’ve brought back with me. 

We’re always very careful about brining home souvenirs from our travels that will have a purpose in our life and our home.  We have a fruit pyramid from Paris, a drum from India, artwork from Berlin, and a hammock from Mexico.  Touristy trinket are just that, trinkets, and they inevitably end up in the recycling or the bag of stuff being donated to the Salvation Army a few years down the road.

But I’ve never come back home with a word.  Maybe because I tend to be quite apprehensive of speaking the local language when away, for fear of mispronunciation  and misunderstanding (probably has something to do with those perfectionist tendencies I have too).  So next time we venture away from our home country, perhaps I’ll trade a new fruit pyramid for something a bit more linguistically applicable.