by María L. Trigos-Gilbert

You are reading this article because you are hungry. You are hungry for words. Reading this isn’t mandatory. That’s what separates good readers from “bad” readers, more likely bad attitudes toward the activity. Thus with the right disposition one enjoys to read, but without it one dreads it. Let’s begin with a basic question: What are words? Technically speaking one could say that words are isolated characters which put together with some other characters give us a specific symbol. This compound symbol has a meaning, at times universal and some other times personal.

For instance, the letter “L” is just one of the characters from our known and common alphabet which unified with some other letters gives us a word. For example, think of the word “love.” Love has many meanings like when one likes something, adores something or someone, or when one finds something extremely appealing. For instance, in the USA people sometimes say “I love pizza,” or “I love my husband.” In Spanish if someone says, “yo AMO a la pizza,” or “yo AMO comer pizza,” would be rather too strong. In Spanish the word love has a strong implication, and to say that one loves an object or a special meal would be as if this person is misusing the word, twisting its meaning. Of course, we could find a considerable number of people in the Spanish world using “to love” rather than “to like”. It depends how strong one wants to go about something or someone.

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