Espressive

Today

A friend today commented that she has only just, after God knows how many years, realised that her favourite coffee is "espresso", not "expresso". She added that we often read what we expect to see, not what's there.

Quite.

In My Day

As a child I was a greedy reader. I read my books very fast and often ones that were a bit beyond my age. Thus, I read Dickens by the time I was about nine, Laine's Arabian Nights and so on. Often I had to struggle with strange phrases, especially in my beloved Hans Andersen. What, exactly was meant by "snip, snap, snurr, bassleurr" in the Snow Queen? ..... Something very Scandinavian that meant nothing to me and which I couldn't pronounce. 

And all those Persian names in the Arabian nights! I just had to stumble along somehow, I didn't ask my parents (that would have meant admitting to reading those books at three in the morning), so my misunderstandings just went on.

One of my favourite HCA stories was "The Wild Swans" which tells of little Elsie and her struggles against cruelty and prejudice. I read it again and again and cried as she was dragged through the streets in a tumbrel and rescued at the last minute by her brothers.

Only when I read the story out loud to my daughters  about twenty years later did I realise that her name is "Elise".