A New Year - New Words

I want to write a little something today.  Nearly everyday I feel guilt for not doing a little bit of writing.  So what better way to start the new year off than spend ten minutes writing.  I’d like to do a little bit of writing everyday to kind of “keep my hand in”.  I wouldn’t really call this a New Year’s resolution, but mostly just because I hate New Year’s resolutions.  I should be writing my memoirs of New Zealand, but I can’t tell you how hard that is!  I’ve done a good bit of writing on the topics I wanted to cover, but now comes the editing and research that needs to be done.  I love to edit.  I just don’t like editing my own work.  Or maybe it’s the research I hate more.  I’ve done most of the editing of my New Zealand writing, but whenever I edit it I realize there’s a lot of research I need to do to back up what I’m saying.  Maybe I should hire a researcher. . . 

On a completely other topic, but somewhat related, I’ve chosen the top three words that I’ve learned and incorporated into my vocabulary in 2011.  Two of them are very Kiwi-ish to me: reckon and cheers.  

Every time I say “I reckon” I think of my friend Richard.  He was the first person that I really noticed used this phrase a lot.  Every time I say “I reckon” I think of him.  I must be thinking of him a lot because I say it several times a day.  Even to my ears it still sounds weird and I wonder how it sounds to my friends and family.  Although, recently I’ve noticed some of my family members picking up on it.

Cheers.  Not as in let’s make a toast, “cheers”, but as in “thank you”.  I used to have an Australian guest at my hotel in Seattle who always said “cheers” at the end of our encounters.  It drove me nuts.  I had no frame of reference for it.  Whenever he said it it always made me feel a bit awkward.  What do you say in response to “cheers”?  You’re welcome?  That just never seemed right to me.  I even had a conversation with him just to discover exactly what he meant when he said it.  Then I went to New Zealand and everyone says “cheers” or “cheers for that”.  I had to get used to it.  With about 2 or 3 months left in my stay, I started using cheers too.  But I still can hardly say it without tacking a “thank you” on at the end.  “Cheers.  Thank you.”  Has become a standard in my lexicon of language.  I love to say it especially to sales girls just to watch them squirm at it like I used to.  I’m cruel.  I know it.

The third new word I’ve begun to use often is “honestly”.  I have no clue where I picked this up from!  Well, that’s not entirely true.  My friend Emily says “honestly” quite often, but I’ve known her forever.  How can I have just now picked up this word from her?  But somehow it is a major player in my speaking life.  Nearly every time I say it I wonder where that it from!  I’ve never felt like an “honestly” person, but apparently I am.

Have you picked up any new words or phrases that you didn’t use a year ago?  Anything sneaking into your conversations you don’t recognize?