Taking turns

Hey, Dad, I want to try something new in my blog.

Okay. What did you have in mind?

I want to do a thing where we talk to each other.

Oh, okay, you mean like a conversation or a dialog. We can do that.

A convo-what? 

A conversation. That's when two or more people talk to each other.

Then what's a dialup?

It's dialog -- it sounds like the tree-part. That's where you have just two people talking to each other.

Then why don't you just call it talking to each other? Why do people make words so hard? Neither of those words sound like people talking to each other. And why do you have so many different sounding words for the same thing?

Well... sometimes words come from different places. Like "conversation" comes from Latin. Here, let me look it up...

Wait, wait, wait... What is Latin?

Oh, Latin is a really old language that a lot of today's words come from. Nobody really speaks Latin anymore, but a lot of other languages take words from it. Like...

Wait... there's more than one people language?! How many languages are there?

Hmmm... I don't know. Let me look that up... Here, Wiki.answers says there's about 6,900 different languages. But it also says it's hard to say exactly because some people might not agree that they're all different languages.

How many is sixty-nine-hunders?

It's a lot. It's more different languages than there are bits of food in your dinner bowl when I feed you.

Is it dinner time, now?!!!

No.

Can it PLEASE be dinner time, now?

No.

How about snack-time? Can it be snack-time, now?

Nima!

Okay, fine. Never mind.
Okay, let me ask you this. If there are so many languages, then there are probably lots of different words for EVERYTHING, right?

Yeah, that sounds right.

I mean, you just said there's three different ways to say, "talking to each other." And that's all just from one language.

Yeah, and there's more than just three ways to say it in my language.

So there could be a whole big bag of dogfood amount of words that all mean the same thing but sound different, right? Why do you need so many different ways to say one thing?

That's a good question. You're a smart doggie!

THANKS, DAD!!!  

So there are a lot of different languages because people got spread apart and then lost touch with each other.

Like, when I lost my first Mom and Dad?

Yeah, like that. Only, people got spread apart for a long time.  So long that they forgot about each other, and when they learned new things, or made up words for things that they thought were better words, they couldn't tell the people they had lost touch with. But they could still teach them to their kids. And when their kids grew up and then had their own kids they could teach them the new word. And when...

Wait... this means I can make up words!!!

Well...

I mean, you said before I can use more people words in my blog, so people can read it better. But people words are just made up. And sometimes they're not the best way to say something. So I should just make up better words, so that people will know them too!

I mean you could, but sometimes what you call things sound a lot like other things and it might be hard for people who don't know what you mean to understand. Like when you used to call the park the "outside open place" and call the balcony upstairs, the "upstairs outside place."

Well, how do people know when they've made up a better new word for something?

In the end, you only know when other people say they like it, and then start using it more than the old word. But sometimes a good place to start is if your new word is made up of other old words that each mean part of what you're trying to say. 

Huh?

Like the word, "conversation." It comes from Latin, which is really old. So someone used old Latin words to make something that means talking to each other.  Let me look it up...

Okay.

Here. It says in Latin, they used the "con" part of the word in words where you're bringing things together... And it says, that the other part, "versation" came from the word, "versatio," which means turning. So "conversatio" literally meant taking turns together...  

OH, I GET IT!!! So people decided that it was a better way to say talking to each other, because it meant they had to taking turns when they did it... We should try doing THAT in my blog!!!