Yesh Li Blog: A is for Ameliorate

Thursday, December 13, 2012

A is for Ameliorate

I love this word, ameliorate. It has a very pleasant, ameliorating tone, and it reminds me of one of the first words I learned in Latin class in the 9th grade. It is the comparative of the adjective bonus (-a, -um), which means good. Melior means better (mejor in Spanish).

Melior

Our daughter Bonnie’s name comes from the Latin root bonus (-a, -um). In Latin, bonita means goodness, in Spanish, pretty.

For you linguaphiles (Hank Dunham, call your office), here it is in its declensions.

*Number*	*Singular*		*Plural*
*Case \ Gender*	*M.F.*	N.	*MM.FF.*	*NN.*
*nominative*	melior	melius	meliōrēs	meliōra
*genitive*	meliōris	meliōris	meliōrum	meliōrum
*dative*	meliōrī	meliōrī	meliōribus	meliōribus
*accusative*	meliōrem	melius	meliōrēs	meliōra
*ablative*	meliōre	meliōre	meliōribus	meliōribus
*vocative*	melior	melius	meliōrēs	meliōra

Ameliorate is sometimes confused with alleviate, but alleviate has to do with making a burden bearable, lessening the pain. Amelioration has to do with actually making things better. Ameliorators of the world, unite. Let’s make this world a better place! Tikkun olam!

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Why Yesh Li Blog?

Why do I have a blog? Quite simply, I have a blog to share my favorite things with others. The right side of the blog has a long list of links to some of the places on the Internet that I visit often. In addition to sharing those with others, I often come here myself to find a quick link to where I am going.

Bonnie, our eldest, led the way into blogging with her Simple Beauty Blog, and later with her extremely popular Beans Blog. I decided I would give blogging a try and thought "I have a blog" might be a clever name, but in English it sounded rather lame, so I did it in Hebrew, a language I love more and more the more I learn it.

What does Yesh Li Blog mean?

We would translate (i.e. interpret) yesh li blog to mean "I have a blog" in English, but the literal Hebrew means "There is for (or to) me a blog." You cannot literally say "I have" something or other in Hebrew. It is always "there is for me," or "there is for you," or "there is for us," etc. Hebrew, the language of the Bible, is showing us that we are really stewards of what has been provided for us and for our use. Rather than private ownership, perhaps a better term for what we "own" would be private stewardship.

Languages have been my passion since at least the fourth grade, when I studied Spanish from a library book called Fun with Spanish. In high school, I was the rara avis that became enamored of Latin. In later U.S. Navy tours of duty in Spain, Italy, and Japan, we did our best to learn the local languages. Along the way, I studied some Russian and picked up some Greek by studying etymologies and some Chinese by studying Japanese writing systems.

My first introduction to Hebrew was in the early 1980s, when I took a correspondence course, but it was not until the past decade that my primary focus has been on this wondrous language. It has been deeply rewarding, and especially in the past few years since we met Ori, an amazing Israeli woman, who has become not only my primary Hebrew mentor but also our good friend. Moreover, the small group of people who meet weekly to study Torah in Hebrew in Boulder have become dear to us and enriched our lives greatly. Further, reading Jewish commentaries on the Web of the weekly Torah portions has deepened my own faith and opened up new understandings of the scriptures we share and of Christian writings based on those scriptures.

The pursuit of words has been an essential part of my life for many years (since birth?). Many things have changed in my life, but I don't see that part of it changing any time soon (until death?). Lehitraot! Shalom, Chaverim!