OCEAN APART, BUT MOVING CLOSER

The number of new words we encounter but can't find in half our dictionaries is legion. "Newspeak" and "newthink" are now in common usage, and we've just lifted "groupthink" from a daily calendar. "Groupthink" is defined as conformity to group values and ethics. It's worth groupthinking about!

Another term from the calendar (sent piece by piece from Philadelphia) is "banting," a diet plan that eschews sweets and carbohydrates. Know any diabetics who "bant"?

"Bunjee" hasn't made my shelves either, but a feature on "bunjee jumping" appeared in a recent issue of Time under the title "Bunjee jumping has come of age." I hadn't been informed of its existence, but discovered it's a high-risk sport in which sportsnuts leap from hot air balloons and high towers to platforms or wherever. Don't give it a second thought unless you're prepared to meet your Maker.

Why this continued obsession with new tried and untried words? Because our thoughts are still on the rapid growth of a language so diverse that even those of us who have spent our lives trying to master it are often confounded by the simplest of terms.

So imagine, once again, what it's like for newcomers and temporary guests from other countries. Suppose you are an exchange student, with little background in spoken English, British or American. You know what a hole is an opening or a perforation in something solid. But one morning a classmate tells you her baby brother, who has no teeth, ate a whole donut. You think she's joking because she's chuckling, so you ask if the baby ate the hole inside the donut. Your newfound friend explains that "whole" means "all" but you still don't know there are two spellings, nor why the same word should mean "all."

Let's consider a few more examples:

A student newly arrived from an Israeli settlement hears a classmate say his family chauffeur drove him to school. The American pronounces the word SHO-fur. To the newcomer, a "shofar" is a ram's horn trumpet sounded in synagogues to announce the beginning of a religious holiday. Can a ram's horn drive, the new arrival wonders. Is it another electronic miracle that saves human energy? If so, he'd better find out about it right away. Life in the United States is exciting, but oh so exhausting!

You are a student from Estonia, and your English teacher tells your class you should all keep a diary. You've always been a poor speller, and you thought a diary was a place where cows are kept. Why should schoolboys keep cows in a land where there is no shortage of milk?

Travel has lessened the gap between American and British English, and we all know an elevator in the United States is a lift in the British Isles. We know suspenders are galluses, a telephone is a call box, and a baby sitter is a child minder. But you are a London native come to make your home with relatives in Ohio, and your reason for enrolling in a cooking class is that your family had such a marvelous cook you are thinking of becoming an American chef.

Your beloved cook back home taught you about caster sugar, icing sugar, and cornflour, and all English children know about digestive biscuits. Here in cooking class, you discover caster sugar is granulated sugar, icing sugar is confectioner's sugar, and cornflour is cornstarch. Digestive biscuits turn out to be graham crackers, sultanas are white raisins, and aubergine is eggplant. Holy Toledo! (All strangers learn expletives their first day in school.)

One thing I'll always regret is that I missed the experience of being an exchange student or teacher in Ireland. (What a challenge for an American English teacher!) I was born 30 years too soon, as the saying goes. It's nearer 50, but only those untutored in American idiom take us at our word. It takes time for them to discover that when we say a leopard never changes its spots, we are saying human nature never changes. But it takes little time for them to learn that regardless of language barriers, human nature is pretty much the same all around the world.