Search for a living fossil
It all started as a single-minded quest for grouper.
Actually, this whole short saga reminds me of a book I once read in elementary school called Search for a Living Fossil, a story about the discovery in 1938 of an ancient fish, thought to be long extinct, that just happened to turn up one day in a fisherman’s boat somewhere off the east coast of Africa.
The name of the fish in question was—is—a coelacanth, an intimidating handle for even the bravest adult, much less the child of eleven I was at the time. Ever the pragmatist, I quickly opted to throw in the towel on this linguistic challenge and select a simple pronunciation reasonable to me—”KO-luh-kanth.” I later learned, of course, that big, smart people properly pronounce this fish’s name “SEE-luh-kanth.” Nevertheless, to this day, when I happen upon this word—rarely, to be sure, but occasionally—that little voice in the back of my childhood brain still sounds out the syllables, “KO-luh-kanth.” Early learning dies hard, even if it’s wrong. Still, I was pretty darn close. Read the rest of this entry »
