So I read my books and I played with my toys and I taught myself how to read by the basics my parents taught me whenever they read to me. When you're left alone for hours every day and told you are not allowed out except for bathroom breaks until further notice, you figure out how to read those books on your own fairly quickly. If I was a smart kid it was because I was forced into developing as quickly as possible for my own sake, it's not my folks fault really - they were as much caught in poor circumstances as I was - but that's neither here nor there for this post.
In the process of learning how to read mostly on my own, I had to figure out how to pronounce difficult words on my own. This brought about the unfortunate side effect of me pronouncing quite a few words in my vocabulary in all the incorrect ways. Whenever someone corrected me for years, it caused me such embarrassment that I usually grumbled, scowled and turned away.
Once I figured out why this was happening (the being corrected on pronunciation often) and how long ago this little dictionary faux paus began - I relaxed.
I decided on a whim to put a hangman widget on my iGoogle profile, just something to do while pages are loading, etc. (see img below)
While playing it over the last week, off and on, I realized that I am increasing my vocabulary and am learning how to correctly enunciate words I'd always found hard to vocalize. (It has a link to a dictionary with audio pronunciations.)
So, even though I'm goofing off I'm still improving myself.
That's my favorite kind of game - where learning and fun go hand in hand.
I'm a geek, I know.
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