The Letter L

The letter L is my favorite letter of the alphabet....it's very convenient that it's the first letter of my name, but when I was little, I thought it was the most beautiful sound. I figured that if it was the initiator of both syllables in MY name and the first sound in my mother's name and the first and last sounds in my grandma's name AND the first sound in both of my other grandma's names, that it was something special indeed. It didn't hurt that the sound the letter L makes is one that you can keep going--it's called a fricative in linguistics. Sounds like F, S, and M share that characteristic with L--you can keep making the sound until you run out of breath...and when you're 3 or 4 that's really fun.

As I got to thinking about the letter L as a kid I realized that it was also the beginning sound of a lot of other really neat words--love, like, listen, lamb, lollipop, lemonade, locomotion (and I did know that word because Mom had the "At the Hop" album collection and "Locomotion" was one of the songs I would twirl my baton to for hours on end.) It seemed to my childish mind that the Letter L was clearly underused and needed to start EVERY word/syllable...so that's just how I started talking.

I wouldn't say things like "Li lant loo lo loo lee lore" (I want to go to the store) where I would replace EVERY beginning sound in a sentence, but I would change the important ones "I lant to lo to the lore." My daddy drove a loylota, my Barbie's drove a lan. Life was good...until Mom got really worried that my hearing was going again and that I was making funny sounds because I couldn't figure out how to talk anymore. She took me to the dr. to have me checked out, and of course I was fine, just goofy (or loofy if you will!).

I grew out of the habit of talking to other people using my "special L language" but I find myself these days talking to my cats that way--my orange kitty is named Loliver, for instance. I still think that the letter L is special and still remember WHY I wanted the letter L to begin all good words...maybe when I'm old and senile it will and people will simply think I'm talking in an alien language or something!