On Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious: Morphologically Amazing

You know that there are people who suffer from many phobias when they were kids. I think I was probably one of them. I'm afraid of many things: water, fire, height, trains, dirt, I guess I used to be afraid of almost everything in this world. One of my childhood phobias was the fear of long words, or what is named: hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.

I used to be afraid that I cannot remember long words and that it wastes my time to pronounce them correctly yet I have to be able to do that in some cases. But this fear I used to suffer was not as bad as my other fears. I'm  triggered to recall and pronounce long words correctly due to some childhood movies I've seen. One of those childhood movies is Mary Poppins.

Yea, that one. That "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious." And to be honest, when I was a kid, I can never recall and pronounce the word correctly (I even have no idea that it is an "invented" word that cannot be found in the dictionary. Yes, I was such an innocent girl). 

Now, that I have learned morphology during my college years and after having the original DVD of Mary Poppins that makes me easier to rewind the scenes whenever I missed what Julie Andrews and other casts say, I remember and can pronounce and spell the word pretty well. 

I like this word, to be honest. I'd say that it's morphologically cute. Why is that? Because it consists of English free morphemes and bound morphemes, but when you combine them together, it doesn't follow the rules of English morphology. Semantically, it seems that the word doesn't mean anything as the characters of the movie say, "it's the word you say when you have nothing else to say."

But you see, when you separate the morphemes together (either the free or the bound ones), they do have meanigns, actually. You'd sound familiar with "super", the bound morpheme "calli" (from the word calligraphy), "fragile", the bound morpheme "istic" (from the word optimisitc, pessimistic, and other similar adjectives), "expiate", and "docious." Even the filmmaker himself said that this word blending actually carries meaning: "Atoning for educability through delicate beauty." Even though, I still cannot tell you why the word with this meaning should be able to help you to express things you hardly express.

But the point is.... I was amazed with this word-invention of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. This shows how creative humans are and how magical a language is. You don't have to strictly follow the rules of language just to express your feelings. You can express all your feelings with either words in dictionary or words you create yourself. Even more magical, you can express your feelings even if you yourself don't even understand the feelings. This shows that your words know you better than yourself. This shows that language is definitely beyond the speaker.

And that makes me even more amazed by the power of linguistics.