Kapol

Although my last post was about dancing the polka, to my eyes it just looks like kapol, kapol, kapol... over and over again. Have you ever noticed that if you look at a word for a really long time or see it written over and over again, it begins to look bizarre and unrecognizable? (Am I the only one who has ever done this? If not, I'm probably the only one who would actually admit to it!) Anyway, divorced from its meaning, on the page it begins to take on the form and likeness of a word in a foreign language. And I think, so this is what it must look like to a non-native speaker!

Before you decide that I have gone mad, consider those audio programs designed to increase sensitivity in English speakers towards those learning the language; they take sounds and rhythms from spoken English and mix and garble them so that English speakers can "hear" what non-native speakers hear when they listen to spoken English without understanding it. I am not making this up. I learned about it when I was taking theater classes way back in the day.

Well, intrepid word investigator that I am, I decided to look up "kapol" in the dictionary. It doesn't exist, at least not in the English language. So if "kapol" were an English word, what would it mean?