The Word Snoop by Ursula Dubosarsky Read Free Book Online Page B

palindromes, especially for inscriptions on public monuments, but lots of languages have them. In English, the longest common word that is a palindrome is REDIVIDER. But in Finnish, the word for a soapstone seller, believe it or not, is a palindrome—SAIPPUAKIVIKAUPPIAS. (Now that’s an unusual occupation—soapstone, anyone?)
    Palindromes can be found in names like Hannah, Otto, Pip, or Aviva, or places like Glenelg (where they even have an annual palindrome festival!). And then there’s always ABBA, the Swedish pop group. But a whole sentence can be a palindrome. Have a look at the ones below. Ignore the punctuation and the gaps, just look at the letters.
    Go, dog!
Was it a cat I saw?
Don’t nod.
Do geese see God?

    Believe it or not, in 1969 the French writer Georges Perec wrote a palindromic story that was 500 words long! The whole story reads the same backward as forward. It would have been very difficult to do, and it was a very strange piece of writing. In fact, some people who read it didn’t realize it was a palindrome and thought he had gone mad . . .
    The comedian Weird Al Yankovic wrote a song of palindromes about singer Bob Dylan. Try singing this:
    Madam, I’m Adam
Too hot to hoot
No lemons, no melon
Too bad I hid a boot
    Wow! (Hey, that’s a palindrome too.)

    I wonder if you can make up your own palindrome song? First, you need a supply of words. To get you started, try to figure out the palindromes on the opposite page, but I’m sure you can think of lots more yourself.

    Palindromes
    1. Another name for father
    2. The sound of popcorn cooking
    3. More red
    4. A kind of canoe
    5. If you’re in the Scouts, you’ll try to do a good one of these every day
    6. The sound a horn makes
    7. Another word for peek

Mnemonics
    Many Venomous Earwigs Munch Jelly Sausages
Underneath Nests.
    I think this sentence is trying to tell me something—and not just about venomous earwigs. This is actually a mnemonic (pronounced nem-on-ik ). A mnemonic is the word for tricks we can play with our minds to help us remember things. Like the order of the planets in the solar system . . .
    Mercury Venus Earth Mars Jupiter
Saturn Uranus Neptune
    Do you see? The beginning letters of each word in that first sentence stand for the beginning letters of the planets in the order they appear in the sky. For some reason, it’s easier to remember a silly sentence than the names of the planets themselves.
    The word mnemonic comes from one of the Titans in ancient Greek mythology. Her name was Mnemosyne ( Nem-oss-in-ee ) and she represented memory. In the ancient world, memory was especially important when there weren’t many books and not many people learned to read. People used to memorize pages and pages of the books everyone wanted to hear, like The Odyssey or the Bible, and hundreds of types of mnemonics were developed to help them do this. Nowadays we would find it incredible that people could remember that much, but of course back then they didn’t have a choice. It wasn’t until the fifteenth century, after the printing press was invented, that the need for such amazing acts of memory fell away.
    But not totally! There are still things we need to remember. When the Word Snoop was at school, she learned the Great Lakes from west to east across Michigan with the sentence: Sam’s Horse Must Eat Oats— Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, Ontario. (You’d be surprised how often this information comes in handy . . . )
    There are many different types of mnemonics. For example, to remember the difference between spelling desert and dessert, you can say “the sweet one has two sugars.” (Two S’s, get it?) And what about the rhyme to remember the number of days in each month (“Thirty days has September . . .” and so on). That’s a mnemonic too. And have you seen the episode of The Simpsons when Bart and Lisa help Marge to study for a big exam by putting all the facts she needs to remember to the tune of a song? I bet