THE KEY DEMOGRAPHIC

At the clinic, my doctor has probably prescribed the same blood pressure meds to many other patients, most of whom are probably a lot older than myself. And given that their full functional literacy is in Chinese, it must all look like letter salad to them. I cannot imagine trying to remember the difference between Amlodipine-Besylate and Losartan-hctz when your entire life everything you've read is one or two syllables, rarely three or four, clearly put down in distinct and recognizable patterns consisting of a collection of brush or pen strokes representing one of 214 searchable graphic elements with or without a recognizable phonetic element of up to forty strokes but usually considerably less, around a dozen strokes or so, of which there are around two thousand or more out of which around five hundred are quite common and seen everyday, and are therefore quite easy to recall over time.

English, in comparison, can be a bit tricky. Amlodipine is FOUR syllables (not five), Besylate is three. Which cannot be found in the dictionary, or at least not in a meaningful framework. It's like Western medicine decided to name everything "thingummy". "Hon, did you remember to take 'thingummy', 'thingummy', and 'thingummy' this morning after you got up?"

"You know I never do puzzles that early!"

Several native speakers of English that I know also have problems with words consisting of multiple syllables and consants clustered together in a non-strictly Anglo-Saxon order, and persistently misread the names of their favourite unpronounceable consumer goods.

In the case of some of them, single malt Scotch.

The names of which are in Klingon.

Variations on thingummy.

With hairballs.

Everything would be so much better if everyone spoke Dutch. It's easy and logical. "Afsluitdijk". "Scheveningen". "'sHertogenbosch". "Zelfgewaarwording's fenomeen".
"Volksvertegenwoordiging".

And it's rewarding! Tulips, gingerbread, and stroopwafels!



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