Shaina Lim
Professor John Gides
LING113B
1 March 2018
Where My Heart Belongs
Etymologists have spent centuries searching for the ancient roots of words and how their meaning has changed over time. Some words have different meanings to different people. Although generally understood in an almost similar way, some words have various meanings when used in a different context. Examining a word, therefore, requires a thorough analysis of its fundamental definitions and meaning (Pulman, 2). One word that over time has had different meanings and has been existed since the beginning of human civilization is "home." I believe most of us know little about the word "home."
At this point, do you know when "home" was actually embedded in human consciousness? Is our feeling of home natural or is it based on a permanent structure? For a significant part of the history of human species, a home may have been merely a little fire by the river and the light it cast on a couple of familiar faces, surrounded by the ancient hills. With time, it evolved to mean a house where people could live together and obtain shelter. Be that as it may, whatever home is, and how it entered our consciousness, it's just a natural phenomenon that happens to our mind. This understanding of the word "home" encompasses a socio-cultural meaning and emphasize the meaning of words as carriers of cultural meaning (Goddard, 1-3).
Home is home, and everything else is not home. That is precisely how the world is built. If you search the definition from Oxford dictionary, home means the place where one lives permanently, primarily as a member of a family or household (Matthews, 360). It also refers to a game played on the team's field or the finishing point in sports (ibid). I believe there is nothing wrong with the definition from the dictionary, but this is just the traditional way of how teachers in school teach the students or how people understand the word. As part of speech, home can work as a noun, adjective, adverb, and verb (ibid). Apparently, the word was derived from Old English hām, of Germanic origin and it was related to Dutch heem and German Heim (ibid). It was used since the 19th century, and the number is still increasing now (ibid). "Home" in the full range and feeling of Modern English is a conception that belongs distinctively to the word home (ibid). Interestingly, it is not covered by any single word in most of the Indo-European languages (ibid).
Home gives me a place to care about the most important people in my life, and they are my family. On top of that, it is true that being home can be anywhere at any time because "Home isn't a place, it's a feeling," as quoted by Cecelia Ahern (Ahern). Home is a feeling of satisfaction and joy that I share with the ones I love. Home is where there are people that can make me crazy one minute, and cause me to be upset the next minute. Home implies that regardless of what I am experiencing, irrespective of how difficult life gets, there is somebody that supports me. I know that a place is my home when I am comfortable enough just to be who I am, because I know that my family will accept the real me. I am sure home is the place one can share the ludicrousness of their day with no regret or repercussions.
However, some people say that "home" is just a place. While for me, it's not just a place; it's a place where I can feel comfortable and look forward to living every day opportunely. I will always remember when my grandfather told me:" Home is a place where our hearts belong to;it is a natural feeling that happens in life. Home is a place that helps me to create and remember countless of memories. A home is not necessarily built by blocks or wood, but rather with the bond of family. This is because family is the main thing that makes a home feel like a home. A person could have every material element in the whole world, yet it would mean nothing on the off chance when he or she doesn't have somebody with which to share it with. As such, home to me is meaningful and it semantically identified with sharing the joy, anguish, and material things with my family.
Home has been a significant word in our language today, and there's a reason for this. Some people say you can't feel "at home" in other places. But actually, there's a huge psychological difference between feeling at home and being home. Feeling at home when going on a vacation or visiting a new place is a way of saying that the feeling of "home-ness" has never gone since you left home. For some people, as they travel or relocate through their lives, they'll rediscover home over and over, while others never find another after they leave home. On the other hand, there are also a few people who never leave the one home they've commonly known for their life. While for a person that suffers homesick will know how sharp the boundary between home and not-home can be on the grounds. There is also a possibility they will experience the ill effects of the distinction. I know because I was one of them. I suffered the hardship when I first moved to the United States. Every day and night were terrible; every road, people were strangers to me. I never realize how important home was until I went away from what I used to know as home.
Over time, the meaning of the word home has evolved significantly. From just a simple dwelling surrounded by familiar faces, a home has expanded in meaning to include other social dimensions. One such aspect is the attachment that individuals have with their close relatives. This is what completes the feeling of home for most people. For instance, in sports, the home team means a team that is playing closer to where it is based. Home has also been used in different other contexts. A good example is in computing where home refers to a page in a website; it is the default web page that loads when you visit a web address (Perfetti, Charles and Joseph 22-37). In the case of some people, home is a variable concept, changing dependant on the placement of another person or object, or a person may even consider his or her own body the only "true" home. We can find these people using home as "My laptop is my home, " or even "Wifi is home." Even though the true meaning of "home" has changed, there is a passage of the Avatamsaka Sutra says: "The very beginning mind itself is the most accomplished mind of true enlightenment," and I sincerely believed it (Glassman, Maezumi and, Buksbazen, 81).
The word home affects different people in different ways. For some people who hear the word home, it simply gives them an image of a house where they live with their families. Mentioning the word home to a person could trigger the thoughts of their relatives. For instance, if you said the word home to a father working in a city away from his family, the first thought that crosses his mind is the people he left behind. For a person living in a foreign country, the mention of the word home might remind them of the country they originated. But do you know in recent times, home has turned into a hazardous thought for some people? Given the robust implications and passionate affiliations that home has for most of us, the people who have lost their homes and the things they most esteemed, such as the homeless and refugees or who have never had a legitimate home, in any case, confront mental effects and personality emergencies of huge extents. Being without a home is crushing on them in different levels. In the end, they can only be dealt with sympathy and dedication. This then shows that for different people, the effect that the word has on them is dependent on what beliefs and meaning they attach to that word.
On a personal level, the word home reminds me of the place I grew up. Although I may say that my current address is my home, any mention of home reminds me of the place I grew up and what I left behind. Hearing the word home to me brings a nostalgic feeling of the exciting times I had growing up with my parents and siblings. Even though it has only been months since I came to the United States, but I still can't wait for the next time I go home. For me, therefore, home would be a place that I get to share with the people I cared. It would not matter much where that place is as long as I am surrounded by people I love. For any place to qualify as home to me, it has to have the warmth of family. Home is to me not just a house but an environment of love and companionship.
A meaning of a word should not be understood from just a single dimension. Regardless of what the literary sources give as the definition of a word, the only way to better have a comprehensive knowledge is by looking deep inside our own imaginations and understanding. This requires us to analyze the values we attach to that word as well as the way it forms part of our consciousness. Therefore, regardless of any word, the origin and contemporary meaning should be analyzed from both a social and cultural viewpoint. It is only this way that an all rounded understanding of the word in question can be acquired."Home" is a word that I interpreted differently from the others because that is where my heart belongs and a place that I am surrounded by love.
Work Cited
Ahern, Cecelia. Love, Rosie. Hachette, 2015.
Glassman, Bernie, Taizan Maezumi, and Daishin Buksbazen. The Hazy Moon of Enlightenment: Part of the On Zen Practice collection. Simon and Schuster, 2007.
Goddard, Cliff. "Words as carriers of cultural meaning." The Oxford handbook of the word. 2015.
Matthews, Peter Hugoe. The concise Oxford dictionary of linguistics. Oxford University Press, 2014.
Pulman, Stephan Guy. Word meaning and belief. Routledge, 2016.
Perfetti, Charles, and Joseph Stafura. "Word knowledge in a theory of reading comprehension." Scientific Studies of Reading 18.1 (2014): 22-37.