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01/25/2005: "Inaugural Virtue Word Exercise"

It’s clear that Bush’s inaugural address will have a very special place in history. Not for it’s political content, of course; that would require that the aspirations expressed in the speech be based in reality, and we all know that the Bush Administration takes great pride in not being reality-based. (And we’re not making that up either – they say so themselves!) No, Bush’s speech will go down in history as one of the great language learning exercises, right up there with “the quick red fox jumped over the lazy brown dog.” Dittohead is the world’s newest language, and the second Bush inaugural address is noteworthy for its inventory of Dittohead virtue words. Virtue words have special importance for students of Dittohead because 1) they are used quite frequently by native Dittohead speakers and 2) their meaning is radically different from their English equivalents. We did a survey of the Dittohead virtue words in the speech and came up with the following examples: commitments, honor, oath, duties, liberty, freedom, rights, dignity, matchless value, ideals, rule of law, protection of minorities, protect, moral choice, reform, decent, justice, trust, progress, friendship, sacrifice, evil, courage, character, integrity, tolerance, conscience, good, and true. My personal favorites are “honor,” “sacrifice,” and “conscience.” These are especially useful as examples of Dittohead virtue word usage because of their total absence from the day to day activities of the Administration even as the Administration holds these up as their day to day obsessions. Some day television sets will have a menu option for Dittohead subtitles, making it easy for English speakers to follow Dittohead speeches. Until then, if you’re not a fluent speaker of Dittohead, you’ll need to rely on resources like SherWright’s Dittohead Dictionary. Perhaps you’ve noticed that over the last several days we’ve been defining Dittohead virtue words used in the President’s speech. We hope you find value in yet another valuable and unique service from this site, and tell your friends!