But, Minnesota to Papua New Guinea is a long flight. 25 hours, in fact, without layovers (and crossing the International Dateline doesn’t help either). It’s a good thing I like flying.
Here we are, on our backs, in a shell of the space shuttle... |
But, little did I know then that aviation could even impact my life through linguistics :)
Whenever I find myself standing in front a desk, giving my name to a receptionist, I automatically begin spelling… “R, I, V as in Victor, A, R, D.” When I was little, I thought this was how everyone gave their last name—didn’t everyone say as in Victor if they had the letter “v”? After all, if I don’t, inevitably there is spelling confusion.
When I was six or seven, I vividly remember the shock of hearing my paternal grandmother give her last name at a video store. “R, I, V as in Valentine, A, R, D.”
Valentine! Where did that come from? On that subject, where did Victor come from?
Victor is actually the word used to represent the letter “v” in the Aviation Phonetic Alphabet. Each letter corresponds to a word to prevent confusion when pilots and control towers are talking to each other.
Even pilots need linguistics!
As I now look ahead to a life lived in airports and traveling on tiny planes (the main means of transportation in PNG), I smile, seeing patterns the Lord established early in my life that could only be His design.
Because, after all, I will always spell it as R, I, V as in Victor, A, R, D.