A Bill Hold

The other day I asked Hiromi if he had some cash for me. Since I don't have paychecks to cash during this Sabbatical year, I often have very little cash in my billfold. He always cheerfully complies with requests for cash, so the next morning, I found this note on the kitchen table:

"I put $18.00 in your bill hold."

I grinned to myself. Another lesson in linguistics.

Like other native Japanese speakers, he sometimes confuses the "f" and "h" sounds. That used to seem impossible to me. Then I noticed that both are unvoiced sounds made by air moving past the lips. The main difference is that the "f" sound involves first placing the top teeth lightly on the bottom lip. The lips are parted for the "h" sound. If you get just a trifle inattentive about the teeth and lip placement, billfold and bill hold have only a very minor pronunciation variation--so minor that if you're not a native-English speaker, they are easily confused.

I started thinking about what a useful thing a "bill hold" would be. I could call up Weststar and ask them to put a "bill hold" on the electricity charges for the month because "money is a little tight this month since the vehicle insurance comes due now." How about a "bill hold" at the dentist's office? This concept has some real possibilities.

The girl from Lancaster County I used to live with always said "wallet" for billfold. Maybe she was onto something I should have taught Hiromi. But then I would have missed this linguistics insight. And my imaginary triumph over Weststar and the dentist would have stayed unimagined.