Tonight at dinner, my parents decided to parse the definition of the words, and usage of, “loan”, “lend”, and “borrow”.

My dad looked to me because I am an “expert in the English language” and asked me to explain, so I do, talking about subject/object and etc. etc. (and realizing halfway through that it’s the same in Japanese, etc.) and then my mom steps in and maybe parses TOO minutely, trying to divide them up by specific situations and scenarios (“I can lend him my car, but he can’t borrow it”) and then I had to explain linguistic power framing and then finally she just stood up in a huff to go get the dictionary and that settled it. Mostly.

Typical dinner.