Palindromes

When studying language - ours or someone else's - we always get caught up in things like verb tenses, remembering that new list of 30 vocabulary words from last week, or wondering whether "I" actually comes before "E" except after "C", It's these aspects of learning a language that makes us want to die a little inside sometimes. So why don't we talk about something fun in our language?

pal·in·drome

ˈpalənˌdrōm/

noun

1. a word, phrase, or sequence that reads the same backward as forward, e.g., madam or nurses run.

Sounds fun right? I actually Wikipedia-ed it because I was curious about the word origin and who actually thought up the concept of palindromes, but I actually found out some things that were far more interesting. Palindromes are like how the word racecar, spelled backward, is still racecar. Or how taco cat spelled backward is still, in fact, taco cat. It works with phrases too! For example, there is no "x" in Nixon, is still there is no "x" in Nixon backward. Cool right? Just wait, it gets BETTER.

Palindromes can be found outside words, phrases, or writing altogether. One such example is a piece of an opera (shown below) written by Alban Burg called Lulu.

The sequence of notes goes: D F♭ A♭ D♮ D F♭ A D | D A F♭ D D♮ A♭ F♭ D

As you can see on the top treble staff, there is a series of notes that go up and down, mirroring itself exactly forward and backward, creating the palindrome. While you technically "write" music, it's interesting to see the same concept across multiple mediums. The next picture describes palindromes that can be found in biology.

This example has to do specifically with DNA nucleotides: Guanine (G), Thymine (T), Adenine (A), and Cytosine (C). C always pairs with G, and A always pairs with T. So, in the left part of the picture, the top strand's sequence reads G A T C, and the bottom strand reads C T A G, creating the palindrome. Neat right?

While the word Palindrome was originally coined to describe when words or phrases could be read the forwards and backward, the word eventually came to describe the phenomenon of something being able to be read forwards and backward. It's interesting how the word has come to have a broader definition to not only describe words that this phenomenon but even when this phenomenon is found in music and our own DNA. Think, not only can you read a palindrome on paper, but you potentially have one inside your own body.

~Maryちゃん