As I read this, three very different thoughts came to my mind.
The first was imagining a similar conversation in a Chinese or Japanese home, where knowing words means knowing drawings (hanzi/kanji), and the difference in thinking that causes.
Second, if my child were to say that to me, my reply would be that there is only one Word that you have to know, but He, the Word who is God, knows you more than you will ever know Him.
Third, the lack of a husband in this story is so common that it isn't even mentioned or noticed, and that says more volumes than any dictionary or Siri.
‘the lack of a husband in this story is so common that it isn’t even mentioned or noticed, and that says more volumes than any dictionary or Siri.’
Many things that probably exist in these lives not mentioned
doesn’t mean they are not there. By the way, the kid was reading a novel, a work of fiction.
I always carried a pocket dictionary in college to be sure I knew the meaning of a word. I vowed I would never say in class, “was he cognitively aware?”. A buddy said later “If he was cognitive, he was aware.” Don’t want to make that mistake twice. LOL
My late brother used to have a saying that something "is more complicated than Japanese arithmetic". I suppose to the Japanese it's no more complicated than our arithmetic but not knowing the meaning of the little characters make it seems so much harder.
A little research tells you that she left an abusive husband.