There are many ways you can approach vocabulary study. Are you looking for a quick review of unfamiliar words you need to learn for a new job? Perhaps you’re going back to school and want to bring your overall vocabulary skills to a higher level in order to be able to get the best grades on your essays and papers. Or maybe you just like the way words look and sound, and hope to bring new life to your correspondence and conversations. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having fun while studying vocabulary, no matter what your goals are, and the English language is full of interesting words and ways to use them.

We’ve talked before about palindromes, words that reads the same both forwards and backwards. Examples of palindromes in English include civic, tenet, solos, kayak, and redder. Some palindromes are entire phrases that can be reversed in letter order and remain identical (“do geese see god” is one example). In addition, there are sentence palindromes where the words are mirrored, rather than the letters (“Fall leaves as soon as leaves fall”), and even entire poems where the palindrome is created by reversing the order of the lines (though the words in each line remain in the same order).

A recent children’s book titled “Mirror Mirror: A Book of Reversible Verse” uses this last technique to present different takes on common fairy tales. Author Marilyn Singer presents both sides of the story by reversing each poem depending on who’s speaking. For example, Little Red Riding Hood’s comment about how sweet and juicy the berries she’s picking are becomes the wolf’s greedy comment on how the berry-picking girl looks so juicy and sweet! It’s a great book to teach children about the fun they can have with language, and the clever wordplay will keep parents entertained as well.

Adults might want to read one of the very few complete novels that form palindromes, Lawrence Levine’s “Dr. Awkward & Olson in Oslo” (a self-published work that didn’t get very far, given the difficulty of making sensible sentences using palindromes). There’s also an inspirational poem by Jonathan Reed titled “Lost Generation” that when read forwards is a bleak commentary on modern life. Reversed, however, it’s a statement of hope and commitment to a better future. You can watch a recording of the poem being recited by teenagers in this YouTube video.

Spend some time studying palindromes, and you’ll be able to state proudly, “Sé verlas al revés!” (a Spanish palindrome that translates as “I know how to see them backwards”)