Blue! Baby! Purple! Hippo! Umbrella!
Nuances. Pictures in your head. Imagination.
The possibilities are endless with any language. It's what's good about words. It's also what's bad.
We almost got to the issue in French class, during which insecure people were endlessly questioning the studentteacher about which answer is "correct" and how to answer in future tests. "What if..." "What if..."
There is no solution. What makes language great is that interpretation, past experiences and imagination varies from person to person. I admit, it's also a bitch sometimes when misunderstandings occur, but if you can't live with that, stop using words and speak only Math. (Danny will be more than willing to help, I'm sure) There, a 2 is a 2, no matter the context.
Also, if the debate had persisted, perhaps the issue of the counterproductivity of reading comprehension tests would have emerged as well. It's absolutely normal that one person does not interpret a work in exactly the same way as the next. But, reading tests absolutely want one specific answer, and in that way, education dulls the imagination like nothing else.
There are standard meanings for certain things, but past the basic necessities to understanding, is it really beneficial to allow yourself to be limited by some bozo who didn't even write the text and therefore can't possibly know exactly what the author meant but who decides which answers are "right" anyways?
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