Flirtatious: You ignite the cutaneous oils of my pulsating pectoral region.
Real Mood? Literally Pugnacious
Prediction: Tommorrow, somewhere in America, someone will use their entree fork on the salad. I'm not kiddin! It's going to happen.
Word usage is fun and sometimes it's fun to make fun of how they (words) are used. Let's quickly review a few of my linguistic pet peeves. I don't think all homo sapiens should be lumped into the phylum "Guys," and certainly not "Guyses." I would be mightily angry should I be referred to by the appellation "Gal," or me and my drinking buddies lumped together as "Galses."
I have a problem dropping the article "the", prior to hospital, to describe where a person might be going after being hit by a truck. It bothers me because it's a syntactic invasion of American English. It's clearly not the way we've said it since The Revolution. But now with the international flavor of twenty four hour cable news channels, "going to hospital" is slowly becoming acceptable when it ought to be exceptable. Has it occured to anyone the reason they say it that way, might be that under the British medical system, technically there really is just a single hospital? Just a guess.
So here's my latest. It is the use of the word "Pass" in all it's forms, to describe death. Was it really taking us too long to say, "Passed Away?" Where was the motivation, the very need to shorten it? Please stop to think of the dysfunction of using this already potentially confusing multi-functioning word to describe the sensitive biological act of dying. Example, you say?
There's a bunch of guys sittin' around the Mercantile getting ready for a hot game of dominoes. Someone finally notices.
"Hey, where's Billy Bob?"
"Ain't ya heard?"
"Heard What?
"Billy Bob passed."
"So! That ol boy's been passin' gas for 50 years. It ain't ever stopped 'im from a good game of dominoes."
"No, I mean he PASSED."
"Are you pullin' muh leg? You mean he PASSED that drivin' test? The ol' goat don't even use 'is breaks. He just slows down til he 'its sumpin. We need some sorta warnin' system here in town that let's us know when he gets behind the wheel."
"No, dag nabit, yuh knuckle head, he PASSED."
"You tellin' me he seed us all a sittin' here waitin for 'im, and he just walked right on by? That ain't right in my thinkin."
"You straw brained nincompoop. Listen to me now! Billy Bob passed."
"Whatcha gettin' so upset about? The way yer actin' you'd think somebody up and died."
I got more where that came from, but that ought to do the trick.
One might think the evolution of language to be a simple acceptance in time of how it's effectively used by uncomplicated people just trying to get by.
Or it's the work of creative synapses determined to expand the way we see things. My old friend George Dehlmar was good at that. We were on campus together at Long Beach State in the 60's. Out of no where, to fit the environment and circumstances, he would create language.
"So what's happenin' George?" (It's true. We used to say things like that. "What's Happenin'?")
"Think I'm gonna check out this flower and see what's bloomin'."
"Yeah?" Sometimes it was just better to humor him.
"Need to sound her out and get her rhythym. Dig?"
"Oh, right on. No, I don't dig George. Whaat in the hell are you talkin' about?"
"I'm just thinking about going over there and talking to that nice looking girl. If she is as pleasant to talk to as she is looking, I'm going to ask her out."
I miss George.
I'm finding the fracturing of our language comes from all fronts. If we're going to fight it we'll need to circle the word wagons. They're coming at us from all directions.
Heard of Amy Vanderbilt? You'd need to be fairly long in the tooth (where did that one come from) to know about Amy. So to get us all on a 'level playing field,' (where did that one come from) Amy was a self appointed mistress of manners in this country. (I think she PASSED in the early 70's.) If you wanted to know where to place your salad fork? Check with Amy. If you wanted to be "Upper Crust" (where did that one come from) you did as Amy did. I'm telling you all this because you'd think, "here is a woman who is going to protect our language. She will demand that we behave and speak properly." So I stumbled on to a couple of pieces of advice Amy was handing out.
" Do not speak of repulsive matters at table."
Looking for the "the?" It ain't there. We can't blame it all on Christianne Amanpour.
Here's some more Vanderbilt advice.
"Do not smokewithout asking permission, or sit so near that the smoke might annoy."
Huh? annoy who? Looking for a proper noun or pronoun to follow annoy? It will not be showing up. But let us be fair. Maybe Amy was uttering this piece of advice on her death bed. There was an upward inflection on "might annoy," and then (duh,duh,duh,duh) she just PASSED.
Christianne, friends of Billy Bob, George, and Amy I salute you. Without each and every one of you, this blog might bore at ball.
No comments:
Post a Comment