Remember when "blog" still needed to be explained as an abbreviation for "web-log"? Remember when "tweet" was just the sound a bird made? Remember when Webster's Dictionary added Stephen Colbert's original catchword, "truthiness"?
As we progress into new and undiscovered technologies, the addition of new words to the English language has become a necessity. However, we've gone well beyond just words we needed to add, and started throwing whatever we felt like into the English language like it's a stew cooked by madmen, comprised of any old crap we find laying around.
Now, I was an English major and I have a Master's in English, so one would assume that I might have a problem with this free form approach to language, but I actually really enjoy the freedom it provides. I mean, "preggers" has now become a commonly used synonym for "pregnant" (I don't know why, it takes just as long to say and sounds ridiculous, but whatever), because gossip columnists started saying it and printing it in tabloids.
And remember that the English language isn't viewed like other languages. We're not the French, we don't have an English Academy locked away in some stuffy classroom voting on what should or should not be spoken by truly literate, pretentious people. Granted, we do have the aforementioned Webster's Dictionary, but Webster's includes slang and is constantly updating in order to keep up with commonly used words and phrases.
So the closest thing we have to a definitive guide on the English language adapts with us instead of forcing us to adhere to its rules and guidelines. The means that the people cited as being supposedly in charge of our language aren't really in charge, WE ARE!! We're literally making this shit up as we go along!
Hell, even grammar rules are changing from what I was taught. You know you can now correctly begin a sentence with "and" or "but"? One might be tempted to ask "Why?", but the answer is "Why the hell not? People were already doing it anyway, might as well go with the flow."
Ah, to be alive in a time when, if I get stuck writing because the word I want doesn't exist, I can do just as Billy Shakespeare himself did, and make the frackin' thing up.
(P.S.- "Frack" is what they used instead of "fuck" on Battlestar Galactica. Yes I'm a geek, but I admit it.)
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Upon re-reading this, I realized I left out what makes this phenomenon worth mentioning in terms of the last ten years. With the rise of mass media like social networking sites, online news sources, or even blogs (more widely read than mine), new terms and words can and do spread much faster than they did previously. Thus, as our world gets a little more connected, we manage to spread our originality in terms of language use to many more people with much more speed than we ever could have before.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think I made up the word "mulletted" specifically for my previous post, but that does accidentally prove my point for this post. I needed to turn "mullet" into an adjective, so I just did, and I'm assuming you all understood what I meant.
I like the fact that we are so lazy as a nation that we acroymn everything now (LOL, OMG, WTF, DWTS, LMFAO, etc). Once I joined facebook, I had to ask my wife what most of this meant, since I am old and out of it (I at one time thought LOL was lots of love). Also, people have always invented words for certain sitatuaions (like you mulleting from the previous blog) but nowadays, your right, with all those shorthand communicating going on, all it takes is for two people's shorthand to catch on, and suddenly it is in the dictionary. Not like this was not foreseen. Check out the young adult novel Frindle for someone with foresight on this very subject
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