Mr. Bates, I think you must have missed (or misinterpreted) my post of March 3, ’06: The Last Duchess: The Adverb is Dead; Long Live the Adjective!. I fully support the vibrancy and energy that new words and novel phrases bring to our beautiful language, particularly those efforts that do it with humor–and sometimes irony. What I deplore is the mangling of the English Language in situations that call for “standard English” and correct grammar, such as the writing or reading of news, or speeches by our leaders.
And please, no more tea jokes. I’ve been hearing them since my early days as an immigrant, which is to say, the mid-1970’s. Bo-ring.
]]>I have noticed that hammers and heat tend to lead to colorful language.
]]>Old language is particularly wonderful, and I’ve read a lot of it in pursuit of information about the old music I performed. Here’s a period English translation of a bit of advice from a French writer in 1688: “Of two notes one is commonly dotted but it has been thought best not to notate them for fear of their being performed by jerks.” By all means, let’s prevent performance by jerks! (The actual meaning: in France, pairs of eighth notes, though notated simply as two eighth notes, were usually swung or lilted in performance [hence “dotted”] as in mid-20th-century jazz, but French composers didn’t write the dot, because that would have been an indication of an even more extreme inequality of the two notes.)
But new language is fascinating too. I find it frustrating that wikipedia’s monitors tend to suppress neologisms, even if they are commonly in use in a segment of the population (particularly the blogosphere). Languages grow or die; I’d like ours to grow. (I guess I won’t be invited to tea by LitBrit.)
]]>Maybe that’s a cleaned-up version of your story. Either way; isn’t language cool?
]]>In general I am much nastier than the people who are overly fond of the coarse. I prefer to watch the victim bleed to death from a thousand minor cuts, than to bash their skulls in with a single stroke.
]]>I don’t see cursing as a weakness, though; it’s just another vehicle for expressing oneself, suitable for use in some contexts and not in others.
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