Hello all.
Here I am, stationed back up here atop my snob tower. You'd think tonight that I'd be posting something about the elections. Well, I shall get to that in another post, because this is something I feel more strongly about in politics and have been dying to address for some time now.
I'd like to add that if you're going to insist that this blog is an insult to your intelligence you might want to stop reading. And if you're dyslexic, apologies in advance - it's not your fault.
Basically, the point is this: I love our language. You probably thought, 'She's an English student, how inevitable / predictable'. And I wouldn't blame you, because you'd be right. And one thing I'm always railing against is its blatant misuse on a constant basis.
To start with:
Grammar.
Why do so many folk struggle to get this right? It's not THAT hard, surely. To kick off with:
They're = they are
There = referring to a place
Their = belonging to them.
Of course, when you're speaking all these words sound the same, but they're not written the same. After all, you wouldn't pronounce the silent letters in words even though you write them down. (I hate silent letters myself - but sadly I have two in my full name. Pot, kettle, black etc. Damn parents...)
Anyway - for example -
They're parking their car over there.
See? Not hard.
Also:
Your = belonging to you
You're = you are
For example -
I hope you're going to exercise your democratic right to vote today.
There we go - nice, topical sentence. See, I DID get the elections in there after all. Anywomb...yeah, again it's not that hard.
There's also:
'i' before 'e', except after 'c'.
For example:
I do believe that I have been deceived.
There. (I'm aware there are exceptions to this rule but we'll sweep them under the carpet for now...)
And...what else? Ah yes:
I hate textspeak. Hate, hate, hate it. I remember being horrified when my mam told me there were kids in the primary school class she was helping out in who were using it in written assignments. This was some years ago when it was a new thing.
It's just laziness, really. I can understand why it was coined - which is the rise in the use of mobile phones. To this day most mobiles have a cap on how many characters you can put in a text, although this seems to increase as newer models are brought out (my current phone, for example - a now-dated Samsung U700V - can have up to 765 characters including spaces. I'm sure my first phone, the much-missed Nokia 3310, held less than this). However, one thing I cannot stand is the use of text speak on computers or in other media that is not SMS. The only things remotely acceptable in my book are acronyms. Howevr if u typ lik dis on d cmptr, missn out vwls an whtnt, I will very probably ignore what you are trying to say to me, frankly because I can't be bothered to decipher it. To be honest, text speak is even becoming redundant in texts now. I never use it anymore anyway - I used to, all the time. If you find my old MSN blog a lot of entries in there are written in text speak, I'm ashamed to admit. But I haven't used text speak in around four or five years (unless to be tongue-in-cheek). I just write full words. Predictive text tends to help this. You can spell full words so why abbreviate? I have even encountered people who think predictive text has helped them improve their spelling. Additionally, you also have to consider the level of phones now that have QWERTY keyboards rather than touch tone pads (although to be honest I dislike these too. Yes, I'm a cynic and a change-fearing technophobe as well as a snob).
It's same whn yuh typ dis, neva usin propa spellin bcoz u cnt b rsed. Yes, 'neva' 'eva' 'propa' etc piss me off too. Particularly when they are being written by Scottish folk. Dropping the 'r' in words (or throwing it away as the Proclaimers famously stated) is an English thing. While I have no problem with the English, if I read something written like that by a Scottish person, I end up trying to read it in their voice (it's usually on Facebook and therefore written by someone I know / have met in real life) and it grates on me something rotten. For some reason this never happens the other way around, I don't know why.
The other one is wh3n f0lk us3 numb35s 2 r3pl4c3 c3rt4in l3tt3rs, p4rt1cul4rly v0w3l5. See how ridiculously untidy and grotesque that looks? Again, I can't even attempt to try and decipher stuff written like this. The fact that I was pish at Maths at school probably doesn't help me - I'm a linguist, not a numerist. If you write to me using numbers in place of letters I'll ignore the message. Hell, it'll probably offend my poor eyes so much that I'll delete it too.
And finally - misuse of words in general not intended as malapropisms. In this case - 'sick'. The Oxford English Dictionary has this word listed as follows:
sick (adjective): 1 affected by physical or mental illness. 2 feeling nauseous and wanting to vomit. 3 (sick of) bored by or annoyed with someone because one has had too much of them. 4 informal behaving in an abnormal or cruel way. 5 informal (of humour) dealing with unpleasant subjects in a cruel or upsetting way. noun Brit. informal vomit...
And so forth.
Anyway...what I'm trying to say is, nowhere is the word used in the same context in the chorus of a song by a certain Ms L Gaga:
Let's have some fun
This beat is sick
I wanna take a ride
On your disco stick
Well, I'm sure we're all clear on what 'disco stick' means. However...'this beat is sick'? I'm sorry, is she saying it's nauseous? Or vomit in its physical form? Or just plain annoying? Personally I'd bank on all three, but then again, I'm not a fan. I'm led to believe it means she likes it. This - sorry - sickens me, in the sense of the second meaning listed above.
Since when did it become trendy to use that word in a positive context? I first fell foul of this practise when a young wannabe rapper (I think) messaged me on Myspace many years back demanding I listen to his stuff. He made the mistake of opening his message with something along the following lines:
"(sic) Yo, wassup! Been checkin out ya profile and its lookin pretty sick, man..."
At this point I stopped reading and deleted it I was so offended. Again, am I missing something here? Since when did it become cool to talk like that? If you ask me, I think it sounds neddish. I associate it with the little pricks who sit on the top deck of the no. 40 bus service, playing their generic 'sick' beats off the shitty tinny speakers on their MP3-compatible mobile (I was sure those things came with headphones?! Mine certainly did, anyway). I don't know if this is me trying to come across as an educated, intellectual snob type, but frankly...I've harped on about it for long enough, think my feelings about it have been made perfectly clear.
And people wonder why I'm not a fan of Lady Gaga...but that's another rant for another time, thank you very much.
If you've read this far without getting bored or offended, congratulations. Have a Digestive.
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