Now, try not to hold this against me, but I am a retired English
teacher. Being that, I happen to LOVE the English language, and I have a
huge problem when I see it being misused or abused.
Now, trust me, I understand that there is nothing under the sun that is constant.
Nothing is written in stone.
Que Nada.
Zip.
EVERYTHING, in order to stay alive, must change, including language.
When a language stops changing, it dies. Look at Latin. It was the
official language of the mighty Roman Empire for a couple of centuries.
And then the barbarians rode in one day out of nowhere, beat the living
crap out of Rome, and decimated the Roman civilization. When that
happened, people stopped using the language. Because of that, the
language stopped changing…and WHAMMO! . . . the language died. It was
gone almost overnight, historically speaking! Latin then became the
language of snooty intellectuals and the Roman Catholic Church, and
nobody else ever used it again. (Way back when I was an altar boy, I had
to learn to say the Mass in Latin, and I absolutely detested it! “And a
great big suscipiat to you too, Pater!”)
Words are always being added and subtracted from our living language (Software, IPOD, and Googled are all words that are relatively new. Words like typewriter and hippodrome are on their way out.)
The definitions of words change too. For example, did you know that original definition of the word villain was “a person who tills the soil.” In other words, if you called
somebody a villain back in Geoffrey Chaucer’s day, you were simply
saying that he was a farmer. The word sly was synonym for smart, and knight (or, more correctly, knyghte), at one time, meant “young boy.”
So our language is constantly in flux, and that is a good thing…
but that doesn’t mean that I have to like it.
I have always had a hard time with change. The older I get, the more I yearn for the days of my youth when it seems that everything was so much more constant!
*Sigh!* The 1950′s were so predictable
and ordinary!!!!! (Except, of course, for The Cold War, McCarthyism,
Civil Defense drills and the constant threat of nuclear Armageddon.)
But since I haven’t quite mastered time travel just yet, I am stuck
in the present, where I appear to be a lamentable old geezer who bemoans
change of any kind.
With that being said, let me continue my rant about the misuse of the language.
Did you have a Christmas dinner this year? What about a Thanksgiving dinner?
I’ll bet you did.
But, have you ever gotten together with your family for Christmas or Thanksgiving supper?
I doubt it!
And at what time of day do you usually gather formally around the
Thanksgiving or Christmas table? Sometime around midday or early
afternoon. Right?
That’s because dinner is the midday meal.
Supper is the evening meal.
You don’t have dinner at 6 p.m. You have supper at that time.
When work is done for the day, you go home to have supper. Not dinner.
Got it?
So when you hear the voice of Robert Mitchum on the TV or the radio
saying, “Beef! It’s what’s for dinner!”, please know that the wonderful
actor is misspeaking. (And you have no idea how hard it is for me to criticize the dead! Sorry, Robert!)
Also, the proper pronunciation of the word often is “ofFen”. Not ofTen.
In our language, we have silent consonants. We do it on purpose so that foreigners have a REALLY tough time learning it. That way, we can make fun of them and feel superior to them.
You don’t pronounce knife like “ka-nife”, do you? (In the Middle English period they did, but now we know better!)
AND what about the word know? You don’t say, “ka-no-wah”, right?)
Of course you don’t!
So don’t say “ofTen”.
Just knock it off, okay?
Don’t be stupid.
Okay, let me further test your knowledge of the language.
Do you know what the difference is between regardless and irregardless?
You do?
Interesting, because there isn’t any. They both mean exactly the same thing. So, why stick in the extra syllable?
Same with flammable and inflammable.
They mean the same damned thing! So, why the hell waste your breath?
Keep it simple.
And what about those folks who insist on saying, “I concur” instead of “I agree”?
Are you trying to impress me?
Well, forget it! You’re wasting your time.
Don’t get all high-faluting on me. Simply say “agree.”
Don’t be a jerk.