English is one disturbing language. It is the language suffering from the deepest identity crisis of all languages, and it has been this way for centuries. Thank you Normans! For that matter, thank you GIs who bring home the Japanese at the end of WWII and suck the meaning out of words such as 'karaoke' and 'geisha' and mistranslating these words into pop culture, rendering them vulgar and utterly useless. (To be fair, the Japanese obsession with American culture is far more frightful.)
What I really want to talk about is the direction English is going lately. Specifically, I'd like to mention slang and the reformation of words into new vulgarities. To be even more specific: Terms of Endearment.
William Shakespeare is long acknowledged to be the greatest wordsmith our language has ever been influenced by. His timing was impeccable; the English had, for too long, been held under cultural siege by the Continent (The worst atrocities committed by the French.), and the 16th century was the absolute last straw. By the end of it, during Bill's own heyday, Britain had managed to propagate nationalism in the liberation from such powerhouse influences such as Catholicism and the Holy Roman Empire. Elizabeth had destroyed the Spanish with a ragtag bunch of sea dogs. The Irish were under control. Drake and other Englishmen had imprinted the English seal into the Americas. It was a ripe time to reclaim the English language from Franco-Germanification.
Reading over some of the words invented by Shakespeare, it's hard to imagine English without them. Auspicious, gnarled, obscene, suspicious, even apostrophe, which is only a word meant to indicate a grammatical notation. They are so common place that the list of approximately 1700 words holds some shockers. What is a language without the word 'control' for example? As I mentioned the word earlier, had Shakespeare not coined the word 'control', would the Irish ever have become civilized (I jest, of course.)?
It's this tradition of reclaiming English, started by the Bard himself, that has carried us into the modern English of today. True, there is French resistance to this deconstructionist shove, but English has since become the language of choice in the global market. So what the frak (Battlestar Galactica) are we doing to it?!
I'm talking specifically about slang and the infantilization of perfectly good, useful words. This trend of shortening words, adding a double consonant and a 'y', is a pathetic cry for help. English, insane as it is, is a largely creative palette. You have all sorts of Latin and Greek to play with (Again, thank you Normans!), so go USE it! Were I a man and my 'wifey' dared call me her 'hubby', I would be insulted by her ignorance. For that matter I would never marry someone who found either of those words to be acceptable terms of endearment.
While not my favorite, I would like to explore the endearing 'patootie' . My handy reference, the Online Etymology Dictionary, suggests that it derives from an earlier 'sweet potato'. As ludicrous as being called a sweet potato may seem, considering that at one time sweet potatoes were a popular staple of nutrition, it's no different from calling someone 'cookie' or 'sugar'. We like cookies and sugar, and people liked sweet potatoes. I still like sweet potatoes. Patootie somehow came out of that and now stands alone as cute nickname. You wouldn't guess it was related to 'sweet potato', and its story of origin is speculative at best. It holds its own, while 'hubby' in the meantime is an obvious brutalization of the word 'husband'. Where is the creativity?
The creativity comes out in phrases. 'Baby bump' comes to mind, and for a moment I would like to argue its status as endearing. Bump (Shakespeare!) has always suggested, as far as in reference to the human body, an unpleasant situation in which swelling occurs on the surface of ourselves. This includes acne, goosebumps, bumps on the head, etc. Being bumped is also typically unpleasant. Heck, 'bumping someone off' is murder, for Betsy's sake! How then is an awaiting bundle of joy comparable at all to such an antagonistic state of being? Creating life is generally thought of as a good thing. Implying that your pregnant belly is a bump only says to me that you're somehow ashamed, and yet people still use it in complimenting you. 'Oh, what a cute baby bump! How long do you have left to be preggers?!' It makes me shudder.
What I really want to talk about is the direction English is going lately. Specifically, I'd like to mention slang and the reformation of words into new vulgarities. To be even more specific: Terms of Endearment.
William Shakespeare is long acknowledged to be the greatest wordsmith our language has ever been influenced by. His timing was impeccable; the English had, for too long, been held under cultural siege by the Continent (The worst atrocities committed by the French.), and the 16th century was the absolute last straw. By the end of it, during Bill's own heyday, Britain had managed to propagate nationalism in the liberation from such powerhouse influences such as Catholicism and the Holy Roman Empire. Elizabeth had destroyed the Spanish with a ragtag bunch of sea dogs. The Irish were under control. Drake and other Englishmen had imprinted the English seal into the Americas. It was a ripe time to reclaim the English language from Franco-Germanification.
Reading over some of the words invented by Shakespeare, it's hard to imagine English without them. Auspicious, gnarled, obscene, suspicious, even apostrophe, which is only a word meant to indicate a grammatical notation. They are so common place that the list of approximately 1700 words holds some shockers. What is a language without the word 'control' for example? As I mentioned the word earlier, had Shakespeare not coined the word 'control', would the Irish ever have become civilized (I jest, of course.)?
It's this tradition of reclaiming English, started by the Bard himself, that has carried us into the modern English of today. True, there is French resistance to this deconstructionist shove, but English has since become the language of choice in the global market. So what the frak (Battlestar Galactica) are we doing to it?!
I'm talking specifically about slang and the infantilization of perfectly good, useful words. This trend of shortening words, adding a double consonant and a 'y', is a pathetic cry for help. English, insane as it is, is a largely creative palette. You have all sorts of Latin and Greek to play with (Again, thank you Normans!), so go USE it! Were I a man and my 'wifey' dared call me her 'hubby', I would be insulted by her ignorance. For that matter I would never marry someone who found either of those words to be acceptable terms of endearment.
While not my favorite, I would like to explore the endearing 'patootie' . My handy reference, the Online Etymology Dictionary, suggests that it derives from an earlier 'sweet potato'. As ludicrous as being called a sweet potato may seem, considering that at one time sweet potatoes were a popular staple of nutrition, it's no different from calling someone 'cookie' or 'sugar'. We like cookies and sugar, and people liked sweet potatoes. I still like sweet potatoes. Patootie somehow came out of that and now stands alone as cute nickname. You wouldn't guess it was related to 'sweet potato', and its story of origin is speculative at best. It holds its own, while 'hubby' in the meantime is an obvious brutalization of the word 'husband'. Where is the creativity?
The creativity comes out in phrases. 'Baby bump' comes to mind, and for a moment I would like to argue its status as endearing. Bump (Shakespeare!) has always suggested, as far as in reference to the human body, an unpleasant situation in which swelling occurs on the surface of ourselves. This includes acne, goosebumps, bumps on the head, etc. Being bumped is also typically unpleasant. Heck, 'bumping someone off' is murder, for Betsy's sake! How then is an awaiting bundle of joy comparable at all to such an antagonistic state of being? Creating life is generally thought of as a good thing. Implying that your pregnant belly is a bump only says to me that you're somehow ashamed, and yet people still use it in complimenting you. 'Oh, what a cute baby bump! How long do you have left to be preggers?!' It makes me shudder.
I know this is a losing battle. Slang will carry on, language will evolve, and I will die before the end of it. No, this has nothing to do with my eternal salvation, but it's important to me nonetheless. I may die, but I would like to think that I may have a positive impact on the temporal world, one slang word at a time. I REALLY don't want to hear the word 'hubby' in the afterlife.
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