AS I LISTEN TO talking heads on tv I wonder: “When did the language change?”
BACK IN THE DAY, words I learned in elementary (primary, grade) school usually had specific meanings.
Now, many of those words have disappeared from use or had their meanings broadened.
As examples
- * Moment: my unabridged dictionaries used to list “moment” as 90 seconds, a minute and a half.
* Sex: Once “sex” was for humans and animals; it was not to be confused with “gender.”
* Gender: Words in many languages — MOST languages — have gender. A “city” in Hebrew is feminine while a “horse” is masculine. Why one is feminine and another is masculine is known only to the original Hebrew speakers. Russian, Spanish. French likewise are “gender aware.” (I don’t know any Oriental languages so I won’t comment on them.)
* Actors were men; actresses were women.
The tube told me that modern Colgate® has Cavity Protection.
Why would anyone, other than perhaps a someone working in a dental office, want to protect cavities. Wouldn’t it be better to protect against cavities or prevent cavities?
Maybe this is a case of “opposite speak” in which “bad” means “good.”
I still remember how to use in and into.
- Some boys were in and around a “swimmin’ hole.” Some of the boys were in in the water, some were “bank walkers,” and one was diving into the water. OK, so the original story omitted the bank walkers, but I’ve heard the story since I was knee high to a grasshopper.
It can be challenging to read a Shakespeare sonnet in the original English.
I fear that soon, if it has not already occurred, people will struggle to read Tom Sawyer”2 or The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County3, two of Samuel Langhorne Clemens many works.
Clemens’ works are under fire in some communities for failing the “political correctness” demanded of today, similar to the disappearance of Uncle Remus and Song of the South — never mind that Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus stories had a moral attached. (Song of the South, originally written in “dialect” IS difficult to read/comprehend, but the moral of each tale prevails.)
The tv talking heads regularly abuse unique. Unique is unique. It cannot be “most” unique or “extremely” unique or even “very” unique. Something could be “almost” unique, but probably “very unusual” or “exceedingly rare” would be better.
I don’t mind coined words; it is to misused words I object.
Almost all cars today seem to be advertised as “Sport Utility Vehicles,” SUVs.
A Jeep® Gladiator with four-wheel drive is an SUV; a BMW® X7, despite claims to the contrary (“full-size luxury SUV”) is not an SUV, even with all-wheel drive. Subaru® has been making “SUVs” for years if all it takes is all-wheel (or four-wheel) drive to make a car an SUV. Just add a roof rack and trailer hitch!
Hyundai® still has a line of sedans, albeit it does not identify anything as a “coupe.” (What’s the difference? In the “old days,” a “coupe” was a two-door vehicle and a sedan had four doors. With the exception of the Checker® Marathon (see below) and the Executive Sedan and Limousine from Chrysler®, neither coupe nor sedan had decent rear-seat legroom.)
I’m not a fan of acronyms unless whatever the acronym represents is best known by the acronym. SCUBA is a good example. Most people would be hard pressed to define SCUBA as “Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.” Likewise “wifi” as “wireless fidelity” (I didn’t know that). As a young reporter, I learned to first “
Governments are notorious for abbreviations. Some languages have sub-sets that are so filled with esoteric abbreviations that an outsider, were it not for the Internet, would never be able to translate a sentence. A verbal “secret handshake,” if you will.
I know that English is a “living” language and trying to halt change is impossible.
I’m not trying to halt change, just to build on the basics.
Free gift, indeed! If it’s a gift, it’s free.
Sources
1. http://tinyurl.com/k2l2l4m
2. http://tinyurl.com/yyopgw3c
3. http://tinyurl.com/pt8ceem
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
Truth is an absolute defense to defamation. Defamation is a false statement of fact. If the statement was accurate, then by definition it wasn’t defamatory.
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