Posted by
Charles Mudgeon on Monday, July 16, 2007 6:25:17 AM
This is a repost. I'll have a new one up this afternoon. Over the weekend, some insightful and incredibly perceptive visitor left a comment saying this particular post was a "brilliant observation and succinctly expressed." Since readership has increased to almost ten every single day, it makes sense to give the extra nine people the opportunity that they missed when it was first posted. It is my sacred duty not to deprave you further.
“So," I asked, "is a man hanged or is he hung?”
“It depends on the context.” The answer came from my granddaughter, Fantasia, who will be turning 23 on Monday and whose life, therefore, is nearly over. And while it was an answer I wasn't expecting, I had to agree it was appropriate. I often pose such questions to my granddaughters in order to determine if I can bestow the status of “Adult” upon them. This may also explain why they avoid me.
I have a thing about the English language and its use in everyday conversation. No one will ever confuse me with Edwin Neuman or William Sapphire; I’m not a fanatic on the subject. And I do my share of making up and misusing words to get a desired effect, but I usually know the proper form (Please refer to the word "deprave" in the forward.) – and the people I’m talking to usually know the proper form and that I’m kidding. Nonetheless, I do believe a culture is reflected in its language. If the language is destroyed, the culture will follow shortly.
So I nag and I prod and I belittle and I complain - and I’m slowly but steadily losing the fight.
A college football analyst was discussing Ohio State’s recent dominance of Big Ten football. He said that because of its success the school had reached the “nadir” of its influence in the conference. I knew what he meant. I knew he had used exactly the wrong word to convey what he was attempting to say. But how many people listening didn’t know? How many people thought they had just learned a fancy new word that they would now forever use incorrectly? And how long might it take for the word to come to mean highest point rather than lowest point?
This one word will not bring down the culture, but it ain’t gonna help neither. On the trip from meaning lowest to meaning highest, at some point half the people will think it means lowest, while the other half will think it means highest. Chaos ensues.
If you don’t think this sort of transformation is possible, consider this: Till her dying day, my mother’s first thought when she heard the word “gay” was not homosexual. Ask a teen today what he thinks the book “Our Hearts Were Young and Gay” might be about. If he isn’t comfortable talking to you about it, tell him to Google it for an answer.
Within a one hour time span on a cable news channel, I heard the anchor use the following terminology: centered in the middle; a confluence of events coming together; and 6:00 am in the morning. If you don’t recognize the redundancies, it is only because they are so commonplace the ear no longer is assaulted.
Teachers in the Atlanta school system were recently ordered not to correct a student’s grammar. Whoever came up with this gem ought to be charged with a hate crime, child abuse, probably racism and possibly treason. To deny children the ability to learn proper use of the language will guarantee a permanent underclass. It secures failure for countless numbers in future generations.
Look at the title of my posting today: I Be Talk Gooder Dan Yunz. It is a combination of English, Ebonics and Newspeak influenced by Brooklyn and Pittsburgh slang. You can probably translate it into pure English, but how long will it be before each increasingly small group has its own unique form of communication? How long before a dynamic language becomes a muddle of confusion? How long will we continue to allow our school systems to abuse and neglect our children?
How long before the culture crashes and burns?