New Words in Creation: Bargument

Noun: Bargument - a difference of opinion between two or more totally inebriated individuals at an establishment that legally dispenses alcoholic beverages.

"We got into a bargument over political parties.

Verb: Bargue - to enter into a bargument over some totally ridiculous issue.

We bargued about political parties.

Always pleased to further pervert the English language.

Thank you.

The Profound Illiteracy of Facebook and the Web. Don't miss the Canon Shooting!

One of the not entirely unexpected revelations of the endless posts on my Facebook wall, is just how the grasp of the English language by friends and acquaintances has disintegrated. Judging by the near non-existence of proper spelling, grammar and punctuation, one might conclude that we are all suddenly living in the late 19th Century before the advent of Public Schools and education and dictionaries despite the spectacular availability of online resources and spell checkers.

Creative spelling is astonishing as is the equally adventurous ignorance of punctuation.

Here's a "sentence" (paraphrased so as to disguise its origin) that comes directly from a FB post.

time to learn my part I'm performing tomorrow!!!

Now this could be interpreted in a number of ways.

1) It is now time to learn my part which I am performing tomorrow.

2) There is time to learn my part which I am performing tomorrow.

3) It is now time to learn my part. I am performing tomorrow.

4) There will be time to learn my part. I am performing tomorrow.

I sort of think number (3) was intended, but without talking to the person, I have no idea.

I'd be tempted to write it as:

It is time to learn my part: I'm performing tomorrow.

From a journalistic viewpoint, this is highly speculative, but, hey, you've got to take a chance sometimes.

I've changed "I'm" to "I am" since the extravagant use of apostrophes (and commas or the non-use of apostrophes and commas) is a new aspect of modern creative writing.

The favorite trope is the addition of an apostrophe to nearly everything that has an "s" at the end of it.

The previous sentence using this remarkable linguistic revelation would include:

"... the extravagant use of apostrophe's... " to indicate more than one apostrophe. [If there was such a thing, it would be correct to say that "I am visiting the apostrophe's new house."]

The distinction in the mind of many between possessive and plural has vanished in the wake of the eradication of the distinction between "less" and "fewer." Perhaps this has to do with some unknown additive to highly sugared breakfast cereals (or is that cereal's ?) or some other more pernicious plot. Oops. Sorry. That's "perhap's" and "Oop's" isn't it? Or is it Thats' perhaps's and oops's, ain't it?

"I went to visit the Smiths" becomes "I went to visit the Smith's." If it was "I went to the Smith's house" all would be well, but this puts us back into the realm of speculative journalism.

There seems (ummm seem's) to be no cure for all of this. All of my friends (er... friend's) in the educational professions (ahhh... profession's) tell me that high school students and college students come to them unable to write clear sentences (sentence's). Instead of advancing the knowledge of students, these hapless educators slave at getting the kids to disentangle themselves from their IPods and smartphones long enough to consider history or philosophy or home economics. (Do they actually teach Home Ec any more? I wonder.)

I'm going to go right out on a limb here and state the obvious. The majority of this linguistic chaos originates with texting. Now just why any sentient being would want to spend more than a nanosecond informing another sentient being that "hey whoa it rocks" in the midst of watching a movie or eating or taking a dump is totally beyond my compreshension. But, hey, whoa, different strokes... .

The need to contract words so that one's thumbs don't fall off from exhaustion is crucial. T nd 2 contct wds sew tht my thmbs r stil hr iz imptnt. Or something like that with the addition of lots of smileys and other strange symbols alien to my aging eyes, but highly meaningful to those under 12 years old.

There is more at stake here than the generation gap: The continuity of civilization depends upon the communication of various forms of knowledge.

There is a genuine difference between "It's here" and "Its here." The former means "It is here," the latter means "This 'here' belongs to It" (whatever that means).

A sign in the New York City Subway reads "Haircut's." Haircut's what? The Haircut's dog? The Haircut's life insurance policy? You can argue that everyone knows what they really meant. I can argue that this requires lots of unnecessary speculation and that it panders to ignorance.

Indede y bother spelin nething kurectlee in the furst plaze. We kin awl figyour owt whut I mene neeeway, kan't weee?

The world has not collapsed yet, but when I view a subway car full of grown people so plugged-in to their electronic devices that they don't even notice where they are, that they are shoving their backpack into the eyes of some hapless old lady who is blissfully IPod free, that they miss their stop and curse because they weren't paying attention, that they stand in the middle of the door unmoving because they are so involved in whatever music is playing far too loudly into their ears that they haven't noticed that the door is open, that the chime is ringing, that seven people are trying to shove them out of the way to escape, and then, that it's really everyone else's fault for interrupting, bothering and annoying them!

Steve Jobs and colleagues have provided the world with the finest excuse in centuries for rudeness, inattention, small-mindedness and unnecessary redundancy of function with those cute little IPhone thingies. A great, elegant toy. A great, inelegant time waster. A great distraction from the reality of where you are. If you looked up from your smart phone for just a moment, you might see where you are instead of having to call up a GPS application that pings three satellites in orbit around the earth, pings your phone back and displays a map that shows you where you already should have noticed that you were standing in the first place. (Okay, it is convenient to be standing on a strange street corner in heaven only knows what country, to be able to push a button and find out how many steps you need to take to reach the nearest McDonald's. Don't know how I lived for decades without it).

My favorite Facebook malaprop this week is a notice for the "Canon shooting" as part of a Pirate Week Celebration. One wonders what crime the poor Canon committed to be shot! Was it Pachelbel's Canon? Whatever did Pachelbel do to deserve this? Obviously, they meant "cannon," didn't they? But this is an event put on by a government agency and promoted by, oh I don't know, the agency director's sister's son's girlfriend fresh out of fourth grade. I'm pleased to know, in retrospect, that pirates were deeply into Canons. It shows that they were not all lowly, child-raping, thieving scumbags. Some of them appreciated the finer things as they pillaged and burned with their IPods blasting in their ears.

Sew, eye xstole tha vertewz uv lerning how 2 spel ahnd punkyewweight if ownlee owt of consideration to us awld fokz hoo r stuk withe Inglush az it yewst 2 b b4 yew kreeyaytive kidz fixed it 4 us awl. :-)

Oh, wait! I'm sorry. I forgot the punctuation.

S'ew, eye xstole, tha vertewz uv lerning, how 2, s'pel ahnd punkyewweight, if ownlee owt of consideration. to us awld fok'z!!! hoo r, stuk, withe Inglush, az it yew'st 2 b, b4 yew kreeyaytive kid'z, fixed it 4 u's awl !!!! ;-) :-D :-P~~~

That's better, isn't it?

Thank you.

Adverbs and Adjectives

Actually overheard in a University Classroom:

Professor: If an adverb modifies the verb, what does an adjective modify?

Student: The "jective."

To Octopus. A new verb

There are hugs and there are Hugs.

There are the namby pamby air-hugs that ladies give each other insincerely to avoid intimacy and smudging their make up.

Then there are friendlier hugs of greeting, football player crushing hugs of congratulations after they win the game, and other shades of grey in between.

But there are those totally entwined hugs (both erotic and not) in which the participants so thoroughly intertwine their limbs (arms and legs, necks and torsos) that the place where the hugger and huggee begin and leave off are difficult to determine.

I think this deserves a better description than "hugging."

So, I've "verbized" yet another noun from "octopus" into "to octopus" meaning for two (or perhaps more) people to so totally entwine their limbs that the place where the hugger and the huggee begin and leave off are difficult to determine.

Examples: They octopussed and then fell asleep.

The two kittens were octopussed as they took a nap.

The teenagers were so octopussed, it was hard to tell how they could stand up. In fact, they toppled over onto the bed, still octopussed.

You're free to use the new verb provided you credit me. You can send money, too. I won't refuse.

And have fun octopussing.

"Tuh" The New Word In Town

Unfortunately, I've done this myself, so rest easy.

The English word "to," a common and much beloved preposition, has been transmogrified into "tuh" when it is spoken outloud in sentences by an increasing number of Americans (and perhaps those in other countries as well, but I'm not sure because my sample is too small).

It's still spelled "to" (as if it were to be pronounced that way, too), but it is mostly pronounced tuh.

"I went to the store" comes out as "I went tuh the store."

This is not just another case of saying "nuclear" as "new-cue-lar" as one of our current politicians is so fond of doing. No, it is a little hard to keep your tongue moving properly when you say "nuclear" especially if you are not too fond of reading and spelling. Those who say "new-cue-lar" tend to spell it nucular, so they have an excuse. (In case you are confused, it is pronounced "new-klee-are" or something very much like that.)

But this new "tuh" thing is some sort of creeping tongue laziness. We can all see how it's spelled, for heaven's sake. It' s a two letter word composed of "t" and "o." It's hard to mess that up.

It's supposed to be pronunced like "two." They are homonyms, right? 'Two=to' when it comes to pronunciation. That should be easy.

"I want tuh go out tuh the movies."

"Did you take the book back tuh the library or did you give it to you dog to play with." Now there's one where they are differentiated. I think.

Perhaps "to" is pronounced correctly when we want to emphasize it. "Did you give it to her or did you just leave it on the table?" I'll bet you'd say "to" as "two" in that sentence, wouldn't you?
Not that I have any way to know, but when you are reading these sentences to yourself in your head, are you saying "to" as in "two" or do you misprounounce it in your mind as well? I tend to think "to" (as in "two") when I read silently to myself and while I'm typing this.

But, as I previously confessed, I (ahem) do sometimes utter the dreaded "tuh." "So I said tuh the guy that he oughta give it back tuh her! And he told me tuh shove it."

And perhaps you will, too.

Fewer And Fewer Fewers

Fewer and fewer of us use "fewer" as a word. It has been replaced by less.

Modern folks would say "less and less of us use "fewer," but that's wrong, not that you'd know it by listening to anyone else but me and a few of my foolish (or is that "few-less"?) friends. It annoys me to hear otherwise intelligent announcers on, say, NPR, saying "fewer" less and less, if at all. Every day, in fact, there is less use of few.

The difference, for those of you who are too young to remember or just don't or didn't care, is that "less" is for "amounts" of things and "fewer" is for numbers of things or people.

Here're the examples.

• There is less water in the short glass than in the tall glass.
• There are six people in the blue car and four in the red one. The red car has fewer people in it.

No one would say "please put fewer sugar into the pie," but no one seems to have a problem saying there are less people in that line than in this one.

That, I guess, is how language changes. It seems to become less precise and much less useful. (Intuitively, one does know that you wouldn't say "fewer precise.")

Is it just laziness on the part of the average person? Or is the difference between "fewer" and "less" just too hard to learn?

I have fewer and fewer ideas about it and less and less time to try to figure it out. Or is that less and less ideas about it and fewer and fewer time to try to figure it out? Nahhh... it's the first one, don't you agree?