Well... What word would you expect me to start my new blog with? It's a word I use a lot. Sometimes a word that irritates me, (when it's used in the fake sense for example: Elvis' house was big enough for, well, a king.) "Well" bugged me when I was corrected as an English speaking novice for saying or writing things like, "I'm doing good, how about you?" I still say things like that even now that I am aware of their grammatically inaccurate nature. One teacher used to say to me, "Superman does good, you are doing well." And I used to think, "WELL, why are you flunking me then?" But that wasn't my English teacher, it was a math teacher of mine. I never liked math, but I enjoy words. Always have. Moreso than most. I imagine this had more than a little to do with my choice of English as a major in school and my desire to teach the language, ideally in Canada someday. And this will be a major topic of this entry and this blog.
It's a practically endless topic since the English language is constantly changing. It's alive. I reckon it changes as much or more than other languages. Even in my short lifetime I've seen staggering change. The other day I enjoyed some Cap'n Crunch cereal with 3.25% milk. When I was young there were two kinds of milk: 2% and Homo. Not any more! Remember Homo milk? Yeah it was the REAL stuff. Homo was macho! Fathers everywhere were asking their 2% preferring sons, "Do you think Alexander the Great drank 2%? Not a chance!" "Yeah but, Dad, he probably just drank milk from a cow. They didn't have 2% back then." "All right smarty pants, Rock Hudson then. You think a guy gets that tough by drinking 2%?" "I dunno. Who is he?" "Younger generation, why I oughta... Okay then Dennis Rodman or the guy from that band you like, whatsawhoozit?" "Judas Priest?" "Yeah! You think they drank 2% to get that cool?" "I guess not, Dad." "Damn right not! Now go back to watching the Brady Bunch and see how a REAL man raises a family. I bet Mr. Brady never buys 2% milk..."
And remember "Eenie meenie miny moe, catch a tiger by the toe?" Nope. I don't either. In MY neighbourhood we weren't catching TIGERS by the toes. We were catching something else you might find in Africa. In the jungle... OH NO I DI INT! Well? What the hell? I can't SAY it! Or WRITE it! I don't know if Blogspot would even accept that word. Spellcheck highlights it; it's not in my computer dictionary; I probably get flagged when I email or chat with it... but it's used FAR more than at any other time in history. A lot of people use it every day. It's an odd etymological progression. I mean, you will never see, for the sake of argument, a German dude go up to another German dude and say, "Yo, whazzup my Nazi? Give a Kraut some love." At least I've never seen or heard that. Maybe it happens. I've never lived in Germany.
But I HAVE lived in Korea and there is no country with more young people who WISH they were pigmentally qualified to use that word. They walk, dance, rap, dress and try real hard to talk like, uh, let's say "urban youth of western origin who are gifted hue-wise." I probably could have made more money teaching ESL, Ebonics as a Second Language over there than English. But if they DID manage to get really, really DOPE at talking like black dudes I still don't think you'd get kids saying, for argument's sake, things like, "Gook, I got your back. You know you my Slant dawg!" You'd just, you'd never hear that.
And language is powerful! One word can get you lynched. Just ask Michael Richards. You know, Kramer. I can sit here writing this knowing that, sure, it'll upset a few people a little bit. But they'll get over it. It's done in fun. For the sake of comedy. But if I just typed that N-word one time, you readers would know you are supposed to be properly outraged. And that's the way it should be, right? Because we want everybody to be equal and not judged by skin colour I shouldn't be able to say, write or think that word while Chris Rock, (for the sake of argument), being black, can say it every second word. THAT'S the equality we're shooting for!
Having said all this, I'm not even going to tell you what my Mom calls Brazil nuts.
"Secret" words. They baffle me as an aspiring linguist. The N-word is just one. Words we are supposed to act like we don't know in certain social situations. Or at least act like we are too refined to ever utter them. I guess "fuck" would be the big one. Say "effin", call it the "f-bomb", bleep it out or just bleep one letter of it, but never, under most circumstances, USE that word! I ask you honestly and sincerely, what the fuck? Is there an English speaker who hadn't learned the word "fuck" by the time they were old enough to master the motor skills needed to independantly raise their middle finger? People use this word, folks. And it's got a million uses. One of, if not THE most versatile word in the language. Get used to it cuz it ain't going away.
I LOVE the Flight of the Conchords song where they sing "Too many mutha &*%uckers ^%$#uckin' with my shi*$%." Doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to piece together what they are trying to say. LARRY Holmes could figure it out. In fact this may be one mystery that Larry is BETTER qualified to solve than Sherlock. Ha ha ha ha.
Another example of the growing language is the results of globalization. The world is getting smaller and it's affecting our languages. We know a lot of foreign words. Some are used regularly. When I was in Korea I was immitating Korean baseball announcers saying, "Safe-imnida! Homelun! Foul! Nice play!" One of my students said, "Wow! You know a lot of Korean!"
The other day I was reminded of some of my homes growing up. I lived near a dairy farm on Hamilton mountain, in B.C. and even in Korea. I actually LIKE the smell of cow shi$*&%! But you'll never hear me say, "Mmmmm, I just LOVE the smell of dairy air!"
Thanks for reading my new blog. See ya next time.
