You’re reading them. I’m writing them. They’re on the page, in the air, on the tips of our tongues. Yes, words. The little guys that we don’t give much thought to expect when searching for the right one.
Words are the building blocks of language. We use thousands of them everyday. You can’t get from the bed to the breakfast table without encountering a few words. They’re spoken, written, overused, never head of, misspelled and pronounced incorrectly.
The progression of time and the advance of technology bring new words in existence. I don’t think ‘modem’ was in Webster’s first edition. Also, laziness and slang create new words, combine others and use many incorrectly. Poorly used words, spoken and written, are slowly working themselves in the English language. Are we head for a language Dark Ages? Will we endure the Great Word Depression?
That may be a bit of an exaggeration. When we talk, most of us know what we’re talking about. Common sense tells us that we should hold our tongues when the conversation turns to subjects with which we are not familiar. A general rule of communication is to understand that which you’re speaking of. But knowing what you’re talking about and knowing how to talk about it are entirely different ideas. If the information is the car, knowing how to correctly communicate it is the freeway.
The English language takes a daily beating. In a society that seems to cruise in the fast lane, progressing and developing in rapid measure almost by the day, our language is stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic with no exit in sight. Misuse of words, improper constructions and simple mix-ups plague our mode of communication.
Forms of the verb ‘to go’ get mangled. “Tony went, ‘I’m out of here.’ and I went ‘Yeah, right!'” Actually, these two said their parts. People don’t go anything. They say things.
‘I’m all’ and ‘he’s all’ have no proper basis in English when referring to spoken communication. Where did we come up with this one? Is it too boring to say that someone said something? ‘We’re all’ and ‘she goes’ don’t apply to speaking. They are conversational slang.
If we can speak, we can use English and should do so with the intention of doing it properly. But incorrect phrasing and invented saying aren’t the only enemy attack the language. Individuals who believe themselves to be well spoken are guilty of word violation, as well. Stuffing speech with modifiers and excess words has become habit for people. Do we really, absolutely, necessarily needs to add on the ‘quites’ and ‘rathers’?
This is not to say language should be watered down to accommodate the simplest of vocabularies. We still want to talk well. No one benefits from lowering the general language standard (except the publishers of the See Jane run books).
It is not necessary to have an expansive vocabulary or to be abnle to expound upon a myriad of topics with sagacious veracity. Little words are often the most effective. Speaking crisply and clearly are the tasks faced by common society. Let’s not give in to the easy traps.
Nobody ‘supposably left the country.’ The word is ‘supposedly.’ You may want to say that something will happen regardless of what your sister does, but it is incorrect to say it will happen irregardless. I won’t not mention the error in double negatives. ‘Don’t’ and ‘doesn’t’ are not interchangeable, I, you, we and they ‘don’t’. He or she ‘doesn’t.’
An effective writing tool is to try to write the way people speak. Maybe people would be better off trying to speak the way they would write. If I wrote the way I spoke with my friends, every English teacher I ever had would simultaneously have heart attacks. All these language infractions aren’t unbearable in informal conversation. But if we want to stop butchering the English language, we might think of how we would write what we are about t say. Being excessively colloquial won’t usher in the language Dark Ages. But when we begin to see it in print, then the Great Word Depression will be upon us. Irregardless, I can’t not leave not. My boss told me to be at work in half and hour. And he goes: “Don’t be late.” I’m all, “No, sir.” He supposably fired the last person who was late.
Mike Mussey is an English senior and writes biweekly on Mondays.
