Does that sound negative? Gosh, I hope not. As a little girl growing up in the south, the very most important thing was to be A Sweet Girl. For all of my almost 45 years I have been unable to exorcise the directive from my brain, so I do still find myself unconsciously striving to be A Sweet Girl, even now.
I just get so impatient and frustrated with people who misuse language. Words are so important, and mean so much to me. I take it personally and get offended when people misuse/mispronounce words.
And the worst part is, when a word is consistently misused/mispronounced for enough years, the official definition/pronunciation will change. This is terrible! Don't give me that stuff about language evolving, that is devolving!
As a shy and introverted but bookwormy and occasionally snotty teen, I learned the word "forte", which meant an area at which one excels, and was pronounced "fort". It didn't look like "fort", though, it looked like "for-tay", which is how everyone pronounced it. Now that is an official accepted pronunciation. Fail!
Also the word "apropos". It used to mean relating to, but everyone thought it was just a fancy way to say appropriate, so now that is an actual accepted definition.
What does this mean? The English language is being altered to accomodate people who are too stupid or ignorant to look up the correct usage of the very words that are coming out of their mouths. Our entire society is collapsing!
I am making a prediction: the next thing to be changed because of virtually universal misusage will be acronym. Everyone, seriously, everyone thinks that an acronym is just letters that stand for words, ie, WTF, LOL, etc. That is not right. An acronym is a word formed from the initial letters in a phrase, like SCUBA, or WASP. WTF and such are actually initialisms.
No one knows this, right? This misunderstanding is basically unanimous. Look around on the internet and you'll find several helpful sites to figure out what frequently-used "acronyms" stand for, and none at all for initialisms. So, you know what that means. The only question is how long it will take.
I'm going to go even further on my next prediction: at some point in our terrible demise as humans, in our slow mindless plodding towards a world where the lowest common denominator rules not only occasionally but exclusively, where the beauty, nay, the very meaning of language itself is not valued one bit -- "a whole nother" will be acceptable.
Yes, yes. It's already happening, it's already moved from conversational usage to actual print media. Why people can't say "another whole" I honestly do not understand. Why do people want to say, in essence, "a whole another"?
Because people are stupid and wrong and I hate everybody.
Uh oh, my Sweet Girl mask is slipping again.
One last note: The day "simular" becomes okay will be the day that I will kill myself. FYI.
And i love you!
ReplyDeleteI love this post. I learned a lot from it, especially about initialisms. you're going to make me seem very smart up here in the city.
LOL (which is NOT and acronym!)
I came via Angella! I love this post because I often feel the same way - but I'm afraid we both need to relax. Language moves and grows and always will, thank goodness. Otherwise we'd all be saying "thou" and "In sooth" and how tiresome would that be.
ReplyDeleteYou'll be happy to know that in England, (my home country) "apropos" is used according to you definition, and not in the American, confusing way where people say "That's very apropos". It's even spelled in two words, "A Propos". Not that England is a paragon of grammar, because they now stick "innit?" on the end of everything. Innit?
Angella, if you go around talking about initialisms, you won't seem smart, you'll just annoy people. Trust me on this one! But thanks :)
ReplyDeleteHi Expat mum! Thanks for coming by.
ReplyDeleteI probably do need to relax. But in sooth, I think it would be super if people still said "sooth"!
Do people in England say "a whole nother"? Because I am delighted to hear about the correct usage of apropos. Maybe I should consider moving there!