SHOULD'VE, COULD OF, WOULDA

DW has opined that it is in fact the smart people in the world that are to blame for the decline of the English language. His theory is that the common folk hear the intelligent people (mis)using certain words, and are following suit. At first I thought this was ridiculous...

Now I'm not so sure. In my distaste for the overactive evolution of this language, I do find myself using these neologisms on purpose.* In the right company, I will force myself to say "prolly" instead of "probably", or "should of" instead of "should have" -- both with obvious emphasis -- to mock the direction of today's vernacular.

It must be said that these two are among my greatest peeves. The latter, "should of", with its cousins "could of" and "would of", are, a little surprisingly, the ones that I can more easily excuse. For the children that use it, I can only assume that they read so little that they've never seen contractions in use. They hear others use them in speech, translate it to the words they do know how to spell, and voila, new English.

Does this excuse it, though, from appearing in a television commercial (if memory serves, for Bud Light)? Or does it excuse the 95,700 webpages that Google finds with "should of"? Even if we allow for the few pages that are discussing the incorrectness of the «word», that's a whole lot of web pages being designed by illiterates. Ouch.

And "prolly". What is that? I can understand "probly" and "probally", as the spoken word has that predominant B sound in there. If it wasn't formed from a simple misspelling, then, is it meant to be a time-saver in writing (or, let's be honest, when typing)? Maybe. But is that the reason Judge Reinhold's character in Fast Times at Ridgemont High says it -- because the scriptwriter was trying to save some time? 1982 sure predates all Instant Messaging systems, and most bulletin boards as well.

So who's to blame? The computing industry for making people lazy? The intelligensia who are unknowingly mis-educating the masses by example? Or do we point the finger once again at the media, with the doctrine that if it's on T.V. it must be true?

But if it's about people learning things incorrectly, and not being taught the correct words and language, is it not the education system at fault? When degree-holders confuse simple homonyms and cannot recognize that a word is obviously misspelled, should we not question the efficacy of the institution and the value of the degree?

Or is it the workplace that's to blame, allowing unqualified people to write publicly -- whether it's a corporate webpage or a cafe's sandwich board?

I work at an educational institution, so am I one of those to blame for allowing graduates with just basic English skills? No. What about when I don't speak up when there are publicly-posted webpages here replete with errors, here at work? Maybe. Or, is it truly my personal, purposeful misuse of the language, spreading to all who care to listen?

Prolly.

* Have I just assumed to place myself amongst the "smart people" to which I refer? Yup. Take it or leave it.

INSTITUTIONS CRUMBLING

As someone who rants about the abuse of English as often as I take a breath, I was sure that I had a long diatribe coming when I was told about an article relating the latest changes to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.

Alas, I was wrong; the author of the article not only did the job for me, but with a little more conviction than I might have done.

The article, for those too busy to look, discusses the slang being added, the errors being standardized, and the words being "kicked out" of the dictionary.

The addition of slang is probably the area where I disagree most with the article. The author, Robert Hartwell Fiske, mentions the ephemeral nature of slang, and suggests that it's life-cycle rarely spans one edition of a dictionary. While this might be the case, I question whether a dictionary should only cover words in standard use, or whether it can also be used as a reference when reading older works. The term "dis" is still in use, unfortunately, and I myself have been asked more than once as to its origin. Even if the «word»'s usage dies out, media of today might need translation in the future. We do, for instance, have many entries that are noted as archaic -- or are those words the very ones removed to add the new ones? Of these archaic words, it's true that some people might use them, but others have been relegated to the rank of obscure crossword references and Scrabble®.

As for words that are dropped from the dictionary, I agree with Fiske that a book containing these words would be interesting. More interesting than the list, however, would be the rationale behind their removal.

The biggest issue I have with the additions mentioned in the article, and again where I agree with Fiske, is the addition of words that are just plain wrong.

Reading the article, I learned two new terms, "descriptivist" and "prescriptivist", of which I am certainly the latter. While I can accept that language needs to change, I think it should be from necessity and not fallacy. I used to be worse, nitpicking about every misuse -- sometimes incorrectly -- until I realized that even fellow prescriptivists relax their standards at times. Now I just silently take pride in my correct usage while rolling my eyes at others' speech and writing.

Still, this doesn't excuse misuse and misspellings. The examples cited in the article are poignant: "accidently" is an absurd addition. I can't say I've ever heard this word pronounced this way, though I can see people misspelling "accidentally" in such a way. It does not make it right. "Conversate". I suppose we should give a little credit to those who attempt to apply grammatical rules to further their vocabulary, but not all back-formation should be considered valid, just because it's become popular.

My own peccadillo, not mentioned in the article, is "supposably" versus "supposedly". I think what irks me the most is that most people don't know the real meaning of "supposably"; I think it's fairly obvious that they're taking affixes that they hear every day and, having not seen the word in print, assume that "supposedly" is spelled similarly.

And this, I think, is the crux of the issue. What I can't decide, though, is whether people are reading less -- to be blamed on television and videogames I'm sure -- or if people are reading more, now that they have access to email and the Internet, but that this increased influx of text is unedited and teaching incorrect uses to those who could otherwise benefit from all this extra reading.

But the question being asked, regarding these additions to the dictionaries, is whether the dictionaries' roles are exactly that -- to note the way language is used, and not necessarily the way it should be used. I'm of the opinion that separate dictionaries should exist to differentiate between the two, or at the very least it should be well-noted in an all-in-one dictionary that words are incorrect or fleeting as they are slang, dialectal or archaic now. Or, are we just going to allow a handful of companies to declare what is and is not considered «correct»?

Supposably.

NE BODY OUT THERE?

Thanks for stopping by The Ruckus Room. We've saved the La-Z-Boy* just for you, so take a load off. That's what we're here for.

You've likely stumbled upon us because you clicked some link that you really should not have; or your 'bot turned up our byte-based basement retreat and how could you resist the possibility of virtual shag carpeting; or like us, your one of those people who possess an overwhelming urge, nay, biological imperative to correct others when they misuse a word, mis-spell a word, or basically butcher the English language so horribly as to make it incomprehensible. The Ruckus Room is the place to get that sort of thing off your chest.

That's not to say we're perfect. No sir. Not at all. But we're trying. And if we all tried just a little every day, dumbass additions to the language, like _ne_ included in the title above, wouldn't exist to infuriate us to the point of apoplexy -- although, I do admit that a little incoherent rage matched with splotchy fits of red covering the face and arms can be amusing. Sometimes.

For those of you not in the know, _ne_ is the phonetic representation of _any_. For those of you who do know what it is, and worse yet use it, shame on you. I get the cultural significance of pluralizing with a _z_ or mixing numbers with letters to form words (of a sort) like _l3wt_ and _l33t_ to keep the 5-0 guessing about your mad hackzor skills, er, skillz. But _ne_? You save just one letter when you're typing. Are you lazy? Is it cool? Probably, on both counts. You know who I feel for in all this, beside my doctor who has the unfortunate job of telling me my blood pressure is too high and that I need to relax, teachers. Imagine the state of English papers throughout the education systems, clogged with this new lexicon. Sigh

Thanks again for coming by. We're sure glad you did. Next time we'll break out the margarita mix.

* Don't worry, we'll get to this sort of thing and the marketers who breed it soon enough.