I don’t speak English anymore. Apparently, for some years now, I’ve been speaking a dying dialect from the 20th century which hasn’t been English since Brad jumped from Jennifer to Jolie. (And we all know how that worked out. Just sayin’!) Anyway, I’m literally no longer literate in my own language and that upsets me. I see this as yet another stone in the Yellow Brick Road to hell that’s leading my world to extinction. Culture is tied to language, and language is the canary in any society’s mineshaft. Once the canary stops singing, it’s only a matter of time before it’s pushing up daisies. (BTW, if you caught any of those references, you probably don’t speak 21st century English, either.)
The problem is, as a linguistic dinosaur, I have no idea what half the words people use these days mean. So, for the most part, I guess. However, as the world fills up with bromances, bait-clicks, metrosexuals, and binge watching I find it harder and harder to understand what the hell people are talking about. Here are a few more of my best guesses.
Cosplay — Derived from “costume” and “play,” this word covers a range of meaning, but I believe it’s actually just a euphemism for someone whose life sucks so badly they spend their time dressing up and pretending to be somebody else.
Mansplaining — This one is very complicated. On the surface it’s a portmanteau word for a man explaining something. Dig deeper, and it’s a man explaining something in a very condescending way — usually to a woman. Dig even deeper, and mansplaining actually means some men have not yet surrendered in the gender wars and they still insist on talking about football and automobiles and other boring, technical stuff — like anybody cares about that crap.
Sideboob — “Sideboob” is one of those words that relies entirely on the speaker, and, oddly enough is not actually about boobs, at all. It’s about the dress and the woman wearing it. It illustrates our contemporary attitude towards women. It suggests that the same dress is both sultry and sleazy and that the woman wearing it is attractive, stylish and sophisticated — but probably a skank.
There’s also:
Askhole — Everybody asks stupid questions but me.
Snowmageddon — Our winter was worse than your winter.
And
Plutoed — Nobody wants me around, but I’m here anyway — and there’s nothing you can do about it.
But by far my favourite is
Screenager — This is an all-purpose word for the latest generation’s obsession with phones, tabs and computers. However, what it actually means is contemporary teenagers are all losers — why aren’t they out at the Drive-in theater, drinking illegal beer and trying to get pregnant, like we did at their age?
As we used to say, ’nuff said.
Still hung over from the party that was Italy, I spent last week fighting off jetlag and fighting with culture shock. (North American streets are too wide, too clean and too new.) Anyway, it gave me time to catch up on Games of Thrones and wonder about all manner of curious things. For example, hearing a lot of English spoken as a second language, I realized that it’s a damn good thing I was born with English because there’s no way I could ever learn its nuances secondhand. And honestly, I applaud anybody who can, because they’re tons smarter than I’ll ever be.
“Never” is a self-absorbed bastard who hangs around our vocabulary doing nothing except making trouble. Sure, every once in a while it might bestir itself to state the obvious like “I’ve ‘never’ been to Papua New Guinea,” but in general, it spends its days sittin’ on its ass. You see “never” hardly ever (notice how I did that) comes up in ordinary conversation. It thinks it’s too important for that pedestrian activity. The only time “never” goes into action is when somebody’s jumped into the deep end of their ego pool and clearly can’t swim. Then, and only then, “never” turns into this verbal ninja, dishing out the hyperbole like it’s Chuck Norris and turning every discussion into the War Of The Words. Let me show you what I mean.
WD Fyfe 