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Midge, Moose. Moose, Midge. Alliteration is just one of the quirky little twists that one can use to augment the English language. English, for my jingoistic dollar, is still the crème de la crème of all languages. To listen to all the alarmist intellectual Henny-Penny doom-mongers going on and on these days about the imminent death of the English language, you'd think that the English language was, like, ya know, totally dying or something. Whatever.
Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but, English is not just the language of Britain, Australia, Canada, and certain parts of Kentucky. It's also the language of business, diplomacy, and technology. I have always had a deep and abiding love for the English language. I've always loved the flirtatious tango of consonants and vowels, the sturdy dependability of nouns and the capricious whimsy of verbs, the strutting pageantry of the adjective and the flitting evanescence of the adverb, all kept safe and orderly by those reliable little policemen, punctuation marks. Wow! Think I got my ass kicked much in high school?
You can gauge the esteem in which we hold the English language simply by telling someone you majored in it. The first thing they do is mentally subtract twenty grand off what they think you make for a living. The second thing they do is ask you to bring them a menu and tell them the soup of the day. And why not? In school, English was the easiest subject to bullxxxx your way through. There are no Cliff's Notes for Physics. You can't bluff your way though a Calculus discussion just by watching Calculus: The Movie. But when it comes to an essay question, you can fake it like a hooker being paid by-the-moan.
English is a protean, evolving language that must constantly change in order to remain relevant, but, let's not go out of our way to appropriate words from other cultures simply to justify making something more expensive. You can add all the Italian suffixes you want, you're not fooling anybody over there at Starbucks--it's still just coffee. Now ring me the xxxx up, you frappa-loser.
And Starbucco's is not the only cultural borrower. Doctors tend to lift most of their phrases from Greek, which is only fitting since every time I go to see one, he somehow feels the need to spend the afternoon spelunking around in my ass.
I wouldn’t be so worried about the fate of the English language if more of us could speak it properly. Forget Stone Cold Steve Austin or The Rock, if you want to see real wrestling, watch our president pronounce the word “unilateral.” Love the guy or hate him, you have to admit that when Bush is speaking unscripted, the English language disintegrates like cotton candy in a monsoon. Even he looks like he’s surprised at what’s coming out of his mouth, kind of like John Malkovich when he had that puppeteer inside his head.
The English language is very much alive. From where I’m standing, our mother tongue is kicking ass and taking names. It’s large and in charge. It’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, full of piss and vinegar and ready to open up a big ol’ can of whup-ass. It’s calling the shots, it’s bouncing and behaving, it’s all up in it, and it’s all that and a bag of chips. What the xxxx am I talking about?
I have upon occasion been labeled the E. B. White of the word “f.ck,” but you have to admit that I went an entire football season without saying it. Take it from a connoisseur, it should be used sparingly, like saffron in a f.cking paella. The word “f.ck” is a beauty, isn’t it? From its fricative genesis, blossoming into its ripe, rich middle until it’s cruelly truncated in its prime by a merciless, glottal stop . . . In all of its earthy, salty illicit Anglo-Saxon glory, “f.ck” is almost as satisfying to say as it is to do.
Some would say I contribute to the coarsening of the English language through my casual use of profanity. To those critics I would respond that my discourse merely exemplifies the vaunted precedent of valorizing the oral vernacular. I would further add that language is a living tissue, which must occasionally suffer the rupture of subversion in order to convalesce into a more structural stability. So to those guardians of the linguistic gates out there who charge that I shoehorn the f-word in wherever I can merely to further a rather tenuous career built entirely on a profane house of cards . . . well, why don’t you just go f.ckerize yourselves.
Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.
--Miller, Dennis. The Rant Zone, (81 - 84).
Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here, but, English is not just the language of Britain, Australia, Canada, and certain parts of Kentucky. It's also the language of business, diplomacy, and technology. I have always had a deep and abiding love for the English language. I've always loved the flirtatious tango of consonants and vowels, the sturdy dependability of nouns and the capricious whimsy of verbs, the strutting pageantry of the adjective and the flitting evanescence of the adverb, all kept safe and orderly by those reliable little policemen, punctuation marks. Wow! Think I got my ass kicked much in high school?
You can gauge the esteem in which we hold the English language simply by telling someone you majored in it. The first thing they do is mentally subtract twenty grand off what they think you make for a living. The second thing they do is ask you to bring them a menu and tell them the soup of the day. And why not? In school, English was the easiest subject to bullxxxx your way through. There are no Cliff's Notes for Physics. You can't bluff your way though a Calculus discussion just by watching Calculus: The Movie. But when it comes to an essay question, you can fake it like a hooker being paid by-the-moan.
English is a protean, evolving language that must constantly change in order to remain relevant, but, let's not go out of our way to appropriate words from other cultures simply to justify making something more expensive. You can add all the Italian suffixes you want, you're not fooling anybody over there at Starbucks--it's still just coffee. Now ring me the xxxx up, you frappa-loser.
And Starbucco's is not the only cultural borrower. Doctors tend to lift most of their phrases from Greek, which is only fitting since every time I go to see one, he somehow feels the need to spend the afternoon spelunking around in my ass.
I wouldn’t be so worried about the fate of the English language if more of us could speak it properly. Forget Stone Cold Steve Austin or The Rock, if you want to see real wrestling, watch our president pronounce the word “unilateral.” Love the guy or hate him, you have to admit that when Bush is speaking unscripted, the English language disintegrates like cotton candy in a monsoon. Even he looks like he’s surprised at what’s coming out of his mouth, kind of like John Malkovich when he had that puppeteer inside his head.
The English language is very much alive. From where I’m standing, our mother tongue is kicking ass and taking names. It’s large and in charge. It’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, full of piss and vinegar and ready to open up a big ol’ can of whup-ass. It’s calling the shots, it’s bouncing and behaving, it’s all up in it, and it’s all that and a bag of chips. What the xxxx am I talking about?
I have upon occasion been labeled the E. B. White of the word “f.ck,” but you have to admit that I went an entire football season without saying it. Take it from a connoisseur, it should be used sparingly, like saffron in a f.cking paella. The word “f.ck” is a beauty, isn’t it? From its fricative genesis, blossoming into its ripe, rich middle until it’s cruelly truncated in its prime by a merciless, glottal stop . . . In all of its earthy, salty illicit Anglo-Saxon glory, “f.ck” is almost as satisfying to say as it is to do.
Some would say I contribute to the coarsening of the English language through my casual use of profanity. To those critics I would respond that my discourse merely exemplifies the vaunted precedent of valorizing the oral vernacular. I would further add that language is a living tissue, which must occasionally suffer the rupture of subversion in order to convalesce into a more structural stability. So to those guardians of the linguistic gates out there who charge that I shoehorn the f-word in wherever I can merely to further a rather tenuous career built entirely on a profane house of cards . . . well, why don’t you just go f.ckerize yourselves.
Of course, that’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.
--Miller, Dennis. The Rant Zone, (81 - 84).
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