You Talk Bad
a few examples
Age is a funny thing. My youthful idealism is still intact. My belief that people should help others when they can is sound. Live and let live, don’t judge a book by its cover, everyone deserves a second chance… these and many other ideals continue to help guide my daily life. But, one virtue that I have never had an over-abundance of has been on the wane for a few years now.
I have lost patience with language abusers.
The normal annoyances afflict me, as they do many others. Like people who don’t know the difference, or don’t care about the difference between “your” and “you’re”. I realize we’re all busy, but, when did it become so hard to understand where and when an apostrophe is to be used? Or, those who use words like “irregardless”, or people who use the term “at the end of the day” more than once in a conversation when describing a time when all dialogue has been exhausted. Things like this make me yell at my TV or computer screen.
But, what really makes my head swim is more insidious than these rather benign examples of linguistic fluffery. What really makes me want to palm people on the forehead is turning nouns into verbs, or vice-versa. This is mostly a kid thing, and I have to check myself quite often to avoid the much-deserved passive-aggressive retort.
Let me set the record straight. “Solution” is not a verb. You cannot “solution” a problem. Saying,“that’s a fail.”, That’s “beast” or “that’s epic” MAKES NO SENSE. I know what you mean, but that doesn’t make it any easier to hear. Everything is not “awesome”. Does that song really make your mouth hang open, speechless and in awe? No? Then, shut up. Referring to someone as having “mad skills” also makes no damn sense. And, I’m quite certain the word “amazing” has taken the top spot in being the most over-used descriptive term we have in our language. Very few things amaze me, certainly not fifteen things I see every day, which is about how often I hear it.
I long for the days when everything was “cool”. Men, women, children, the elderly… all were referred to as “man”. Not knowing the difference between a shizzle and a hizzy doesn’t really affect my daily life, so don’t hurl those terms at me like I’m supposed to be okay with it.
Now, get off my lawn.
Age is a funny thing. My youthful idealism is still intact. My belief that people should help others when they can is sound. Live and let live, don’t judge a book by its cover, everyone deserves a second chance… these and many other ideals continue to help guide my daily life. But, one virtue that I have never had an over-abundance of has been on the wane for a few years now.
I have lost patience with language abusers.
The normal annoyances afflict me, as they do many others. Like people who don’t know the difference, or don’t care about the difference between “your” and “you’re”. I realize we’re all busy, but, when did it become so hard to understand where and when an apostrophe is to be used? Or, those who use words like “irregardless”, or people who use the term “at the end of the day” more than once in a conversation when describing a time when all dialogue has been exhausted. Things like this make me yell at my TV or computer screen.
But, what really makes my head swim is more insidious than these rather benign examples of linguistic fluffery. What really makes me want to palm people on the forehead is turning nouns into verbs, or vice-versa. This is mostly a kid thing, and I have to check myself quite often to avoid the much-deserved passive-aggressive retort.
Let me set the record straight. “Solution” is not a verb. You cannot “solution” a problem. Saying,“that’s a fail.”, That’s “beast” or “that’s epic” MAKES NO SENSE. I know what you mean, but that doesn’t make it any easier to hear. Everything is not “awesome”. Does that song really make your mouth hang open, speechless and in awe? No? Then, shut up. Referring to someone as having “mad skills” also makes no damn sense. And, I’m quite certain the word “amazing” has taken the top spot in being the most over-used descriptive term we have in our language. Very few things amaze me, certainly not fifteen things I see every day, which is about how often I hear it.
I long for the days when everything was “cool”. Men, women, children, the elderly… all were referred to as “man”. Not knowing the difference between a shizzle and a hizzy doesn’t really affect my daily life, so don’t hurl those terms at me like I’m supposed to be okay with it.
Now, get off my lawn.
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