Today’s post is about language. I’m usually a pretty mellow person, but when it comes to language use I’m a curmudgeon. Like all people growing up, I was surrounded by the slang of my generation, and much of that slang I liked and used. For instance, you’ll still hear me saying the “Far Out!” when I really like something.
Slang is creative. Slang is imaginative. Slang is playful. I’m all for that. One of my favorite epithets is “God’s teeth!”, introduced to me in a novel I read in graduate school. I think it was Kingsley Amos’ Lucky Jim, but I’m not sure. The origin of the phrase is apparently Elizabethan.
What always gets my dander up and awakens my inner curmudgeon is hearing “I’m like” and “he’s like” (which seems to have replaced “I go” and “he goes”) for “I said” and “he said”. It started as teenspeak, and now it seems damn near universal as those teens have grown up. To me it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard.
My latest outrage is hearing professional journalists and commentators on news talk shows start their comments with “I mean,” or sometimes “Well, I mean” or “Yeah, I mean”. Where the hell does that come from? More teenspeak? These are professionals who ought to know better. God’s Teeth!
Thank you for reading my blog.
Marjorie Beck
Marjorie Beck
Wish I Could Have Been There 