We need a Language Cop.
I may not mean what you think.
English may be the greatest language ever invented. It’s certainly the greatest language ever Darwinned.
OxfordDictionaries.com revels in the language trends behind its latest update to the English lexicon.
• acquihire n: buying out a company primarily for the skills and expertise of its staff
• binge-watch v: watch multiple episodes of a TV show, one right after the other
• clickbait n: content whose main purpose is to draw visitors to this web page
• cord cutting n: practice of cancelling a cable or satellite subscription or landline phone
• geocache n: Since my kids have been geocaching for so long, it surprises me this didn’t make the list years ago
• humblebrag n & v: (make) an ostensibly modest or self-deprecating statement whose actual purpose is to draw attention to something of which one is proud
• listicle n: an Internet article presented in the form of a numbered or bullet-pointed list
• octocopter n: I want one
• side boob n: I like them
• time-poor adj.: spending much of one’s time working or occupied; I’ve always liked the term “land-poor” for families with more grass than cash
• vape v: drag on an e-cig.
I’ll post and tweet some clickbait to this listicle. Two other words in this sentence made earlier Oxford lists.
English may be the greatest language ever.
• Linguist Max Müller said, “English spelling is a national misfortune to England and an international misfortune to the rest of the world.”
Nobody ever said it was easy to be great.
• Where else would we find homonyms, homophones, homographs, and heteronyms?
It was a fair day when I went to the country fair to pay the fare for a pair of pears. Fortunately I did not tear the bag which might have caused me to tear up.
• Our resourceful language borrows most every word you or I speak from some other language and prodigiously lends many of them back.
The band played guitars, a mandolin, fiddle, banjo, and bass at the Summer Sounds concert yesterday. Guitar comes to us from the Arabic qi-ta-ra or qai-thara which originally descended from the ancient Greek kithara. A bass is not a fish when it has strings. There were no hazards at the concert other than the threat of rain. Unlike the linguists in France, we can borrow hazard from the medieval French hasart.
We need a Language Cop. We need to keep the languages of our settlers old and new alive but we also need to assure we can talk to each other. Ket, the language spoken in Central Siberia, is vital. Abenaki is a small but significant member the Algonquian languages of northeastern North America. Zazaki is an indispensable Indo-European language spoken primarily in eastern Turkey by the Zaza people.
I love that some of our words come from Ket, and Abenaki, and Zazaki.
I see red every time I hear “Press 1 for Ket” from a telephone system.
I’m glad we do include Siberians and earlier Americans and Iranians in our culture but if we really want to include Siberians and earlier Americans, and Iranians in our culture, then the phony Liberals have to get out of the way and let the Siberians and earlier Americans and Iranians learn to speak to the English and Spanish and Tag-A-Log speakers who live next door. In the common language their adopted country has adopted.
The best way to do that is for us all to learn English, too.
That’s the key. English is the greatest language ever simply because it remains so common, so accessible, so complete.
The phony Liberals are those who insisted the Voting Rights Act include help for “language minority voters.” Hello? Only citizens can vote. Citizens take the oath in what language? The phony Liberals are those who insisted that school textbooks be printed for “language minority students.” Hello?
We do need a Language Cop. We need a Language Cop who will arrest the phony Liberals who insist on shackling the Siberians and earlier Americans and Iranians and Spanish and Tag-A-Log speakers so they can’t speak with each other.
Carpe dentum … seize the teeth.
–Mrs. Doubtfire
Divide and conquer is highly supported when folks can’t communicate with one another. It’s been done before (look up Tower of Babel.)
Rex Harrison — as Professor Henry Higgins — in My Fair Lady, lamented: “Why Can’t The English Speak English?” It seemed to trouble him.
A female character sang:
“Why can’t The English set a good example to people whose English is painful to your ears?
It brings the Scot & The Irish even close to tears!
There even are places where English completely disappears!!
IN AMERICA…THEY HAVEN’T USED ITN FOR YEARS.”
Of course, the English we speak on these shores is not “English” at all, but a bastardized language called “American English”. And sadly, many — myself included — cannot even speak that.
As Herr Blogmeister points out, the task is constantly *difficulted* because new words are always being invented and added to the lexicon. Years ago I invented a word called “giantific” to describe something very large; but it never caught on. I still use it, and nobody cares or notices.
Herr Blogmeister mentions Homonyms, Homographs and Homophones. Of late we have seen the self-descriptive “Obamaphones” — and who can ignore the tiresome term “Obamacare”. Someday someone will devise a comedic word to describe his enigmatic Hawaiian birth records.
I’m not creative and can’t think of anything clever; but then, it really is no laughing matter.
— George
What’s with all this babble in Babylonia? Narcissism versus art and science. Narcissism wins. Your argument is the best I have read in defense of a national language. There is a dearth of such arguments. In 1997 I began to search for a simple term that describes my findings in bioelectromagnetics research and I tried “ecosyn” only to learn that a Netherlands company owned the trademark to the term and perverted it. Then I tried “echosyn” and found it as a title in a list of music synthesizer sound bars. It is a sound sequence that has no mathematical relevance to the etymology. My search was futile. How does one give voice to a concept when the relevant terms have been perverted?
“Gaiawar is a persona I created for use in Deja Groups, now Groups Google. The term has since been used for creating computerized video games that have no relevance to the original.
I often laugh and cry inside when I reflect on the hundreds of incidents during conversation with others when we are each using common English language but not communicating. Seems to happen most often between wife and I.
I propose a pogrom, erasure of all Liberals. for a start toward a viable solution.
http://www.reddit.com/r/ForeverAlone/comments/2dmkxe/i_hate_it_when_they_show_interest_and_then_let/