Having been publicly recognised as a bit of a wordy git of late…

 

Mainly because of my blogging prowess…

 

Somewhat surprisingly. I was recently invited to become the Founder President of the Logan based Philological Society (Not really).

And wrongly assuming that philology was the posh word for something like wife swapping. I naturally accepted. All well and good but the night before the inaugural meeting. The secretary-elect quietly informed me that philology was in fact. As she so eloquently put it, ‘Language and stuff like that’.

Needless to say, I did what any self respecting wordsmith would do. I panicked. Then, I panicked some more, raced home to my keyboard and hurriedly re-wrote my inaugural presidential address. And for your further edification and delight, I hereby append the speech as delivered.

 

Word Play… And stuff like that.

 

Ladies and gentlemen. I feel greatly honoured to be invited here tonight to give this address. And not only honoured but somewhat awed by the whole thing. For I ask you now, is not language one of the most important aspects of all human behaviour? I think it’s terrifically useful for communicating with. And, in line with current socio-dynamic psychologist theory. I would say that talking wouldn’t quite be the same without it. Language is, when you come down to it, a whole… I mean it’s a whole… language of its own, isn’t it? And it’s way much better at getting things over to other people than… Than… Well, you know.

However, I have chosen as the subject. Of this, my inaugural address. Not a song of praise for the unsung goddess of language. But more a note of caution on some of the lesser known abuses and depredations currently being heaped upon her alter. If the goddess we know as language is truly the White Cliffs of human expression. Then she is being sadly eroded at the bottom.

I have decided tonight to select a few of the more current abuses and misuses of language. The ones I think are a bit more ‘commoner’. And therefore ‘dangerouser’ to its wellbeing. And I’m going to fully illustrate them for you.

For these purposes I shall ignore the older errors. As I shall the newer (ie… text message speak – l8ers m8). Those that generations of grammarians have regarded as their bêtes noirs (a French phrase meaning literally ‘black bets’, i.e. money down the drain). I shall not be rehashing those school-masterish sentences. Such as ‘Where did you get that book you know I don’t like to be read to out of down from?’ (Laughter).

I do not particularly object to ending a sentence with a preposition. But prefer, like most politicians and prostitutes. To end my sentence with a proposition! (No laughter at all).

 

The first aspect of current abuse that I should like to illustrate is the common practice of converting nouns into verbs.

At random and without any regard to grammar or propriety.

 

For the purposes of this talk. I shall define as a noun any word pertaining to an object or abstract concept that has specific ontological significance. Within any given substantive contextual cognitive pattern.

And of course a verb is a ‘doing word’.

Now the practice of converting a noun into a verb is long-standing. For centuries we have penned letters, pencilled drawings, and more recently telephoned our friends. Or even Googled the odd bit of interweb information.

But the practice of random and willy nilly conversion of any noun into a verb. One might say ‘of verbing a noun’. Except one wouldn’t be caught dead doing so (still no laughter). Reached its apogee (or possibly apogeed). In an American movie when an unruly and ungrammatical youth said to his moll, ‘Cigarette me, baby.’

 

The mannerism quickly caught on.

 

Soon Americans were saying to each other, ‘Let me lunch you.’ The connotations were numerous. One could let oneself be ‘coffeed’ early in the morning. The working class continually ‘meat and two vegged’ one another. While the aristocrats ‘Devonshire-clotted-cream-teaed’ themselves. And the middle class executive, forever in a rush, simply ‘hamburgered’ himself.

After you have been lunched (or even lynched). The bill is then checked and ‘credit-carded’. And if you don’t want to keep the receipt you can always ‘bin’ it.

I am sure you get the idea. It surprises me that the Americans. Having had so much trouble with Messrs. Nixon, Ford, Carter, Clinton, Bush, Bush, Obama and now Trump. Do not say things like ‘the best man lost the race, so the whole ceremony was completely Presidented’.

And from this inauspicious beginning, whither? Will doctors of this country start doing it? Will patients soon be hearing things like ‘Well Mr Smith. I’m sorry to say that you have been heart-attacked’. Let us hope not (Even if he has).

Will the practice then extend to abbreviations? Shall it be de rigueur (literally ‘boring you stiff’). To utter phrases like ‘my new play was BBC’d yesterday’, and the like. And if you fancy getting away from it all, you might choose to P & O off.

 

There is also another trend coming to us on the wind of change blowing across the Atlantic.

Most of it small change unfortunately…

 

And that is the new tendency to append the suffix -ise, to abstract nouns.

Thus a citizen may announce that his house ‘has been burglarised’.

This is indeed a crime of superfluity (by both parties) since we have totally acceptable alternatives freely available. In ‘a burglary has taken place’. Or even ‘the house was burgled’. So this error carries with it an air of precision and technical knowledge which makes it attractive to the uninitiated.

I fear that we will have. On the crest of the real crime wave. A second phraseological crime wave. Innocent passers-by will soon be ‘robbery-with-violencised’. Urban streets will be ‘loitered-with-intentised’ in. And rich merchants will be ‘muggerised’. Or else ‘abductionised’. And ‘grievously-bodily-harmised’, ‘robberised’, ‘assaultised’. And, for all I know, ‘sodomised’ and then sent back home to be simonized.

The mere thought of all this dastardliness is enough to make me ‘heart failurised’ (or was it ‘heart-attacked’?).

As the parliamentarians so often say, ‘The -ise have it!’ (Absolutely no laughter at all).

 

Then there’s the problem of the second remove.

 

This is not another name for the debate for the abolition of public schools. But merely a way of suggesting that people are tending to forget where their words initially come from.

A vienna is a sausage first designed or built in Vienna. A hamburger is a flat cake of stuff dittoed (forgive me) in Hamburg.

But there is no such place as Beefburg. Nor is there a place… Even in Arizona – called Supereggbrunchburg. Though there is still time for a Russian oil oligarch to come along and build one.

In the same vein. There is a well known confection made with cherries and chocolate sponge. Called a Black Forest gateau.  If one invents a lemon flavoured version, would it become Yellow Forest gateaux? Let us hope not.

With the present standard of etymological orthodoxy. It would soon become Yellow River gateaux or even the highly xenophobic Yellow Peril gateaux. Even if it could be ‘ediblised’.

 

The final aspect of linguistic abuse.

That I would like to highlight under the precise glare of my philological scalpel…

Is that of the chimera.

 

The uneasy alliance of verb and preposition in an ongoing and upcoming scenario. We may soon look forward to train passengers becoming involved in an ‘offgetting’ situation. Athletes starting an ‘uplimbering’ run. Students becoming ‘outdropped’ (which sounds a little too surgical for my liking). And of course prunes becoming – as everyone knows – ‘throughgoing’ (very surgical). Need I say more?

Well, ladies and gentlemen. This address has been little more than a preliminary survey of the field. An ‘upwarming’ attempt on my part.

If it has been too long or inaccurate. I do apologise in a ‘downclimbing’ fashion. I just hope I haven’t ‘boredomised’ you too much with it all.

(Again, no laughter but a round of ecstatic shuffling of feet and a spontaneous burst of going across the road to the pub).

(And stuff like that).

This post hasn’t much to do with work today, I thought we could all do with a break