Crenellated Flotsam

I don’t much like the term Grammar Nazi, but I’ve been called that and probably worse over my life. For me, it’s not so much a matter of defending my native tongue like a cop, but I do so because I’m a hopeless romantic and I don’t like to see English hurt.

Not that the language minds, or even notices.

I love how language changes over the years, how it grows, but I’m never very happy when the change costs us something and gives nothing new in return. Without changes, we wouldn’t have such great new words as fo shizzle, website, or Branjelica. These words, and many others, are ones we need.

I’ve grown used to, if not fond of, Internet thread board people co-opting most of their terms instead of coming up with their own, but I wish they’d come up something new instead of grabbing spam, troll, and the like. It was bad enough for me when spam moved from Usenet postings on a wide number of groups to include any e-mail ad, but lately it’s been dumbed down even more and now is used to disparage any comment someone dislikes.

Dammit, I love this language and all the nuances it lets us convey. A pretty girl isn’t the same as a cute one, and calling someone brilliant means something different than saying she’s smart. When we need a new word to describe something, English lets that happen and, over time, the word becomes part of our shared language.

When some word with a long and recognized history, such as chocolate, is broadened to mean just about anything that contains any amount of coca, for example, we don’t gain anything and the larger meaning dilutes the meaning of the words we use to communicate our thoughts without ambiguity. I know, I know, no one except lawyers and philosophers care about such precision, but I don’t want a language that ends up losing the distinction between an abode and a house.

There’s no way any living language can remain static, stay the same, become entrenched, calcified, or stagnant, and there shouldn’t be. Still, when a word or phrase I love is used to mean something different than it’s always meant, what it was designed to convey, a little part of me dies, and it hurts more when we lose an exacting, defined term and gain nothing.
I’d rather spend a week in jail than a night in prison as long as those words mean what they were meant to mean. If I’m gonna be precise, that is.

I don’t remember much from the history classes I took in school, which were only those I needed to get a degree in another field, but I don’t think that has anything to do with my point.

Every day, from every side, I hear people in America talking about our Founding Fathers, a group of people with whom I’m admittedly ignorant. Yeah, I know some of their names, but I don’t know very much else about them.

Anyway, to make some point, partisans usually call on one or more of these Fathers to reinforce their position. Whether it’s arguing for small government or nationwide health care, these historical people are brought up to prove whatever’s being argued.

Like I said, I can’t claim to understand if the viewpoint of the long dead person is true or not, but I don’t think it matters one way or the other. Not only does it seem that to every Founding Father there’s an equal but opposite Founding Father, but I’m not convinced what someone said 250 years ago even makes a lot of sense any more.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think those guys did a great thing in setting up this country. Our constitution is a remarkable document and not just because it’s almost completely silent when it comes to policy. It’s a great frame for running a country, and I think it’s done a pretty good job of holding up.

What concerns me is this idea that what Franklin, Jefferson, Adams, or whoever believed in 1770 is what they would think today. I’m thinking these people, as much as anyone, would be as influenced as much by their environment as they would be by any internal tendencies.

I didn’t take many psychology or sociology classes, either, but I have a hunch that we’re shaped as much by where and how we’re brought up as we are by anything. Kids learn from their parents, and either carry those same things on or rebel against them and take the other side. We all grow through adolescence and the self-obsessed twenties, and some of us stop along the way and others continue to grow throughout our lives and find their positions changing.

My point is, not everyone is static and I’m not even sure that we can say with any certainty that how anyone turned out was ever fixed. A kid raised in Portland in the 1960s might have an entirely different set of political or cultural beliefs had she been raised in Salinas or Houston.

The people who grew up in New York in 1827, I’m thinking, might not even recognize themselves in the mirror if, instead, they were raised even ten or fifty years later. I just think where and how we develop is a huge factor in determining who we are.

If that’s true, a contemporary George Washington might not believe what the one from history did. If we permit people to change, if we brought him back to life, there’s every reason to believe he might even change his mind about whatever it is he’s most known for thinking.

I guess this is all just to say that I have no idea what lesson I’m supposed to take from arguments based on these old guys.

If you ask me, the word awesome has pretty much lost all of its oomph.

I guess I can see why it became so popular with the kids, who are almost always at the forefront of changes in lanuguage and usage, but that doesn’t help me feel better about losing another perfectly fine word.

Over my life, I’ve seen quite a few words come and go, change meaning, or take over slang and become popular. Some, like gay, have had their meaning restricted, with no new word popping up to take their old place and meaning, which reduces our language by exactly one word. Others, such as jungle, have become politically incorrect and necessarily replaced by cold, dry, descriptive phrases (tropical rainforest) that have absolutely no emotional response. Sure, I may picture the same thing as before, but tropical rainforest doesn’t bring up memories of drums or all those movies I saw as a kid.

After a few days of rain, we’ve had a couple of sunshine here in Los Angeles. It was bright and sunny earlier this morning, but now clouds have returned and I changed from shorts to long pants. When the sun pops out, I can turn my face toward it and feel its warmth, and trying to fathom the enormous power of something that far away being felt by me and making a noticeable difference astounds me.

The explosive power of the sun is awesome. It gives me pause, causes me to feel awe, in a way no slang use of the word even approaches. A new song or remarkable play in a sporting event doesn’t make me feel that way, but without thinking, that’s the word we use to describe them. Awesome has now become simply filler, much like uh or like, added to speech or writing but adding nothing to the idea being brought forth other than “I like this” or “I think this is good.”

I thought it was bad when incredible became cheapened by use and went from its original “impossible to believe or credit” to doubtful or, worse, unlikely. I hadn’t realized that language needed to change to eliminate the nuances our individual words were invented to convey, but I guess that’s the way it goes.

It’s not awesome, this evolution, it’s erosion.

As if life weren’t confusing enough, I sometimes make it worse by refusing to understand simple concepts.

One of my longer lasting problems comes with the notion of secret. For some reason, I keep thinking of in terms of a stronger, probably non-existent word that would refer to something that I, and I alone, know. I know, I know, most secrets are between two people, but it always feels to me as if more than one person knows about some thing, it’s not the same as a real secret.

As can be expected, this gets me into lots of trouble, but only with myself. I like to think of myself as one of the more discrete people around, and anything I think shouldn’t be public or even divulged to another person is locked up tight in my head. I don’t have much trouble keeping these things secret and I don’t remember ever hearing anyone gossiping about me as blabbing, but maybe they do and just keep it a secret from me.

I’d like two terms, one for things I share with others and another for things only I know. I suppose I could distinguish them by calling the first one confidences, but it’s not likely I’d remember to do that all the time. Still, it’s a good way to keep the two things separate.

There are any number of things I’m aware of that no one else knows, but they’re not all worthy of being called secrets. I think a secret has to be something I’m hiding, or that I don’t want other people to know. I mean, right now no one knows which toothpaste I used this morning or what underwear I have on, but it’s not like I wouldn’t tell anyone who asked. Those things are unknown to the world, but that’s more a matter of happenstance than reluctance.

What’s weird about the confidences is that I have a hard time considering them as secrets because even if I never mention them, someone else knows about them and could talk about them. Since I can’t really control if no one else learns about them, I have a hard time considering them as secrets. If I die, the secret won’t die with me and that, to me, pretty much keeps them out of the realm of secrecy.

Then again, a confidence, I think, is something that I’m told about, not something that arises on its own. Just like the toothpaste, I’ve done a lot of things with other people, but only the ones we don’t other people to know about should be secret. Even more troubling, a lot of those things, now that I think about it, are things I’d have to check with the other person to find out if I can talk about it or not. I know what I’m not telling anyone, and those things are secret, but my not talking about something doesn’t mean it’s a secret. It would have to be something I know, or have been told, not to discuss with others.

So, in my overly complicated world, there’s more to the matter of secrets than would seem to be necessary. There’s probably thousands who’ve had access to my super secret Social Security Number so I guess a secret boils down to something someone doesn’t want others to know, no matter how many already do or why.