Revisiting the 1800s

Back To the Future?


I don't consider myself a curmudgeon as a general rule. I have been known to climb atop the soap box in response to abuses of the English language that became popular, first in email shortcuts and lately in text messages. While not aghast as much as the Eats Shoots and Leaves author, I'm not about to accept colloquialisms just because the "majority" chooses to. That's why I'm frustrated with the way language is spoken.
I'm sure somebody got upset when "OK" became common parlance as did so many other common expressions. I would be remiss, probably, if I did not say that I,too, use some colloquial expressions from time to time. However, I know the difference between "while" and "why" (unlike one of my students yesterday). I also know how to say and spell "all right" as an expression of agreement...unlike any of the kids in the movie Save the Last Dance. In case you missed the movie, a Midwestern kid who can actuially speak, transfers to a different school and eventually begins to say things like "aight" instead of "all right." (If you pronounce "aight" carefully, it almost begins to sound the same as the correct version. Of course, yesterday, I got a text from a student who used the same "aight" instead of "all right, alright or even OK. But that's not the worst.
What landed on my last language nerve was the Super Bowl hype. "Who dat?" became a rallying cry for one team. I even heard it as "Who dat goin' ta beat dem Saints?" The last straw was the headline of today's Green Bay (used-to-be-a-real) newspaper: "WHO DAT? DEY CHAMPIONS!!
It wasn't too long ago that such verbiage would be considered impolite or even downright racist...evoking memories of all the controversies surrounding Huckleberry Finn. Now, it seems we can use such a dialect with impunity. Does nobody remember any of that? Proudly shouting such a diatribe into televisions cameras/
Maybe it's just me. Maybe I am a curmudgeon.
But then, I didn't thin Huck Finn was racist given the representation of the times in which it was written.
I just don't think we should go back there...in action OR in speech.