I swear, I heard one of the kids down the street say these words before.
Sup with the schooling system, yo? That ain’t what MC Hammer would call “Proper.” Have we finally upgraded to English 2.0 without my knowledge? Since, back in the day, we didn’t have grammar and spell checkers, we were forced to learn things the old-fashioned way. By memory. Could it be that technology have been spoiling us rotten for awhile now? I remember being able to multiply and divide by hand. I’m afraid it’s a lot more convenient to hit the calculator icon these days, than to grab the pen and piece of paper in front of me.
However, while some people still need to play catch-up on learning basic language skills, I’m afraid, in this day and age, we all have to somehow do so, as well. Though, in some other way. I don’t know about you, but the English dictionary seems to be getting thicker and thicker on a daily basis. Albeit, unofficially.
I mean, since when did the word “favorite” become a verb? (Did I just hear someone mention “Googled?”) Technorati would say… Your blog has been favorited five times. Good luck convincing your spell checker to pass that one. And, it just doesn’t roll nicely on the tongue, either. Admit it!
By the way, I found the following list from the American Dialect Society after having read the news yesterday announcing “Subprime” as official word of the year 2007. These words are just a small sample from an extensive list that goes all the way back to 1990.
2007
Subprime – an adjective used to describe a risky or less than ideal loan, mortgage, or investment.
Googlegänger – A person with your name who shows up when you google yourself.
Texter – a person who sends text messages.
Billary/Hill-Bill – Bill and Hillary Clinton
Quadriboobage – The appearance of having four breasts caused by wearing a brassiere that is too small.2006
Plutoed – to be demoted or devalued (This is just cruel, I think. Call me sentimental but I love and miss my Pluto!)
Brokeback – of questionable masculinity; insufficiently heteronormative.
Pornament – a Christmas ornament of the adult kind.2005
Truthiness – the quality of stating concepts or facts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true.
Flee-ancée – in reference to runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks.
It’s also interesting to find these out:
Word of the decade (90’s) – Web
Word of the century (20th) – Jazz
Word of the millennium (past one, I’m guessing) – She
There you go. I hope you were entertained, somehow.
Oh, and if you’re wondering what your emo boy just blurted out on the celly while wafflin’ with his G, here’s a fun place to find out. Now, that’s sick, brah.
Chris Alma José 
Haha, amusing.
I would say that our language has become more malleable of late, which might not be bad on its own. It’s most likely that the people making these grievous grammatical errors in the first place were perfectly aware of their foul, but found amusement in this. However, the problem comes in the less-intelligent imitators who take everything at face value or simply don’t know the correct alternative.
It’s a little sad, I agree. But, nobody ever said trends were intelligent.
It’s so nice to hear from people who treasure the English language. I think a lot of the problem comes from the change in English education. We’ve messed up the whole process for acquiring correct English. As a future English teacher, I struggle with this daily. I just can’t decide how am going to tackle speech and writing in a high school classroom full of students who don’t know what subjects and verbs are. What are we going to do?
I have been entertained- thank you!
I voted against an ornament exchange at work this year. Maybe next year I’ll propose a pornament exchange :-).
The evolution of language is always interesting. However, I cringe at the tendency these days to misuse apostrophes. It is a frequent occurrence on many news networks. Drives me mad. I saw a headline the other day which said: ‘ Free Physic Reading’s.’ Say what?
very interesting entry. i’ve picked up quite a few words which i’ll probably use to amuse people and hopefully add spice to an otherwise boring conversation 🙂