Followers

Saturday 22 June 2013

WordPress Daily Prompt: No Thank You

If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?

Photographers, artists, poets: show us NO.




Storm sky in Feldbrunnen

No Thank You – we have had our fair share of rain, dark clouds and storms for this year. This photo was one of those approaching storms in my garden. My poor garden had to work overtime catching up after our cold Spring, which was no Spring, well it was. It just Sprung from Winter to Summer with nothing in between.

Now let us write a blog. The actual title of the prompt includes a word that leaves a bad taste behind. There are countries in this world that have “bans” incorporated in their way of life, meaning no free speech. So let us ban “ban” Yes George Orwell sends his greetings..

Living in a country sharing four languages and English being a common language in usage when nothing else works, I find it difficult to find a forbidden word. Of course I could say let us ban all the swear words, just talk clean and ignore them: much better for the children and for the general environment. It is becoming a trend in Facebook and other social sites to add an “f” word or something similar to perhaps emphasise the point, especially being used in an act of revenge towards someone, although I just cannot fathom why this has to be written in a public place. There is such a thing as e-mail and even a telephone. Personally I do not find it necessary to write it all, but if some people do, then it is their problem. In my moments of solitude where perhaps something goes wrong, do I just say “oh dear” or “what a shame”. To be honest with you all, no, I do not. What I say in my own four walls is my business, I am no angel – who is??

There is one thing that annoys me. Not so much the spoken work, but written. Do we have to write “u 2” when we mean “you too”. I am not very good at this new saving time way of writing and I do possess the ten finger typing system, so I do not need it. Another symbol I have found lately is <3. To be quite honest I still do not really know what this means. I think “heart” or is it “great” – no idea, but Facebook people are using it all over the place. Is the word it replaces so difficult to spell or pronounce, that it has to be substituted by a sign and a number.

So in a nutshell, I would not ban any words. Go ahead and use them, they are all part of our language, even if you think using the odd infamy is a better was of expressing the point you want to make. The people using such expressions so not exactly impress me with a sign of high intelligence. If you have problems with spelling or grammar and you think substituting it all with numbers and letters shows a higher level of intelligence, then it is your problem, but I do not need it. I went to school and learnt how to write and spell.

I have to have a chuckle living in Switzerland in an area where I am surrounded by Swiss German speaking, especially the youngsters. Ask them something and the answer is “no problem” in English of course. Or perhaps the answer “whatsoever” will be given to a remark: lovely how we are all beginning to understand each other. Oh, and the “f” word has now become international. No matter what your mother tongue is, it will be used in the original English version.

1 comment:

  1. I have to agree with you on 'text-speak' as I call it. It came about originally as a way of saving character-space in an SMS message. However, it's general spread into everyday use is, to me, just plain laziness. And in reference to your mention of his name, it does remind me of Orwell's 'Newspeak' language in his novel '1984'.

    ReplyDelete