Murder in Progress!

When I arrived in America I was still a smoker so my trips to the store involved conversations such as:

“Do you sell fags?”
“No! Now get out of here, you pervert”

And at work when I’d tell my colleagues I was ‘going out to smoke a fag’ they looked on in terror, expecting me to shoot the rather effeminate security guard.

Having a fag in my mouth, a spare fag, or worse still, asking to ‘bum a fag’ were phases I quickly weaned myself off. Eventually I quit smoking altogether – the potential for embarrassment was too acute.

Other areas of confusion involved the word ‘fanny’ and for months I would cringe when I heard of somebody being kicked in the fanny or scratch my head in wonder if told about somebody falling on their fanny.

Again I was able to adapt, although I still don’t use the word myself. ‘Arse’ is more effective and, with emphasis on the ‘R’, still makes my colleagues and American friends laugh raucously.
But there are some words I am just unable to accept and two in particular, spring to mind:

"Winningest" and "Burglarized"

To put these absurdities into context, here’s a promotional piece of blurb I read about a certain alarm company, several weeks ago:

Homeowners subscribing to [Alarm Company X]’s monitoring program have been burglarized 45% less households subscribing to other providers. That’s why [Alarm Company X] has again won the [subdivision] award for preferred home security provider, making us the winningest Home Security providor in [subdivision] since 1998.


Worse still, when I point out this butchery of the English language, I’M the one who gets ridiculed!

Another thing I have not been able to get used to is “Y’All” and the international use of ‘like’ and ‘you know’ to punctuate a sentence.

I admit that alone, ‘Y’all” is a harmless colloquialism and we all use them. But something about the radio DJs who accompanied me to work this morning, really disturbed me. I'll try and re-create the dialogue that took place between the three hosts of the show I was listening to:

Host 1: [Excited] Ooh, ooh. Y'All! Listen to this, Y'All.
Host 2: Uh huh?
Host 3: What?
Host 1: I was in Y'All's neighborhood on Saturday and I went into, like...you know...Kroger. Y'all have a bigger Kroger than, like, my, you know, neighborhood. Anyway, I'm in Kroger and this guy goes 'You're [minor local celebrity] and I go, like, 'yeah'. You know.
Host 2: You love it when that happens, it's, you know, it like, makes you feel all cool.
Host 3: I bet you asked for like, some free stuff. Y'all do it, I know Y'all do.

At that point I tuned out and started composing this post in my head. I remembered back to when the 'Teletubbies' first appeared on tv; I thought it was a terrible program idea, teaching kids to speak so incorrectly. It seems that I have always had a bee in my bonnet about this topic. Back then I wasn't brave enough to say so. For one thing, it would have been admitting to watching the 'Teletubbies' and for another, my friends would have beaten me senseless, chanting 'Teachers Pet' and 'Mike's a Girly swot.' (Yes, learning was considered a girly activity in my school.)

Don't get me wrong, I don't think we should all rush out and buy a plum to stick in our mouths and talk like the British Aristocracy, but we should at least know how to speak and write properly before we chose not to.

If your job is in the media, surely you should always strive to speak and/or write well? Is it really too much to expect a radio or TV announcer to have the ability to form a coherent sentence without punctuating it with, like, you know, garbage?

By the time I got to work I had some serious doubts about this post and potentially exposing myself in this way. After all, moaning about 'kidspeak' is the domain of the 'old fart', so I eventually, grudgingly, decided to let it go.

Then I got a text message from my daughter. (Yesterday she got a new phone and that's like, a whole 'nother, like, story, right there! You know?)

The message went like this:

'Thanx for da fone. It much better dan da nokia!'

Before I had a chance to lecture her, I saw in the instruction manual, right there in black and white, all about how da kl ppl spk in txt msgs. Dem ppl at da fone cmpny r gr8, rnt dey?

What with these radio muppets in her ear and the cell phone/messenger making my her write 'I luvd da movie, it gr8', my daughter can look forward to growing up with, like, y'know, a totally kl vocab, Y'all.

And even if I do go "listen up, Yo." she just, like, goes "whatever" and I'm like "Wow, this sux."

Dude. Does that mean I am now an official resident of 'Old Fartsville'? I guess it does.

And while I'm at it, I hate the word 'creme' and the phrase 'I'm all about that'.

And it's not 'I could care less', it's 'I Couldn't care less'. Isn't that obvious?

That's it. I'm going home now!