Changes to our language...are you listening?

One that jumps out at me is starting a statement with "I ain't gonna lie..."

What I hear is "I'm gonna lie..."

 

Nahhh. They all know I'm the old engineer that speaks his mind and don't care about their feelings. Most of the time I'm ignored until they need me to do something.

 

I hear words replacing perfectly respectable words in young peoples random conversations. I don't speak jive, so this is the best translation I can manage.

Q. "Hi there, friend. How's everything going with you?"
A. "Hello, my friend. Life is good."

What I hear.

Q. "Yo, n*****, supwichu?"
A. "Ja, my n*****, zallgud."

I know how this will play out, I've seen it over and over. This speech pattern becomes comfortable, and then one day they'll use the N word on the wrong old man and end up with a mouth full of bony knuckles. I'm more comfortable hanging out with the old men who wouldn't think of using such language. I could ask. when did it all go so wrong? But I'm thinking it was in the late 1970's to early 80's. Can't pin down a specific date or event, but that seems to be when I noticed a change. Music Television, Saturday Night Live, Department of Education, Food & Agriculture Act. It's all seemed to go downhill from there.

 

A few ones I can't stand:

"As well"
This is ridiculously overused. Some people can't speak a single sentence without tacking it on at the end when it isn't necessary Many use it redundantly. For example, "I'm also going to do so-and-so as well." I first noticed TV meteorologists doing this about 25-30 years ago. And it just snowballed from there. Not long ago, some teenage clerk at a fast-food place asked me, "Would you also like fries with that order as well?" I replied, "No thank you, as well." It went right over his head. He was a typical product of the American "education" system today.

"Reach out"
Not "call" "contact" or "get in touch with?" Sometimes when someone says it, I extend my arm as if I am literally reaching out. They don't seem to get it either, think I'm weird or perhaps a fascist because it does resemble a Roman salute.

"Let's unpack that"
Instead of "analyze", "investigate" "examine" or "study".

"Skill set"
What's wrong with "skills?"

"Reach into your toolbox"
Every query or problem-solving now requires a toolbox.

 

And these days, everything has to be "a solution". No matter what the field or industry.
How about, "It's out of my wheelhouse!". Like everyone is a ship's pilot now.

 

"I was gifted with..."

 

"My bad. It's all good."

And then there's "No problem" as a response to "Thank you." (That's starting to sound like "no tip" to me )

 

"I will reach out to a colleague and get back to you..."

 

We went to school before the Department of Education existed.

Or as people would say now. "Before it was a thing."

 

I like to think we actually passed basic English from elementary through high school. Not skipping it to sit in the elementary school parking lot smoking with the cool kids.

 

Also makes me crazy when someone cannot complete a full sentence without saying "like" numerous times in it.

 

"like" still sounds like a "valley girl" to me. I find "um" and "ahhh" annoying, especially on talk-to-text messages. At the absolute top of my list was a Sergeant I worked with briefly in Okinawa. He would say "Waddyacall, waddayacall" usually repeated again after a pause to suck in some air between the first and second pair. It sounded like an annoying bird call. And he did this every third word. It was maddening. The call of the "Flip-flop wearing shit-bird." Last time I saw him he was storming around the barracks fuming about what we'd done to "his" room. He maintained a rack and empty wall locker in the barracks and lived in town with his wife. He would stop in at lunch time to smoke cigarettes and leave the butts in his ash tray. We were three Sergeant's to a room then, and he never showed up for field day. (Thursday clean-up) So we inverted all his gear. Not just inverted. Suspended from the water pipes on the ceiling. We tied his sheets to the springs so the mattress would stay on and the regulation blanket over the pillow held it in place. We glued his cigarette butts to the ash tray and glued it to his small table that we also tied upside down to the ceiling. Only his wall locker remained on the deck, but it was also flipped. We never heard a word about it. I got promoted and moved into the Staff NCO barracks and didn't have to deal with Sergeant Waddyacall anymore.

My annoyance with these audible pause place-holders was likely made sharper by my father. I never heard him get stuck on a word, or say "um." Not once, ever. He spoke very little, but when he did, he'd composed, edited and punctuated his entire thought in his head before saying a thing.