When I opened my Sunday New York Times to a story on
Derek Jeter this week I was stumped from the first word. I had to
ask my daughter to define OMG. “I use it all the time,” she said.
“Where have you been?”
“Oh my God,” I reminded her. “In France.”
Visitors, foreign and American-born, are finding
communication increasingly difficult as catchwords proliferate.
Often they seem to come from the schoolyard.
Just how debased can the English language become and still
be called English? I pondered this question as I attempted to
function in the U.S. after living an extended period in
Europe.
The day before my OMG experience, an angry motorist in
Boston wanted to share his opinion of my driving skills. He held up
his right hand to his forehead and formed an “L” with his thumb and
index finger extended. “Loser,” my 12-year-old grandson translated.
As I grumbled unintelligibly, my grandson held up three fingers and
rotated his hand to the left. The “W” became an “E”, shorthand for
“whatever.”
I assume American adults will be doing the “whatever” sign
to each other eventually, just as they picked up the l-word.
(“Whatever” as a spoken word regrettably seems here to
stay.)
Kids used to borrow language from adults. Now the opposite
is happening. Is this country regressing?
The last time I paid attention to the American vernacular,
“awesome” (from “awe”: reverential fear or wonder) was a rather
cute grownup word tossed around on the playground to describe fast
rope-skipping and such. Now I see it is common currency among real
estate agents, the military, doctors, NASCAR commentators, and even
the ethereal voices of NPR. I heard one smug woman the other day
interviewing a minor author. “You new novel is awesome,” she
purred. He purred back. I thought, “Whatever.”
“Awesome” has the British laughing at us again. One
Londoner wrote on the web recently that it is “a word Americans use
to describe everything.” What we have here is a trend I’ll call
double reverse migration, or the snatching of a children’s word by
adults after it had first been snatched by the kids.
Some adults are still stymied by these two syllables,
though. A junior executive friend of mine recently received a
herogram from her boss — a woman comfortably salaried in the
middle six figures — that consisted of one word:
“AWSUM!”
Part of American lingo creep is normal in a healthy
language, and some of it can be fun. I won’t deal here with Sarah
Palin’s formulations, the Twitter or texting crowd, fashion patios,
tech talk or satellite radio. Eventually someone will do the
book.
The list of neologisms and vulgarisms will be long. What
is a visitor to make of words like “diss” meaning to trash, “sick”
meaning excellent, “rad” meaning even better and “wicked” (at least
in New England) meaning best? They don’t teach this stuff in ESL
classes.
People who work with words are alarmed by slippage into
vocabulary that was once over the line in mixed company. Try
late-night television, where boundaries of propriety are steadily
moving outward. Those of us who can remember Johnny Carson’s
“Tonight Show” are appalled at Jay Leno’s monotonous sexual
innuendo and the sprinkling in the monologue of “hells” and “damns”
and worse. The FCC used to police abuse of the public airwaves,
threatening license problems for those who overstepped. Come back
Newton Minnow.
And what are we to make of a publishing industry that
brings out family-oriented titles such as ‘The Big-Ass Book of
Crafts” and “The Big-Ass Book of Home Decor”?
Okay, I’m confused. I admit it. Isn’t “Kick-Ass,” a major
movie, a vulgar title? And how to explain that the very preppy
population of Wellesley, near once-uptight Boston, seemed
unperturbed when Kickass Cupcakes (“Think about cupcakes in a new
way”) moved into their tranquil town of McMansions and rolling
lawns? Or the randy boys at Boston University who enjoy autumn
girl-watching on Massachusetts Avenue, known as Mass Ave, or more
familiarly as “Ass Ave.”
Some proper households are on edge. My daughter gasped
when her 12-year-old interjected a “WTF?” into dinnertable
conversation. “Chill, mom,” he said. “It means ‘Why the
face?’”
Whatever.
