To the editor:
I’m really not all that formal, once you get to know me. I tease, I dress casually, and I speak casually, to a point. I can use fancy words if I want to, but generally avoid them, as they don’t fit my personality. They usually come across as too showy and too flowery. Some folks out there might prefer synonyms like “ostentatious” and “ornate,” but I’m an easy-going guy who prefers simple words. Casual speech has its advantages.
Still, I don’t like extremes, and think there’s such a thing as speech that’s too casual. It’s one thing to avoid using lots of sixty-four dollar words. It’s another thing to think you have to latch on to every linguistic fad that comes around. As I’ve listened over the decades to casual North American speech habits, I’ve noticed that for more and more of us, holding a conversation without curse words is an almost impossible task. I once challenged a guy to talk to me for five minutes without swearing. After two minutes of catching and stopping himself in mid-sentence, he gave up the challenge.
Unfortunately, swear words aren’t the only verbal crutch in modern American English. The language has been further impoverished by other verbal tics. Thirty years ago, the verbal tic of choice was “y’know.” Nowadays, it’s “like.” This filler word pops up everywhere. Put another way, it like pops up like all over the place and like, adds nothing to the sentence. Like, know what I’m saying? Well, like, read on, okaaaay?
Few people “say” anything. They “go,” and “they’re like,” but they don’t “say” much. Try reading this: And then I’m like, ‘Dude! Check this out!’ And he goes, ‘Cool!’ But, I kind of like got like bored, and so I’m like ‘Later!’” Like bored? Either you got bored or you didn’t! Which is it? He goes? Usually when he’s standing there talking to you, he doesn’t go anywhere! He stays right where he is, unless he’s running late. I would like to think that American English is every bit as respectable as British English, but the expressions italicized above do not represent American English at its best.
As an American citizen, I find it sad that many Americans speak only one language and still call themselves well educated. It is even sadder that many true English speakers in this country do not take enough pride in their language to speak it well. Thanks to today’s Global Village economy, it’s hard to find American goods of high quality without leaving the United States. Do we now have to leave the country to hear high quality American English? Is the best American English “Parlé en Chine,” or “Spoken in China,” depending on your language of choice? Maybe that’s why English speakers from across the Atlantic have never been all that thrilled with it. Like, you think?
Presque Isle
