Bravo to Catherine Winant for her spot-on observation of the deterioration of the English language in her Letter to the Editor in the May 16 edition of the WW-P News, titled “Like, Oh My God, It’s an Assault on the Language.”##M:[more]##
I laughed out loud as I read her words to my own children with emphasis on certain phrases and facial expressions thrown in for added comic effect. (My limited acting skills were nonetheless better than usual because I had added inspiration from the clowns I observed recently at the Ringling Brothers/Barnum and Bailey Circus.) While my children’s faces reflected amusement and a certain degree of resignation (as in, oh boy, here she goes again) I could tell that there was a bit of squirming as they recognized a bit of themselves and their friends in my one-woman show.
I recall overhearing a recent teen conversation held in the rear of my minivan that was torturous, sprinkled with so many “likes” and “Oh my Gods” that I inwardly began twitching every time I heard another, and it was all I could do not to twitch outwardly as well.
In addition to the over-used “like” and “Oh my God” mentioned by Ms. Winant, I would like to throw in my own pet peeves, which, I mean, you know, also involve, you know, the overuse of the phrases, “you know” and “I mean”, which, you know, I believe originally had the intent, you know, of incurring empathy or agreement, you know, with the person who, like, was engaged in, you know, I mean, the conversation.
But oh my God, I mean, like, how can you even, you know, not feel like, you’re, like, I mean, completely under verbal assault, you know, oh my God?!!!? (Catherine, how was that? Are we twitching yet?)
Another huge pet peeve of mine is the growing misuse of apostrophe’s — just as I misused one in that word on purpose, to illustrate my point. And in that case, it’s not just mostly teenagers, who, as we all understand, are still in their formative years when it comes to the use of proper language. But the apostrophe epidemic has hit all segments of the population, as I recently observed on an advertisement posted on a community bulletin board offering music lesson’s, yes, “lesson’s” as if the lessons were possessive and not plural.
I heartily applaud Ms. Winant for taking her concerns about the misuse and overuse of inappropriate phrases to the language arts supervisor at the West Windsor-Plainsboro schools, and I would suggest adding in a review lesson or several, on the proper way to use apostrophes.
Perhaps addressing the issue at the school level is not enough, as many adults seem to have the same problem. Would the idea of grammar review in the workplace cause a revolt? As in, “you’re leading the department in sale’s for the year, but sorry, no raise until, I mean, you know, like you clean up your comma’s and apostrophe’s and golly gee, look at that, I mean, you know, I’m using them incorrectly too!”
I hope I haven’t offended anyone, because while I tend to be a grammar policewoman in my own home, I certainly am not perfect, and in fact, there are many, many areas where I come up severely wanting. One area in particular, which will not be new to my readers, is with technology, but I have a new example that I want to share.
Many of you know that I recently published a collection of my favorite Suburban Mom essays collected over the years. I created a new AOL E-mail account, eunakwon@aol.com, so that people who wanted the book could contact me through it, and not my regular AOL E-mail account, which is usually flooded with E-mails from teachers, coaches, and coupon offers from the bowling alley.
I put that new E-mail address inside the book itself and on my new Suburban Mom business cards, wrote the password down on a piece of paper, and then promptly lost that piece of paper and forgot the password. The AOL service was of no help in retrieving that password because we recently switched from the paid type of account to the free account, and when you try to get help, you get the corporate version of “niener niener niener, we won’t help you since you’re too cheap to pay us, niener niener niener, you’re on your own!” So for several weeks I lived with that uncomfortable feeling that people might be trying to reach me but I was not accessible through that E-mail address.
Finally, to my relief, just this week, in a frenzy of paper cleaning, I found that tiny slip of paper and was able to get back into that account. Phew!
So now I have done exactly what everyone says you are not supposed to do. I have written down all the passwords I have on an index card and taped it to the side of my computer lest I have another bout of brain freeze, which, sure as shootin’, is inevitable, given my age and station in life. I have a password to enter the College Board website, regatta central to register for crew races, for my benefits online, for the discount website for Broadway tickets, for the Yahoo account I had to join for one of the athletic clubs, yadda yadda yadda, on and on.
It was all okay when I could use the same password for each of these accounts, but what truly fouled me up was when I had to change the password for what they called “security purposes.” I thought I was being clever by using variations on names and numbers and dates, which works all very well, but throw in the number of accounts changing at different times and it’s like a darned snowball rolling down the mountain — there is no way humanly to keep up with it all!
This is one of the added perplexities of my life in the new millennium, which is by now eight years old. I guess that I should not complain, given all the modern conveniences that have come along with the inconveniences. So here is an apology to those who E-mailed me and thought I was ignoring them — I wasn’t — I just couldn’t get to you! But now I can, so E-mail me soon and E-mail me often. I mean, like, soon, you know?
