German teenage novelist Helene Hegemann has a bestseller accused of lifting a key page from the book and blog of another young Berliner. NYT says it “shows that perhaps more than simple cribbing is at work. When another character asks Edmond if he came up with that line himself, he replies, ‘I help myself everywhere I find inspiration.’” So not quite Kaavya Viswanathan, but not attribution-share alike either.
Like the Bell Jar, the Cocteau Twins, the poetry of Anne Sexton, and Meshes of the Afternoon, at some point in the life of a young girl with dark interests, you come across the story of Elizabeth Báthory and are unquietly amazed by it. The Transylvanian countess tortured and murdered hundreds of young women. As legend would have it, she once dabbed the blood of a servant girl under her eyes and believed it reduced the signs of aging. But stone cold sadism was her motivation, above any demand for eternal youth. Sound like the perfect role for Tilda Swinton? Why yes, indeed she’s lined up for an adaptation. But wait, Julie Delpy wrote, directed, and stars in The Countess, also about Bathory. Much as I love Delpy, the Swinton movie has a script by Elfriede Jelinek, the bitterest writer I’ve ever read, which I mean as a very good thing.
As a teen, did you jump start cars, deal hash, runaway from home, threaten to kill yourself when your boyfriend took another girl to the prom? Good news! You might be brilliant now! “The brains of teens who behave dangerously are more like adult brains than are those of their more cautious peers.” (via.)
Residents of a Nottinghamshire housing estate have installed pink lights which show up teenagers’ spots in a bid to stop them gathering in the area. Says Dan Lockton, pointing out its resemblance to the Mosquito, “I don’t understand why Britain hates its young people so much. But I can see it storing up a great deal of problems for the future.”
Alright, Sokay: Tomorrow’s English Language
sokay
(also okay) informal
- exclamation 1 expressing agreement or acquiescence. 2 introducing an utterance.
- adjective 1 satisfactory. 2 permissible.
- adverb in a satisfactory manner or to a satisfactory extent.
- noun an authorization or approval.
- verb (OK’s, OK’d, OK’ing) give approval to.
— ORIGIN probably an abbreviation of it’s ok.
Oxford English Dictionary Online, Updated: 30 November 2035.
Fast contractions like the Brit-ism “innit,” and filer words (”um, like”) are constantly moving in and out of our daily lexicon. Why not “sokay”?
“Sokay,” says the waitress when the other waitress bumps into her tray with a “sorry.” You say “sokay,” to the guy saying “pardon” for almost pushing you out of the metro in rush hour. It’s the knee-jerk polite-ish response to the knee-jerk polite-ish apology, barely considered at all; sometimes uttered so softly neither party even hears it. You can’t just say “okay,” as that implies, “Oh, so you are sorry, well I recognize that.” Only “it’s okay,” assures the other person you didn’t take the bump personally.
Language is a constantly evolving thing. Soon few will know what a “swiftboat” was, or more dismally, who John Kerry was, but the term will continue on as it so narrowly defines a common campaign tactic. Lots of our language comes from election year rhetoric. “Keep the ball rolling” refers to “Victory Balls,” ten-foot diameter globes of tin and leather, General William Harrison’s supporters pushed from rally to rally in the presidential race in 1840.
There are a few theories about the origin of “OK”, but at least two refer to that same election’s victor (and incumbent) Martin Van Buren. “Orl korrect,” the 19th century jokey way of writing “all correct” was a Van Buren slogan. Plus, his nickname Old Kinderhook provided the initials.
What is known is that one of the first instances of OK appearing in print was in the spring of 1839 by the Boston Morning Post:
It is hardly necessary to say to those who know Mr. Hughes, that his establishment will be found to be ‘A. No. One’ — that is, O.K. — all correct.
So if OK stands for “all correct,” wouldn’t it be “AC”? Not exactly, says linguist Erin McKean, who points out that the word was intentionally misspelled. Much like the way people on the Internet shorten or abbreviate words when typing, OK was misspelled on purpose.
“For instance, a lot of kids online spell “cool,” “k-e-w-l,” says McKean, senior editor for U.S. dictionaries at Oxford Press. “They know how to spell cool, but it just looks cooler to spell it “k-e-w-l.”
Blame the kids. Now with the internet and mobile phones they have even more ways to pervert spelling and definitions. Kent State researchers consider instant messaging a separate language. “They found that what looked like nonstandard features of written language were, actually, the standardized features within the IM language. The language of instant messaging was found to be informal, explicit, playful, both abbreviated and elaborated, and to emphasize meaning over form and social relationships over content.”
Teens abroad have a subversive vocabulary based on the predictive text on mobile phones
Key words are replaced by the first alternative that comes up on a mobile phone using predictive text — changing “cool” into “book”, “awake” into “cycle”, “beer” into adds”, “pub” into “sub” and “barmaid” into “carnage”.
Those expressing excitement with the old-fashioned text phrase “woohoo!”, now use the far more hip “zonino!” instead. The replacement words — technically paragrams, but commonly known as textonyms, adaptonyms or cellodromes — are becoming part of regular teen banter.
And the older generation — many of whom already struggle with simple text language — are being thrown into yet deeper confusion.
Then again, they called uncool things “pants” long before test messaging.
More than technology, the increase in non-native speakers who might use English only online is going to totally change our language, as Michael Erard explained in New Scientist a few months ago. There will be countless pigeon forms, not just Engrish, but dialects of the sort that you find in African “English-speaking” countries. My friend’s brother-in-law in Nigeria claims he can’t understand her accent. Erard’s article makes the interesting observation that nonnative speakers communicate best with other nonnative speakers. The grammatical structure is too complex.
You probably know it’s “a lot” not “alot,” and flinch when someone says, “they mailed it to my friend and I.” You know what “hopefully” and “momentarily” really mean, but use the colloquialisms nevertheless. But what about “had” before a past-tense verb? Or hyphenating adverbs?
I’ve never understood why some people get crazy angry about “alright,” but grammatical excellence seems to have less to do with English language preservation than it does ritual and initiation. (Yes, I’m trying to find a way of explaining that without using the dreaded E-word.)
When I checked “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” out of the library, I hoped it might cover any grammatical terrain my K through BA public education didn’t. But basically the author says do whatever you want so long as it means exactly what you want it to (i.e. the panda isn’t shooting anybody or going anywhere.)
Garance Franke-Ruta writes:
As blogs move us into a less heavily copy-edited world, I sometimes wonder if we’re moving back into a more 16th and 17th century form of writing, where the idea of correct spelling was less important than the communication of meaning — which, in reality, can be accomplished just as well with incorrectly spelled words and homonyms as with a more perfect language. And also: as we move ever deeper into this new world of speech-like writing, will the perfect, formal language of the page one day seem as antique and elaborate as Victorian silverware?
The success rate of dyslexics should finally dismiss using spelling and grammar as an indicator of intelligence. But besides that, the size, lighting and composition of a computer makes it less than ideal for reading compared to a piece of paper. This makes line-by-line editing a drag for most of us. Maybe it even draws latent dyslexic tendencies from people who don’t otherwise have a problem. Yet this is the device almost all of us use to write. While I’m sure some people are good at spotting errors no matter what the medium. I’m not one of them.
BestWeekEver’s response to a letter suggesting a “copy editor or a lively seminar on the Strunk and White classic Elements of Style is in order” is a classic:
we’re a f*cking blog. And this is the Internet. Though there are many confusing similarities between BestWeekEver.tv and the Harvard Review, the simple fact is the latter is written and edited by erudite men and women of learning, while the former is barely cobbled together by hungover ne’er-do-wells with poor command of the English language and whose lives are generally in shambles. I’m not familiar with this “Strunk and White” of which you speak, but I will assume it’s one of those “book” things I hear so much about from old-timey people. These “books” are like short, boring internets, yes? Forgive me for not caring about them.
The most annoying thing about someone correcting written grammatical errors is the assumption the writer is unaware of the difference between possessive and plural. Why there isn’t more research about how fingers following some rote process, sometimes press the wrong key — usually a homophone — is really surprising.
Related links:
- “The Future of English?” by David Graddol
- Matt Ygelsias’ cake
- Engrish
- “Um…: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean” by Michael Erard
- “Going Nucular” by Geoff Nunberg
- Who is to Blame for “Under the Bus”? Newsweek
- “Do You Speak American?” PBS on the Ebonics debate
- Futurismic on “The Future of English”
- “Read My Slips: Speech Errors Show How Language Is Processed” Science
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