It’s Your Language, But You Can’t Use it
It’s Your Language, But You Can’t Use it
Posted 12/31/2009 at 12:35pm
| by Bart Salisbury
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Language is evolutionary. It meets the needs of the people who use it through adaptation to the necessary and the novel. Technology, for example, adds new words, some of which stick, others which don’t, every year. But there are those out there who’d just as soon you stay within the bounds of ‘proper’ language usage--if it’s good enough for the Queen, then by golly it’s good enough for you.
Lake Superior State University has a Word Banishment Committee, that decides, for our better good, which words need to be dropped from our lexicon. For the past 35-years it has released its “List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness”. This year’s list includes the techno-terms “tweet” (and all its variations: tweetaholic, retweet, twitterhea, twitterature, twittersphere), “app”, “sexting”, and “friend” (when used as a verb).
Before we get hot under the collar at such paternalism, keep in mind that we’re talking the end of December in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. You need to find something to amuse yourself with during these dark, winter days on the Upper Peninsula. Smug self-righteousness is as good an option as mooning Canadians across the St. Mary’s River. And, to be fair, the list does have one redemption: it contains “chillaxin'”.
Image Credit: kparkercothag/Flickr
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DrMD
January 03, 2010 at 10:51am
Who cares about what techno-babble words people use, ban 'em all just leave all the profanity words alone they convey a real messege when you need to cut the crap.
bingojubes
January 02, 2010 at 4:03pm
the comittee needs to take a trip into 4-chan...their books might just double or triple in size after going through there.
athlon11
January 01, 2010 at 5:30pm
Lol, Lake State doesn't have that bad of weather compared to Michigan Tech, and it's a shitty school to boot.
Jeffredo
January 01, 2010 at 12:26am
as a vocalized pause. I know some teenage girls who can't complete a single sentence without saying "like" three or four times. It makes a person want to pop them upside the head and say "stop that nervous habit!".
nekollx
January 04, 2010 at 9:03am
but, like, tweens have been doing that since, like, the early 90's. So you can't, like, blame that on, like, the internet. Hell just look at, like, Power Rangers which Disney remasted and reaired this weekend from 1993. Kimberly, like, says it all the, like, time.
Besides Knave, we're engins not to evolve we would all be speaking in Shakespear's eangish forsooth. Refering to Ciggerettes as Faggots and having a gay old time as we hung out with those colorful niggers down the block.
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Skillz_n_Magic
December 31, 2009 at 5:48pm
They should just call the list "Words that make you sound really gay."
dayooper
December 31, 2009 at 2:58pm
The banished words list - about the only thing you will ever hear coming from sault ste marie...
and yeah im from da soo most boring place ever......
smeeIT
December 31, 2009 at 1:57pm
OH NOES.
So... what exactly stops anybody from using these words? or is it just in the queens presence?
I mean seriously, you can't stop the whole world from using a word that they made up. xD
BTW, I live on Salisbury Dr. just find that ironic. xD
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