Americans mangle the English language and, indeed, have flogged it so badly that we can truly say that we now speak and write, very poorly, something called American. I present here some of my favorite observations about the vagaries of the new mother tongue.
Take the wonderful English word 'comprise'. Things should never be comprised of. To use this word remember that parts comprise the whole, or, the whole is composed of parts. Remember, if you're going to use the word of in your sentence, you will use compose. Here are some other gems:
Trendy words that sneak into the language and replace perfectly valid words that , somehow, have just lost their allure. The newbies sound far more important, right? To wit:
*Impact- and all its cousins, especially the hideous verb form "impacted". Last I knew this was a dental problem. The very good word "effect" is still available and can be made more "impactful" (I couldn't resist) by adding modifiers to it.
*Dialogue- has basically obliterated the very good words "discuss" or "talk about".
*System- Something that performs a task. Something used to be a vacuum cleaner, now it's a "cleaning system".
*Unpack- I think the clowns that use this one (too many Christian broadcasters too, I'm sorry to say) actually mean "explain", and sometimes, "exposit".
*Campus- Any institution with more than one building now is a campus, regardless (see horrors below for more on this one) of whether or not it's even in the same location. By definition, campus facilities would be in one spot, like a collection of university buildings. Not like the company I used to work for that had buildings in many different towns. Management loved to refer to each building as a campus. The only thing they had that was campus-like was their cafeterias. It's that kind of limit-pushing that I'm kvetching about.
Here are some horrors of usage I'll bet you didn't even realize:
*Irregardless- "ain't" no such word. This is a double negative. What you want to use is regardless all by itself.
*Pedophile- this is commonly accepted as PED-oh-file, which makes it a foot problem. It should be PEED-oh-file as in pediatrics.
*Homophobe- One of my favorites! This doesn't mean anything like the world intended it, as in "one who has a fear of homos" (hey, they started it, not me-I personally have nothing against gay people). When you examine the word it breaks down this way (all from the Latin by the way): Homo-- combined form meaning same and phobe which is the combined form of phobia meaning an irrational fear or morbid dread of some thing or things. Hence a homophobe is really someone who is morbidly and/or irrationally afraid of sameness. I'm not making this up.
*Pro-active- should never, never, ever be used by anyone wishing to appear intelligent. If you do have a mental lapse and use it then please have the decency to be a rugged individualist and hyphenate it. You'll be right but everyone will think you're ignorant anyway.
*Same goes for other compound words like infrared. If it's to be pronounced as two words then it also needs the hyphen as in infra-red.
*Ditto any word with a prefix of co. Should be co-operate, co-incidence, etc. Without a hyphen cooperate sounds like something barrel makers would do to one of their creations and coincidence sounds like the hardness of the metal used to make coins.
* When I went to school in the dark ages when real English was being taught and you actually got graded on pensmanship (you thought it was penmanship--well, now it is) I learned that to make a G soft you must follow it with an E. So how does one explain Judgment? Or Ridgway (town in CO)? I'd like to buy an E, Pat. Maybe a few.
Give me time, I'll come up with some more gems in a future installment.
Take the wonderful English word 'comprise'. Things should never be comprised of. To use this word remember that parts comprise the whole, or, the whole is composed of parts. Remember, if you're going to use the word of in your sentence, you will use compose. Here are some other gems:
Trendy words that sneak into the language and replace perfectly valid words that , somehow, have just lost their allure. The newbies sound far more important, right? To wit:
*Impact- and all its cousins, especially the hideous verb form "impacted". Last I knew this was a dental problem. The very good word "effect" is still available and can be made more "impactful" (I couldn't resist) by adding modifiers to it.
*Dialogue- has basically obliterated the very good words "discuss" or "talk about".
*System- Something that performs a task. Something used to be a vacuum cleaner, now it's a "cleaning system".
*Unpack- I think the clowns that use this one (too many Christian broadcasters too, I'm sorry to say) actually mean "explain", and sometimes, "exposit".
*Campus- Any institution with more than one building now is a campus, regardless (see horrors below for more on this one) of whether or not it's even in the same location. By definition, campus facilities would be in one spot, like a collection of university buildings. Not like the company I used to work for that had buildings in many different towns. Management loved to refer to each building as a campus. The only thing they had that was campus-like was their cafeterias. It's that kind of limit-pushing that I'm kvetching about.
Here are some horrors of usage I'll bet you didn't even realize:
*Irregardless- "ain't" no such word. This is a double negative. What you want to use is regardless all by itself.
*Pedophile- this is commonly accepted as PED-oh-file, which makes it a foot problem. It should be PEED-oh-file as in pediatrics.
*Homophobe- One of my favorites! This doesn't mean anything like the world intended it, as in "one who has a fear of homos" (hey, they started it, not me-I personally have nothing against gay people). When you examine the word it breaks down this way (all from the Latin by the way): Homo-- combined form meaning same and phobe which is the combined form of phobia meaning an irrational fear or morbid dread of some thing or things. Hence a homophobe is really someone who is morbidly and/or irrationally afraid of sameness. I'm not making this up.
*Pro-active- should never, never, ever be used by anyone wishing to appear intelligent. If you do have a mental lapse and use it then please have the decency to be a rugged individualist and hyphenate it. You'll be right but everyone will think you're ignorant anyway.
*Same goes for other compound words like infrared. If it's to be pronounced as two words then it also needs the hyphen as in infra-red.
*Ditto any word with a prefix of co. Should be co-operate, co-incidence, etc. Without a hyphen cooperate sounds like something barrel makers would do to one of their creations and coincidence sounds like the hardness of the metal used to make coins.
* When I went to school in the dark ages when real English was being taught and you actually got graded on pensmanship (you thought it was penmanship--well, now it is) I learned that to make a G soft you must follow it with an E. So how does one explain Judgment? Or Ridgway (town in CO)? I'd like to buy an E, Pat. Maybe a few.
Give me time, I'll come up with some more gems in a future installment.
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