I love language, but it has gone too far. Or more accurately, it went too far, and now is on its way back. Our language has started to de-evolve. I'm pretty sure it all started with the political correctness movement. First of all, anything with the word political in it has got to be flawed in some way. From PC came ridiculous phrases like snowperson (or even more absurd...person of snow...believe me, they are not offended), mail carrier, flight attendant, and the like. Granted, flight attendant is not so bad, but I don't seem to have a problem remembering that a male attendant on an airplane is a steward instead of a stewardess.
As happened with the 60s generation, a good thing just got taken too far and it turned into disaster...Oh heck with the 60s alone, people just take most good things too far so they turn into disaster. For example, take drugs...no, no, wait, don't take drugs. Geez. See what I mean, though? I took a good sentence with the best intentions and turned it into a potential disaster. Anyway, take the idea of drugs. Marijuana has a plethora of uses that really help a lot of people avoid suffering from horrible pain and suffering (redundancy...I tackle that fiasco another time). Yet some yahoo decided that he would "just do it" as the commercial says without a real need for it. Then he went on to tell his friends about it. Then his friends decided they could get really bad people to buy it from them for exuberant prices here and abroad. Then the government saw all their profits going into the red and said "Hey there, you can't be rich like us. We have to make this illegal." And so it was done. And government (a.k.a. politics) has come to save the day and humanity. Instead of the horrible proliferation of people who can now enjoy their miserable life, we can now relish the idea of crime without punishment and a whole other division in law enforcement for which more payroll money must be collected in taxes. Cool, eh?
Back to language...Most words that have fallen victim to this atrocity are those that have simply lost their gender. mail carrier, police officer, flight attendant, person of snow (that one just makes me laugh). And that is what is so stupid about them. Some have even gone as far as losing the gender of plain human beings. Woman is now commonly a female. Come on. I even refer to my cat as a girl! We have just so many words in the English language (the French have even less, and they continue to express gender in their communication), and these are just the nouns! We would have to start explaining every little object in detail instead of just saying what it is. All Emmanuels in the world would have to change their names. We'd all have to start talking like Stephen Fry...Instead of saying, "Pass me the car repair manual," you would have to say, "Pass me the pamphlet in which contains the carefully collected and organized instructions for the proper maintenance procedures for repairing the water pump in this vehicle." In which case the proper response would be, "Affirmative, Officer Spock." This is the case with which I began by saying that language has gone too far. Now let's see to where it has regressed today...
As I said above, there are just so many words in the English language. Which means less we have to replace the ones we no longer want to use. Some have positive purposes, such as "frick" to replace that other word of four letters. Others are just plain silly and silly-sounding. The one I despise the most is funnyman...which even in itself violates the gender taboo. It should at least be funnyperson or person exhibiting humor. When I hear this word out of the mouth of someone trying to talk about a comedian, I look around for Joe Pesci or a child of two.
I think that's enough rambling for now. Besides, I think my mail carrier just ran his automobile into my person of snow...
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