LizzieMaine
Bartender
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- Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
I also hate the word "hub" when used in this way. It irritates me far more than it should, but it does.
Here's a bit of bizspeak a ran across this week while reading a book on data collection and analysis, "preplanning". I realized that I'd heard this same term in connection with preparing for the disposition of my remains and chattels when I die, as well as in other contexts in recent years, but what struck me today is the internal redundancy of the term.
After all, isn't all "planning" done in the advance of an event or an action? You can't "plan" for something that has already taken place. That's while you'll never see "postplanning".
Resistance may be as futile as the efforts of the French to keep English words out of their vocabulary. I remember in a high school French textbook from more than 50 years ago an aside explaining this aversion to the "pollution" of the language of les poilous, but I'm rubbed the wrong way by the use of this kind of overblown words for simple concepts.
After all, isn't all "planning" done in the advance of an event or an action? You can't "plan" for something that has already taken place. That's while you'll never see "postplanning".
Now that brought back a lifelong reminisce. Back in schooldays, some piece that had been read out of a book and that which we had to define, brought the class into uproar. It was the word costive. It's direct definition is, constipated. But you can use it like a metaphor, when someone is slow or reluctant in speech or action. In other words unforthcoming.but hey - it's the English language. got to half half a dozen different ways of saying anything....
Now that brought back a lifelong reminisce. Back in schooldays, some piece that had been read out of a book and that which we had to define, brought the class into uproar. It was the word costive. It's direct definition is, constipated. But you can use it like a metaphor, when someone is slow or reluctant in speech or action. In other words unforthcoming.
The fun that is the word costive is that, unless you look it up, having only come across it for the first time, on the page it looks like some sort of derivation of costly.
I’ve noted how two-word phrases have come into common use when, as often as not, one word would suffice.Here's a bit of bizspeak a ran across this week while reading a book on data collection and analysis, "preplanning". I realized that I'd heard this same term in connection with preparing for the disposition of my remains and chattels when I die, as well as in other contexts in recent years, but what struck me today is the internal redundancy of the term.
After all, isn't all "planning" done in the advance of an event or an action? You can't "plan" for something that has already taken place. That's while you'll never see "postplanning".
Resistance may be as futile as the efforts of the French to keep English words out of their vocabulary. I remember in a high school French textbook from more than 50 years ago an aside explaining this aversion to the "pollution" of the language of les poilous, but I'm rubbed the wrong way by the use of this kind of overblown words for simple concepts.
^^^^
My super power is that I always get in line behind that person. Or the one who has a coupon, but can’t find it. Or the person who has brought in a plastic bag of loose change to pay with. Or the one who has specially chosen items without price codes. The list goes on and on. But rest assured, I am always in THAT line.
But let’s not blame the new tech itself for all the unnecessary delays. I still too often find myself behind a fellow shopper who waits until her purchases are entirely rung up before she sets to fumbling through her purse for the checkbook and, wouldn’t you know it?, she can’t find a pen.
I’ve noted how two-word phrases have come into common use when, as often as not, one word would suffice.
Examples?
“Price point.” Isn’t “price” good enough?
”Skill set.” How does that differ in any meaningful way from “skills”?
”Lived experience.” What other kind of experience is there?
“Intellectual dishonesty.” Well, I suppose there’s some distinction to be made, seeing how dishonesty comes in myriad varieties, but rarely do I hear the two-word version used when “dishonesty” all on its lonesome would have done just as well, and usually better.
The most accurate description of English that I've ever seen came from a linguistics professor who called it "the shower drain of languages," full of a tangle of loanwords, conflicting and confusing orthography, and contradictory rules of syntax. Intelligibility, he argued, was the only thing that actually mattered -- and attempting to enforce any sort of definitive form upon it was pointless because it never stopped evolving long enough to be really defined.reminds me of an exercise our Spanish teacher used to do to show how challenging the English language can be for non-native speakers. He wrote the word "Ghoti" on the board and asked us to pronounce it - of course we all got it wrong. Then he walked us through a bunch of English pronunciations and showed us how an ESL speaker would see those, and then confidently read "ghoti" as "fish". Can also be done with "Pheti".
Ghoti - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti
Pheti - https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/8701/can-fish-really-be-spelled-pheti#8797
Those of us who are native English speakers are blessed, indeed, insofar as English has become the lingua Franca of the world and —for the most part— we can travel to most big cities without having to learn the local language. It certainly makes travel easier.
My daughter just accepted a job at a university in Vienna, Austria, where the language of instruction for all masters degree programs (and up) is English.
I have heard that one can easily compose a sentence in English using only Germanic words, but that it is not possible to compose one without using any.The Church was the first group of invade the originally West Germanic language the Saxons, Jutes and Angles would come to know as 'Englisc", bringing Latin words from religious observances into the law. Then the Vikings brought their words with them that ended up being integrated into the local populations, that we still use today: skill, dirt, rotten, egg, link, skirt, want, weak, skin, girth, anger, happy, aloft, seat, glove, axle, and many many more.
The Normans had the next huge cultural impact with the Conquest in 1066, mostly at first on the nobility and judiciary, but soon enough French words began creeping into all aspects of English: asset, enemy, crime, dungeon, embezzle, vicar, warden, treaty, survive, pleasure, prison, fashion, chivalry, butcher, judge, evidence, duty, launch, quarter, occupy, reward, virgin, button.
Finally, we have Greek, which has given us such words as athlete, climate, harmony, ocean, geography, program, utopia, therapy, physics, machine, ethics, decade, cinema, aroma, centre, cube, fantasy, disc, hymn, metaphor, patriot, rhythm, and even sarcasm.
Still, even with all those integrated words, close to a third of modern English is still, well, Englisc: night, heavy, fist, fear, day, boat, after, above, care, drive, did, chew, bought, build, some, play, off, out, pretty, reach, rain, run, truth, welcome, under, yard, small, strong.