This is a follow on to my article entitled ‘Speakin English’, which when I sent it to my Editor was entitled ‘Speaking Inglish’ But Tom corrected my intentional misspelling of English. I mention that here not to make Tom feel bad, as he is clearly a very pedantic Editor. Instead, I include it as the perfect example of the average English person’s poor vocabulary, in that we do not even pronounce the name of the language we speak correctly.
We would not pronounce ‘engine’ as ingine, yet we do not pronounce the E in English or England. The latter sounding more like Ingerland.
From a comment in that above article, I have to say thank you I_left_the_left, for educating me with the term ‘homophone’: each of two or more words having the same pronunciation but different meanings, origins, or spelling, for example new and knew.
Since I listed some, due to English being the language that keeps giving I have discovered more:
Beer/bear/bare (yes OK, but only in Norfolkese) seamen/semen, bass/base, to/too, metre/meter, lock/loch, piece/peace, compere/compare, serial/cereal.
I have me my first foursome: Bye/buy//by/bi. I guess by now you must be bored …….board!
Unusually, I have remembered the word ‘homophone’, as it fascinates me, with it only being one letter from ‘homophobe’, which has an entirely different meaning. Many years ago, I created a ‘Dictionary for the Thick’ which was to store words plus a few word combos in, as I was reading increasingly more articles that contained words that I had never heard of, or if I had heard of them, I was unsure of their meaning. It remains frustrating, in that I occasionally copy a word in to there, only to find I have recorded it already, together with its meaning. So, the idea of improving my vocabulary with this method, is not quite working as intended.
What it has taught me is that certain writers (Rod Liddle) occasionally make words up. But I have a whole sheet dedicated to Rod’s words. He is not as bad as Jeremy Paxman though, who’s book ‘The English’ has so much overwriting, that for me it was difficult to read flowingly. I visualise these writers creating a piece of work using ‘everyday’ English, then they get the thesaurus out to ‘upgrade’ the article.
I had to look up ‘excessive use of words’ in the dreaded Google: ‘wordiness, verbiage, prolixity, grandiloquence, garrulousness, expatiation, logorrhoea, sesquipedalianism, and overwriting’ NB. Sesquipedalianism and prolix were both in my Dictionary and highlighted, so I have obviously read them before, but clearly, I have not remembered them.
Language is important, so why are we debasing it with emotion?
Imagine GOG’s reaction when he received a text reminding him about his Specsavers appointment that said: “we’re excited to see you at…” Excited! Really? I don’t think you are. Or if you are, you really shouldn’t be!
‘Kind regards’ is another that I object too. Is the word ‘kind’ required?
Recently created words, most of which were mentioned before:
As a reminder they were Hashtag, challenging, empowered, awesome or fantastic (when said by waiters taking your order!) Add to them:
“Intolerance” as used by the wokists.
“Embracing” as used by the wokists
“Gifted” (I stole this one, it was covered by EV Carnage on YouTube)
“Resilience/resilient”
“Biblical” (but mentioned not in reference to The Bible
“Learnings” (thanks to 39 Pontiac Dream for that one)
“Literally” as in “I was literally shaking” as used by the wokists
“Intolerance”
“Embracing”
“Triggered”
Of all the modern words that annoy me, perhaps “triggered” is the most annoying. What triggers me are unnecessary words that us Inglish add to verbal communication:
Unnecessary words
Let’s start with that jammy £11.4 million Lottery winner, who starts his emotional outburst on the adverts with “you know what ….” But there is also its abbreviated cousin “you know……”
Others include:
“Do you know…?”
“Like I said…”
“Basically….”
“At the end of the day…”
“To be fair…”
“Yeah, no…”
“I mean…”
“To be honest/in all honesty…” (were you not being honest with what you said, before that?”)
To my shame, my wife has just confirmed that I say: “if you like” and “oddly enough” often!
Modern expressions that smell of BS
“The pandemic”
“Stay safe”
“Standing shoulder to shoulder”
“Diversity is our strength”
“In our community”
“Build back better”
“Fossil Fuels” https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/oil-really-fossil-fuel
Acronyms that aren’t
I love a good acronym: Scuba being my favourite, but should that not be SCUBA?
Radar (I mean RADAR) was once on the list, but not now, as I felt it was cheating, with RA for radio, and even worse AR being “and ranging” ‘and’ has no place in acronyms.
I enjoy a good initialism, but I am not a fan of the three letter agencies: CIA, FBI, DEA, DEI, MI5. I mean, basically, in all honesty, since I found out they are all directed to kill their own citizens.
TTFN, until I come across some more homophones, but before I go here’s an ad hoc list of some of life’s mysteries:
Why do old men grow goatees?
Why do some balding men grow ponytails?
Why do Bomb Disposal teams wear hard hats on beach finds of unexploded ordinance?
Why, when you consider buying or have just bought a certain car, you then see loads of them?
Why does dust get through taped up doors, when using a disc cutter in the house?
Why do the Americans call it math, when it is an abbreviation for mathematicS?
Why do we call paid for by parents’ private schools: public schools?
Why do YouTube links have a dot between the u and the b? (…youtu.be)
Why is it the Gents toilets are always further away from the bar, than the Ladies toilets?
Why do the British police not use British made vans, cars and motorcycles?
Why do woke politicians use the services of sign language presenters, when making speeches?
Why is the mobile phone signal so poor, after “upgrading” the network from 3 to 4G?
Why do politicians predicting climate induced polar ice melts, buy beachfront properties?
Why do those same politicians become wealthy after leaving those influential positions?
Recent mysteries
Why is David Icke banned from travel to 30 countries in Europe?
Why is Reiner Fuellmich in prison in Germany, with his trial continually being delayed?
Why did the ONS change the way they calculate excess deaths, from an established method?
Why did the MSM not mention the eradication of flu in 2020/1?
Why were the Nightingale Hospitals erected with fanfare, but deconstructed with no coverage?
Why was Susan Michie, a psychologist on SAGE, when we (theoretically) had a respiratory virus?
Why do people now claim to keep getting Covid, when they used to call it a stinking cold?
Why do those that claim to get Covid, keep getting the vaccinations against getting Covid?