Saturday, July 1, 2017

"Speaking da Talk"


My friend Claude Horvath just asked me which of these two words was correct under current standard of American English. "...snuck – or is it sneaked?" Simply put both are correct. This of course depending if you're a language purist or not. Purists of are always wrong. This since all languages, but especially English changes regularly. English the fastest of all.

In my lifetime several hundred new words or word fragments have been added to common usage. Some will vanish in time some 20 or 30 of them are here in one form or other to stay. Shebang for example has been around since American revolutionary war times. It referred to a soldiers kit...that is his or her pack with their effects. Regulation or personal.

Walt Whitman noted this during the next phase of the Revolution which we call the Civil War. Troops north, and south called their packs "Shebang's". The word still lives on with those of the post WW2 generation. I recall using it to refer to ones stuff. As in "I took the whole "Shebang" with me." My father, and his generation used it to the same effect. Though after roughly 1900 soldiers no longer did.

Though "shebang" has had a life of over two centuries it is now fading out. I imagine it will have completely vanished by the mid-21st century.

To the point. In the English language the American language words sometimes stay sometimes change meanings then leave. "Yo" was an African American slave term "to move on" or "get out of here". It became a term of greeting later. Later still it entered the Army with Black troops during WW1, and stayed in the military then the fire police, and emergency services through the whole of the 20th century. The term "Bro" has the same exact history. Both in the latter part of that time it migrated back into the general Ghetto dialects, and from there into general usage with a few different meanings. 

One could go on.

Those more learned would see all I've posted as half baked bleep,...yeah well fuck'em. Oh gawd how I loves 'dis language talky talk. "Talky talk"...a Midwestern term long since extinct. Anyway I'm just a lay observer to these goings one so I'll stop here, and have a nice iced tea. 'Been humid today.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Snuck" is the correct form. Her majesty insists on correct conjugation and proper grammar!

Z

Anonymous said...

Oh My God I made a spelling error! It's "Her Majesty" with a capital M, of course.

Z