THE NEW ENGLISH

     Language has certainly changed over the years. I can remember when saying, “You Suck!” would land you in the principal’s office for three licks*. (*For you ‘youngsters’, that would be three strokes across the backside with a wooden paddle. I “heard” that our assistant principal offered “Shot-gun” or “Machine-gun”. Always take the machine-gun, it’s over sooner!!)

Now, “That Sucks!”

is not only used by teachers and sweet little grandmothers, but also is part of major ad campaigns.

　And texting….I can spend fifteen minutes in a text conversation that could be cleared up in a 30 second phone call…! I try not to use the text abbreviations and prefer to go ahead and be square and spell out full sentences. For instance, when my son texts “What’s for supper?”, instead of HIS favorites, “IDK” or ‘food’,  I’ll expound a bit….”Well, we have lasagna left from last night, We can thaw some chicken,…” etc. Drives him crazy…..

     Yesterday,

I heard a teen-ager comment on something she was reading that brought it all home.

     While reading the nutritional info on a box of Cheerios, she exclaimed, “Wow! There must be so much cholesterol in these that they don’t even want you to know!

I asked, “Really, what makes you think that?”

      She said, “Instead of giving a number like the other things, it just says, “OMG”.”

I had to “LOL”!

I’m adding to this on 3/1/12…..

My wife, Vicki, is tutoring some 5th graders after school. She was working on ‘opposites’ recently, giving them words such as ‘hard’ looking for the response, ‘soft’, etc.    To 8 out of 8 students, the opposite response to the word ‘Hot’ was…

‘Ugly’….!!!!!

~ by rkpowers on March 8, 2010.