A man cannot reside in Oklahoma for long without hearing vast amounts of slang. I use it all the time. One I particularly like is "what's shakin' bacon." Note that I cut the end off of the word shaking just for humors sake, and that it also gives the illusion that it rhymes with the word bacon and gives it that nice south of the Mason Dixon feel. I recently listened to an old interview with the late Ray Charles and within that conversation he used the phrase "give me some skin." I imagine that having a nice 1940's jazz feel to it. Many times, people can tell where we are from and what era just by what falls out of our mouths. Even Canadians use the word "A" (if you can call that a word) after every sentence. And south of the border Mexican's use the word "que" to ask, would you mind repeating that? Not that that word would ever be taught in Spanish class. No matter where we roam, we usually run into some form of slang.
My own grandma used to use the phrase "what's knitten kitten." And grandpa would say things like "what's buzzin cousin, and hey sugar, are you rationed?" Of course, that phrase might get you kicked out of the VFW these days, and unless you were alive during the second world war the second part might mean nothing to you. I have more than once described to my autistic son that when we stretch the truth in this family it is called hyperbole, or in our case the epitome of hyperbole. That is to say that we enjoy it so much we do it twice. Sometimes language perplexities are lost on the young man, and why wouldn't they he is a literal kind of guy.
While I was too young to remember most of it there is no doubt that the hippy generation had an effect on our vocabulary. Hippy words that hold negative connotations are words like the following: downer, uptight, freaked out, rip off, bummer, drag, and dropped out. These days the term drag usually stirs up visions of a young man putting on pumps and a dress, and dropped out usually means dropping out of school. Remember when the term drags only referred to stock car races? I miss the days when the life was more straightforward. If you ever feel nostalgic about the hippy generation sayings tune into the old 60's television show Dragnet, they used all of them. Joe Friday evidently had a lot of repressed sexual feelings, it's probably what caused his hair to stand on end. On the positive side there were these words: groovy, out of sight, far out, turn on, tune in, rapping, and doing our own thing. One can usually watch The Brady Bunch and hear all of those little nuggets including wearing bell bottoms big enough to double as a pup tent. Personally, I prefer black and white episodes of The Andy Griffith Show. That show often tried to leave things like pop culture on the back step, that tends to keep a show from becoming cheesy and ensure that it ages well. That might explain why it has been in syndication for sixty years. That show is more like a vintage cheese than like a gallon of milk. These days the word wrapping tends to refer to a type of music where everyone is in need of pulling up their pants. I could apologize for that last statement, but I don't want to. I said it to make a point that is not in need of an apology.
It's interesting that the sixties generation didn't really make up any new terms as much as they changed around the old ones. In other words, there is nothing new under the sun. They were not so much trying to develop their own language as much as they were attempting to get under the skin of their parents and the establishment. That no doubt worked. It's not a new concept and every generation is guilty of it. When I was growing up my stepsister hung a poster of Alice Cooper in her room. I happen to know she wasn't truly a fan, she never went to their concerts, never bought a tee shirt, and anytime his music came on the radio she changed the channel. She did it for one reason only, to freak out my mom and it worked like a charm. Parents can be so easy and predictable. If mom would have taken the time to do a little research, she would have known it was nothing more than a little tasteless guitar music set to an even more tasteless vaudeville act by a man who spends most of his time playing golf.
Can anyone explain to me why the words "sew" and "new" look like they should rhyme but don't? Shouldn't they? The spelling indicates that they should. I used to feel ashamed about my poor spelling skills until I realized that is exactly what they were developed for. What's the deal with strange words that end in the letter B? For instance, bomb, tomb, comb, dumb, couldn't any of these words simply have ended in the letter E and made much more sense? Surely, I am not the first one to ask why the word (big) is smaller than the word (small). Because of a commercial that aired in the seventies nearly every one of my generations knows how to spell the word "bologna." The jingle is stuck in all of our heads like a milk dud on a movie theater floor. But shouldn't it end in a "Y"? And what about those English words that sound the same, have different meanings, but are spelled totally different? Try these on for size, petal/petal, paws/pause, aloud/allowed, alter/altar, bizarre/bizarre. And then there are the two that have always made Bugs Bunny wince, hair/hare. So, I leave you today with the top ten words in which I highly question their spellings and feel that all English professors should be tied to a chalk board and given three lashes with a Thesaurus. BTW, what IS another word for Thesaurus?
Vacuum (what?!)
Indict (no, not even close)
Kneading (why the K?)
Colonel (Kernel? I don't think so)
Gnaw (Ganaw" No, NAW, well if the G is silent why do we need it?)
Minuscule (this is the best of the worst in my opinion)
Phlegm (this word is only used in Mucinex commercials now)
Asphyxiate (why not just use an F?)
Flabbergast (yea right!)
Entrepreneur (are we sure this word isn't French?)
Comentarios