50% actual words

Overheard last night on TruTV

“That set was mad dope yo!”

What has the English language come to?

Perhaps this individual meant to say, “Your performance appeared to be insane mentally deficient stunts randomly performed without regard as to flow or theme!”

Although from the audience reaction and the performing group’s reaction apparently the rough translation into actual English was closer to, “I am stunned to incoherence by your scintillating costumery, acrobatically difficult, and thematically seamless performance. Congratulations!”

Either way the original statement is just another example of the constant slaughtering of the emerging dominant language. (although this last statement is up for debate). The slang of the current pop culture is without a doubt the least comprehensible of any current manifestations. Yes yes  I know I sound stuffy. But how can we take seriously any idiot that uses only 50% actual words in any sentence!?”

I am not advocating any kind of language police(maybe I am). However, why do we as concerned citizens of our culture allow such radical departures from proper speech. I am consistently amazed with how small the average person’s vocabulary is. I used the word, piquant in a sentence to describe the chemical “hotness” of my latest culinary( it’s kyoo lin airy) masterpiece. My fellow gourmands then proceeded to ridicule my diction by proclaiming that piquant was simply a smart person’s way of inadequately illuminating the various nuances relating as to taste and aroma. As one fellow put it “It’s too damn hot!”

 My word choice and method of phrasing has been noted at times as being unconventional but I have cultivated this in the hopes that perhaps I will reach more people through their aural receptivity. Acting alone, I quest for better vocabulary and language mastery.

Why do the popular culture sycophants insist on reducing our culture to monosyllabic verbal ejaculations? (yeah I said it . . . . ejaculations. Read Robert E. Howard; there’s a novelist who could use it without embarrassment or derision).

I am left with a faint but deeply abiding bitter taste. Because I know I cannot stop it. Please please please teach your children proper articulation and provide for them the largest vocabulary you can. Then we can truly bestride the world as linguistic Colossuses, (or at least we’ll sound appropriately pretentious/pompous).

Watching our language fail this way is like watching your favorite dessert crash to the floor after 10 hours of work in Slow motion. Profound disappointment, mixed with pity, and an impotent slow-burning rage. Sometimes it’s so bad I have to stop eating and face-palm. So in closing. . .

“Oh stewardess! I speak jive.”