Words that don't work

After a Facebook discussion about grammar and the use of words that we hate, I thought it would be a good time to resurrect an article I wrote some years ago. Interesting that I still feel the same way!

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Some words just don’t work. These are words that screech across my nerves like a fork across a clean dinner plate. I read them, and suddenly I don’t want to read any further.

The first three are grouped together and etched on my brain:

“wanna, gonna, gotta“

Very appealing when babbled by a two year old, but ridiculous in print. Throw in “ ‘cos ”, and tell me if you can take this person seriously:

“I gotta study hard ‘cos I’m gonna go to law school and I wanna get good grades”

Not so much.

Then there are the words that have been customised without any good reason, because they were perfectly good words in the first place:

“Gotten” - Where did “gotten” come from? What’s wrong with plain old “got”? And how about “burglarised”? Why don’t we just get “burgled” or “robbed” any more? It’s much simpler, and easier to spell!

I think it’s all to do with people’s natural tendency to exaggerate. No-one has “a cold” any more, they have “the flu” - it sounds more impressive. In fact when someone has “flu”, it becomes “viral influenza”. Headaches become migraines, indigestion becomes acid reflux, and words become longer. Strange.

I’ll throw in “cool” and “neat”, because they never seem to be used to describe the temperature or the state of one’s desk any more. Okay, I know. Pop culture. I don’t have a problem with that. My problem is with the fifty year old man who writes to me that he “gotta new computer, and it’s really neat.”

Ooops, nearly forgot! More exaggerations:

“small little”

“more better”

Does “small” make “little” any smaller? No. Same with better. You don’t get “more better” or “less better”. You just get “better” (well, some of us do!)

Of course it doesn’t help that English is probably one of the world’s most confusing languages, so to finish off, here’s an extract from an email sent to me by a San Francisco resident:

“How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and wise guy are opposites? How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while quite a lot and quite a few are alike? How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell another?

Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent? Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown? Met a sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable? And where are all those people who are spring chickens or who would actually hurt a fly?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm clock goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn't a race at all). That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it.”

I gotta go now. Cya.