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stella41b -> Yo talk nang, innit? (rant) (8/20/2009 7:23:22 AM)
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This is something which sends me doollalley and gets on my Nelly. Gee, I'm even inclined to get the hump over this but not to put too fine a point on it I have to ask - what do some people have against the English language?
Not that I'm one for eavesdropping but it's rather warm here in London at the moment and I keep my windows open and I catch drifts of conversation coming from the teenagers who congregate outside the block. I assume it's conversation, though I cannot be too sure, and I'm not entirely sure it's English either. Words drift up like 'blud', 'endz', 'nang', ;wagwaan', ;'sick', 'marvin', and 'innit'.
Have our teenagers become Ali G clones I ask? Is this a separate language, you know like 'pidgin English', but 'urban English' and what does this say about young people? Indeed what does it say about the accents we speak with and the language we use?
But it's not just the teenagers either. Go anywhere, anywhere at all, and almost invariably someone will be talking on a cellphone to someone else who is somewhere else also on a cellphone. It doesn't matter whether it's public transport, the local supermarket, the street, someone somewhere will be on a cellphone. In London you have more chance of coming face to face with an elephant than you have of getting from A to B without anybody using a cellphone.
Now being forced to listen in on someone's private conversation is one thing, but it gets worse. Why? Office jargon, that's why. Yesterday I travelled back from the City of London on a bus behind a man in a suit who spent the entire 45 minutes wittering on to someone about all the details of 'the new intercommunicative confidentiality policy' Really, it goes from the sublime to the ridiculous at this point and at times I don't think even Monty Python could have come up with half of what goes on.
Does for example 'downsizing' actually mean 'As I'm the only one using these idiotic phrases my job is safe and you're all going to get fired'?
Does 'let's all get together and brainstorm' actually mean 'I'm really hung over (or knackered) right now and I'm afraid others will realize that I don't have any ideas and can't remember any moronic phrases to express my thoughts'?
Indeed there is a trend in London which is mushrooming for David Brent type managers and executives all uttering this verbal diarrhoea while the rest of us close our ears and scream inside as we hear phrases like 'Can I have this done by the close of play?'
Why anyone would want to replace the simple 'end of the day' with 'close of play' is well and truly beyond me.
Or how about 'let's hit the ground running'? Does this actually mean 'I'll bugger off to my office and play Freecell while you all struggle to get the work done before the deadline'?
One phrase which I overheard some time back would irritate the calmest - 'cascade it down' which I would assume means 'can't be bothered with that so pass this information on to the rest of the team'. I admit that I have given up on attempts to learn Italian - I'm too busy relearning English, my own language.
I mean there's also 'I've got it on my radar' and 'let's touch base'. I don't think I could ever work in an office again. Sometimes I feel I would only end up throttling my line manager screaming 'speak bloody plain English' but then again chances are my manager would be Polish. Other times I assume it would be just like being in a room full of Americans, you understand what each individual word means, but you don't understand why they are using such words and you're not entirely sure you know what they're talking about (as a Brit you get this feeling quite often when reading threads and postings in the Politics and Religion section here).
But you know this makes me wonder and I feel that I must ask, if you work in management or in an office and have teenage children, how do you communicate with each other? Do you speak Esperanto at the dinner table? Use sign language? Mime? Play charades? Does a younger sibling have to translate everything for you?
What do you think? Are there words and expressions which 'get your goat'? Have you noticed the same? Do you ever feel like a foreigner when speak with or listening to someone speaking your own language?
Thoughts and comments please.
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