It's a standard acronym -- English as a Second Language. It is taught in schools for kids who come to this country and haven't yet learned English. There are adult ESL classes for the "big kids." There are online learning resources for ESL -- learning or teaching. English, you see, is a tough language. Other languages have their difficulties. There are new alphabets, new phonemes (the distinct sounds of a specific language), new concepts. Mandarin Chinese, they tell me, has the same word pronounced with four different "tones" that you won't see in their transliterated language. So when my friend whose last name is Yan brought his wife from China whose last name is Yan, I said, "Oh, so it is the Chinese custom for a wife to take her husband's last name?" "No," he told me and proceeded to tell me that his name and hers were different, although I still can't tell you why.
For English, it's different. English is a hodgepodge of languages from around the world. With heavy influences from Latin and Ancient Greek, we've also stirred in French, German, Norse, Saxon, Spanish, and more. Then we have portmanteaux which is plural for "portmanteau" which is from a French word for a carrying case but now means a blending a word constructed from combining two or more others. See what I mean? This is a tough
Some people who know me call me a "wordsmith" because I write words and, well, my name is Smith. I'm getting to the place that I don't think so. I'm getting to the point that I think I'm an ESL guy. We have so many new words and changed words. Dictionary.com reports that over 15,000 entries were changed in 2020. That includes 650 new entries alone. They even offer to send you weekly "LGBQTIA Language Updates." Weekly. There are, of course, new terms from science and technology for things that are, well, new, but it's so much more. There is politics and pop culture and the environment and the new stuff from COVID and BLM and racist issues (like "brownface" or "whitesplain") and more.
Between the new terms we're dreaming up and the definitions we're changing, I can't keep up. Factor in all the standard terms that have now become offensive, and the rate of change of the English language is making me a prime candidate for ESL. "Does anyone here speak Old English? You know, like from the 20th century?"
1 comment:
It seems clear to me that the best response to these word changes is for those like us to continually use the words as their true definition demands. Don't accept the new, forced definitions...definitions forced upon us by those who corrupt language in order to further their corrupt agenda.
A recent example of this is "sexual preference". Apparently there is no such thing now, despite how recently it has been used by the very people who now wish to outlaw it simply because a highly qualified nominee for the Supreme Court had that unmitigated audacity to utter the expression. But I challenge them to consider this: You have a choice of sex partner. The choices are, a man, a woman, a goat. Which do you choose and why? If you can't say your choice isn't based on what you prefer, you're a liar. Me? I prefer my wife, a woman, because I'm a man and that's how it's supposed to be by God's will and nature.
Post a Comment