When people use terms like 'yo' and 'word' with ease and panache, I get jealous. Really jealous. You could say I'm socially awkward when it comes to being linguistically cool. I'm not the kind of person who can bring herself to drop -er for -a on certain words. I don't have it in me to use hip inflection to say stuff like gangsta or brotha. Seriously, my grandmother sounded more laid back saying 'gangster' than me. And when I try to be all cool and tell my friends to holla, I start to sweat and my stomach gets tied up in knots and I sound more like Cameron Frye in Ferris Bueller's Day Off than the up-to-speed urban dictionary user that I'm shooting for. It's a disaster.
I know that part of my dilemma is that I studied literature in college and I have a strong predilection for appropriate spellings and pronunciations of words. I spent a lot of time understanding linguistics and how people form sounds with lips, teeth, and tongue. Maybe it's because I make statements like the two previous sentences. Maybe it's because I use words like 'panache' and 'predilection' and other nerdy terms. I don't know what drives me to do that, but those words are my comfort zone, and I cringe to think what Shakespeare or Whitman would say about how English has evolved. Perhaps part of my inability to use that sweet, sweet slang is that I'm trying to preserve the integrity of language.
This really comes into play when I read my students' essays and see that they write in text language. For essays. In text. Like just the letter r for are. Or u for you. It kills me. How can they think this is suitable for college papers? I can't even bring myself to employ abbreviations in text messages, much less substitute a word for a letter. Will and Walt must certainly be rolling over in their graves.
Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not totally uptight. Those who know me know I can swear with the dirtiest sailor and make hard-core criminals blush with my ability to rattle off words that would shake the Junior League to its core. For this, I have finesse. Swearing is also a comfort zone. It makes me feel good to say bad words, yes, but I still say them correctly. When I use my favorite 'F' word as an adjective, I make sure to fully annuciate the -ing. And when I say the 'B' word, mine is the one syllable version, unlike Snoop's 'beeatch.' I've tried it his way, and I just butcher it.
Dang it. I suppose this is one of those occasions when I have to hold true to who I am.... a lover of language with a fierce desire to use proper pronunciation. Someone with an obsessive compulsive need to form words correctly. Maybe this has turned me into a total geek. Maybe it's keeping me from realizing my inner slang-using baller. I'll probably never know what it means to get slizzard or tell someone not to be all up in my grill. I won't know what it means to go from the window to the wall. I won't use 'yo' or 'word.' But I gotta be me, and that's not so bad. Language is an art, and we all have different expressions.
But, seriously, what does it mean to go from the window to the wall?
I know that part of my dilemma is that I studied literature in college and I have a strong predilection for appropriate spellings and pronunciations of words. I spent a lot of time understanding linguistics and how people form sounds with lips, teeth, and tongue. Maybe it's because I make statements like the two previous sentences. Maybe it's because I use words like 'panache' and 'predilection' and other nerdy terms. I don't know what drives me to do that, but those words are my comfort zone, and I cringe to think what Shakespeare or Whitman would say about how English has evolved. Perhaps part of my inability to use that sweet, sweet slang is that I'm trying to preserve the integrity of language.
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