ASS-ININE ARTICULATIONS

Our mother tongue is one of the richest and most descriptive of the world’s 50 or so surviving languages.

Contained within the great meaty broth of ‘Queen’s English’ are a number of examples that defy easy digestion (xylopyrography, vicissitudinous and exophthalmia, for example) as well as those which, because of their connotations, are considered unpalatable. But whatever their associations, whatever chords of emotion they end up twanging, they are all part and parcel of our linguistic heritage. Indeed, what other language could provide such an array of alternative nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs? Consider the following: ‘A rolling stone gathers no moss’. This simple maxim could also be written thus: ‘A perambulating portion of metamorphic igneous or sedimentary deposits fails to accumulate an exiguous plant of the cryptogamus species.’

So, why am I pontificating? What is the point to these circumlocutory ramblings? The Americans. That’s what. I really do give a Castlemaine xxxx for what they are doing to our language! And what makes it infinitely worse is that their recycled English is finding its way back to these shores. Witness if you will the act of linguistic butchery meted out to a fine old Anglo-Saxon word. How they have reduced it to something akin to a serpent’s hiss. I am of course referring to the Americanism ‘Ass’. Just say it. Ugh! Now don’t you agree that the original form is far more roundly descriptive? Doesn’t it just roll off the tongue? But now this insidious little interloper is wriggling (or should that be wiggling?) its way into usage over here. For instance, you must have seen the advert for a certain French car that idiotically croons “I see you baby shakin’ your ass…shakin your ass”. OK, granted the visual aspect is quite stimulating, but the use of the horrible little mongrel really bugs the shit out of me! So too does that idiotic phrase so beloved of verbose representatives of her Majesty’s constabulary when discussing progress in police matters: “at this moment in time”. Arrgghh! Both of these ugly American imports are jockeying for the number one spot one my current hit list of ass-inine articulations.

What next? There is plenty to choose from. How about sem-eye for semi, mo-door sickle for motor cycle, mee-ror for mirror, de-fence and off-fence for defence and offence, too-more and die-nesty? And it doesn’t stop there. If your name were Cecil you would become Cee-sil; Peter, Pee-der. Consider if you will, the term ‘see-saw’. They rename it ‘teeter-totter’. Then not content with this, they proceed to pronounce it ‘teeder-todder’. Now if Cecil and Peter were playing on a seesaw, it would be Cee-cil and Pee-der on the teeder-todder!

Having removed that particular obstruction from my gullet I now have to hold up my hands and confess to any of our trans-Atlantic cousins who may be reading this, that we, the originators of the language are not entirely blameless. I am not referring here to the fact that we allowed them to stand on their own two feet a couple of hundred years ago and that the removal of our benign tutorage allowed them to drift into slipshod grammatical ways. No. I am admitting that we too are guilty of mugging the language. Just listen to your favourite Newsreader on any night of the week. He or she will assail your aural senses with ‘Med-sin’ and ‘Sek-ret-tree’…and this from proper heducated people! And the advertisements, they’re just as bad. We will be seduced into buying Cadbury’s chok-lit (lat or lut) or to liven up our laver-tree with new improved Toilet Duck.

We on this side of the Pond are also guilty of other forms of grammar-induced misery. Indeed you have to marvel at a language that can come up with the following head scratchers:

· We can recite at a play, yet play at a recital.
· We fill in a form by filling it out.
· We have noses that run and feet that smell.
· Why do slim chance and fat chance mean the same thing?
· How do you get off a non-stop flight?
· How can your house burn down when it burns up?
· How is it that an alarm goes off when it goes on?
· Why are overtones and undertones the same thing?
· Why isn’t the word ‘phonetic’ spelled the way it sounds?
· Why do overlook and oversee mean different things?
· Why don’t tomb, comb and bomb sound alike?
· Why - if a piano player is called a pianist, a violin player is called a violinist, a saxophone player is called a saxophonist, a flute player is called a flautist – isn’t a drum player called a drumist?

And how about these?

· After a number of injections my jaw got number.
· The bandage was wound around the wound.
· The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
· The oarsmen had a row about how to row.
· The buck does funny things when the does are present.
· The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
· We can cry a tear if we tear a muscle

And finally:

If ‘GH’ stands for ‘P’ as in Hiccough and if ‘OUGH’ stands for ‘O’ as in Dough and if ‘PHTH’ stands for ‘T’ as in Phthisis and if ‘EIGH’ stands for ‘A’ as in neighbour and if ‘TTE’ stands for ‘T’ as in Gazette and if ‘EAU’ stands for ‘O’ as in Plateau then shouldn’t the word ‘Potato’ be spelled GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU?

© Peter Clayfield, November 2005

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Wo-Men
Ass-inine Articulations
Antithetical Assertions (Or: Antithesis Rules - OK?)
Time Trotters, Twisters and Terpsichorean Teenagers