To Laugh at Change

Wifi Is Now A Word, Says the Dictionary. 

    

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   One day last week, I witnessed a few sports hosts laughing at a Dolphins' fan for "Undefeated... Unforgotten" tattooed on his abdomen. They thought it was funny that a man would paint a non-word (one that is not in the dictionary) across his stomach. Yet within a minute or two they announced a CD entitled "Grrr" without a hint of humor. I was confused, and upon asking my husband for clarification on this matter, he was also at a loss for an explanation. 

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     Please visit http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/unforgotten and then tell me that unforgotten is not a proper word. Or perhaps you would prefer to do a Google search yourself to find if unforgotten is indeed a word. Please do whatever you need to assure yourself. Do the same with grrr, which spell check highlights as incorrect. Grrr is not really a proper word, but onomatopoeia, a sound word, or possibly slang. Whatever grrr is, it takes a little more convincing in a Scrabble game than unforgotten, which even spell check recognizes as correct. For an example of the convincing needed to call grrr a word, see http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/grrr.

     Checking to see if a word is a proper word or not is not necessary, or at least it shouldn't be. If the sports guys on TV had done their research, they should have been questioning grrr's existence as a word instead of an already accepted word such as unforgotten. 

     A word's stance of existence in its desired language depends upon its acceptance by the general community. I believe that if a word (or non-word, that may become an accepted word in a matter of time) is understood by another native speaker of whatever tongue it comes to existence in, it is a perfectly good word. If others agree with a new word, it's possible they'll use it and it will catch on and eventually be in the dictionary. Most new words do not stick, but some do and are used whether they are currently in the dictionary or not. 

      Another point to acknowledge is that one word is questioned because the person whose tattoo it presents itself in is not anyone the average Joe knows, while another which is not really an accepted word as of yet is not questioned or dwelt upon due to the popular band that everyone has heard of who has introduced it as a CD title. 

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     And yes, I end sentences with prepositions. There's no shame - you understood it. Since readers and speakers easily understand prepositions at the end of sentences, I don't see why it should be considered grammatically incorrect. And the same goes with sentence order and beginning sentences with things other than subjects. It's writing style, and I believe it should be closer to that of how thoughts happen instead of how writings turn out after 50 revisions. Writing acceptably shouldn't be as much work as it currently is.

     The point of this article is to reveal how ridiculous so much stricture we currently have on language is. Some laugh at change that they don't realize has already happened because they've been taught "right" from "wrong" according to some "language leaders" (English teachers, parents, etc) who've been misled by the "language leaders" before them. Language changes every day, and those who refuse to accept the changes as they happen waste a lot of time and effort trying to stop the change they have no control over. Deers, for example, is incorrect to many, but to those who say it, there is a reason for not accepting the previously accepted zero plural deer; the people who've changed to the s plural need to differentiate between one deer and many deer when they speak, so they refuse to use the ancient zero plural form of deer to reduce and eliminate confusion concerning singularity and plurality.

      Language change is inevitable. Accept it. Embrace it. Don't try to stop it, because you won't. And it's not really that nice to laugh at something you do understand but just don't think is accepted yet. If you understand it, especially without giving it any thought, then it should not be considered incorrect.