So, this has reached the giddying heights of 1000 views, which, considering it was made in September last year... must put it about on par (and I might be a little bit out here) with her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland.
So. Huzzahs all round.
Huzzah.
Saturday 18 February 2012
Eight Buffaloes Walk Into A Bar...
"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."
The above is not a snippet of the deranged ramblings of a bison enthusiast; nor is it an attempt by an edgy new theatre to replace the use of the word 'rhubarb' as the faux murmured speech used in the background of productions. Rather, it is the longest sentence in the English language which uses only one word. It makes use of the obvious animal, the American city 'Buffalo' and the use of an American slang word, meaning 'bully', which also happens to be 'buffalo'. In simpler, less mono-lexical terms, it means 'Bison from Buffalo bullied by other bison from Buffalo bully, in turn, another lot of bison from buffalo'. It is, in my eyes, quite a wonderful little sentence.
On telling MOM about this sentence (MOM standing here for 'Mother-of-Mine': an acronym that I can only assume Americans and a growing number of other English-speakers have adopted -and made lower case, so as not to appear obtrusive when written- lovingly as a mode of reference for their female parent), an interesting philosophical-linguistic debate (hark!) was thus sparked, as we wondered what a word actually, fundamentally is (I had queried Buffalo and buffalo (and indeed, buffalo) being the 'same word', what with the former being a proper noun. Apparently, according to the OED and others, it is merely spelling and pronunciation that defines 'a word', and not a deeper meaning).
But this is not really the point of what is to come. The point is that a language that can churn out eight buffalo, and nothing else, into a grammatically correct, if a little clumsy, sentence is one of wonder and beauty, and it is thus a crying, terrible shame that this language is being marred and tarred the way it is.
Look around you. Greengrocer's peddle their fruit and their vegetables and their extraneous unnecessary punctuation, clearly stolen from the large range of Mens Wear that is freely available. Internet adverts ask if 'Is it possible that you're blood pressure be too high?', and the existential crisis of identity that follows (could I be blood pressure too high?) does nothing to help the suspected ailment. I could go on.
As should be clear, the point that I am making is not an original one, but it is a desperately important one. Our language does matter, and so does the way we use it. But this is where I become torn. On the one hand, being the bleeding heart, wet, good-for-nuffink liberal that I am, I feel somewhat uneasy dictating how people should speak and write. But on the other hand, I am also linguistically conservative (maybe that's being a tad too kind. I'm, frankly, a linguistic snob) and it pains me to see and to hear our tongue being mangled in increasingly unpleasant ways.
Take the 'splice comma', for example; it remains, for me, one of the ugliest pieces of punctuation found. It joins two stand-alone clauses (where there is no conjunction), such as in "It was raining, I got very wet." or "Kumquats are my favourite thing ever, I could eat them all day.", where a semi-colon is called for. I love the semi-colon: I simply adore it. Yet is being replaced by the comma which, frankly, has enough uses already.
People, my brother among them, say that this is just a sign that the language is changing. But why? Why should it change? Granted, there are certain impracticalities stemming from Latin, such as never splitting an infinitive or ending a sentence with a preposition (interestingly, Churchill's favourite 'up with which I will not put' is often misinterpreted; it was a response to overly clunky Civil Service documents which avoided prepositions as the ultimate word like the plague. Next to one particularly unsavoury sentence, he wrote that 'this is the kind of nonsense up with which I will not put'; he was satirising grammatical fastidiousness, not upholding it) that can probably be sent to pastures new (that said, I will still and avoid doing so most of the time; however, there are occasions when what must be done must be done).
So the tricksier, more anal stuff I can probably understand needs some level of reform. However, what is so tricky about using an apostrophe correctly? Or making sure questions end in a question mark? Or even making sure that sentences start with a capital letter and end with anything at all? It reeks of ignorance and laziness, and these are no things that the language should bend down to and change for their sake alone. You wouldn't apply this logic -this populism born of ignorance, this "everybody's doing it, it's time it should change" (note the splice comma. Note it and hiss) attitude- anywhere else, would you?
"Well M'Lud, I did kill him, yes, but I kind of didn't know why what I had done was wrong, and I kind of didn't bother about it, and anyway, M'Lud: the Law is an ever-changing thing and should reflect the common usage!"
What gets me, at times, is the attitude of other people when you try to stick up for poor old grammar. Highlight the finesse of the subjunctive case, for instance, and you will be branded a 'Grammar Nazi'. That sticking to linguistic rules is enough to get you compared to someone who orchestrated the brutal murder of millions of innocents is bad enough; that this only seems to apply to grammar is another thing entirely. Tell a friend they might want to cut the grass, and they don't turn around to call you a 'Lawn Nazi'. Point out a problem in someone's pipes, and you're not labelled a 'Plumbing Nazi'. No. There's a stigma that's been attached to the decent upholding and championing of our beautiful, glorious, wacky old language and that, my friends, is everything that's wrong with society today.
Well, that and the fact that tax evasion, when done under a dog's name, is fine and dandy... but that's another matter entirely.
The above is not a snippet of the deranged ramblings of a bison enthusiast; nor is it an attempt by an edgy new theatre to replace the use of the word 'rhubarb' as the faux murmured speech used in the background of productions. Rather, it is the longest sentence in the English language which uses only one word. It makes use of the obvious animal, the American city 'Buffalo' and the use of an American slang word, meaning 'bully', which also happens to be 'buffalo'. In simpler, less mono-lexical terms, it means 'Bison from Buffalo bullied by other bison from Buffalo bully, in turn, another lot of bison from buffalo'. It is, in my eyes, quite a wonderful little sentence.
On telling MOM about this sentence (MOM standing here for 'Mother-of-Mine': an acronym that I can only assume Americans and a growing number of other English-speakers have adopted -and made lower case, so as not to appear obtrusive when written- lovingly as a mode of reference for their female parent), an interesting philosophical-linguistic debate (hark!) was thus sparked, as we wondered what a word actually, fundamentally is (I had queried Buffalo and buffalo (and indeed, buffalo) being the 'same word', what with the former being a proper noun. Apparently, according to the OED and others, it is merely spelling and pronunciation that defines 'a word', and not a deeper meaning).
But this is not really the point of what is to come. The point is that a language that can churn out eight buffalo, and nothing else, into a grammatically correct, if a little clumsy, sentence is one of wonder and beauty, and it is thus a crying, terrible shame that this language is being marred and tarred the way it is.
Look around you. Greengrocer's peddle their fruit and their vegetables and their extraneous unnecessary punctuation, clearly stolen from the large range of Mens Wear that is freely available. Internet adverts ask if 'Is it possible that you're blood pressure be too high?', and the existential crisis of identity that follows (could I be blood pressure too high?) does nothing to help the suspected ailment. I could go on.
As should be clear, the point that I am making is not an original one, but it is a desperately important one. Our language does matter, and so does the way we use it. But this is where I become torn. On the one hand, being the bleeding heart, wet, good-for-nuffink liberal that I am, I feel somewhat uneasy dictating how people should speak and write. But on the other hand, I am also linguistically conservative (maybe that's being a tad too kind. I'm, frankly, a linguistic snob) and it pains me to see and to hear our tongue being mangled in increasingly unpleasant ways.
Take the 'splice comma', for example; it remains, for me, one of the ugliest pieces of punctuation found. It joins two stand-alone clauses (where there is no conjunction), such as in "It was raining, I got very wet." or "Kumquats are my favourite thing ever, I could eat them all day.", where a semi-colon is called for. I love the semi-colon: I simply adore it. Yet is being replaced by the comma which, frankly, has enough uses already.
People, my brother among them, say that this is just a sign that the language is changing. But why? Why should it change? Granted, there are certain impracticalities stemming from Latin, such as never splitting an infinitive or ending a sentence with a preposition (interestingly, Churchill's favourite 'up with which I will not put' is often misinterpreted; it was a response to overly clunky Civil Service documents which avoided prepositions as the ultimate word like the plague. Next to one particularly unsavoury sentence, he wrote that 'this is the kind of nonsense up with which I will not put'; he was satirising grammatical fastidiousness, not upholding it) that can probably be sent to pastures new (that said, I will still and avoid doing so most of the time; however, there are occasions when what must be done must be done).
So the tricksier, more anal stuff I can probably understand needs some level of reform. However, what is so tricky about using an apostrophe correctly? Or making sure questions end in a question mark? Or even making sure that sentences start with a capital letter and end with anything at all? It reeks of ignorance and laziness, and these are no things that the language should bend down to and change for their sake alone. You wouldn't apply this logic -this populism born of ignorance, this "everybody's doing it, it's time it should change" (note the splice comma. Note it and hiss) attitude- anywhere else, would you?
"Well M'Lud, I did kill him, yes, but I kind of didn't know why what I had done was wrong, and I kind of didn't bother about it, and anyway, M'Lud: the Law is an ever-changing thing and should reflect the common usage!"
What gets me, at times, is the attitude of other people when you try to stick up for poor old grammar. Highlight the finesse of the subjunctive case, for instance, and you will be branded a 'Grammar Nazi'. That sticking to linguistic rules is enough to get you compared to someone who orchestrated the brutal murder of millions of innocents is bad enough; that this only seems to apply to grammar is another thing entirely. Tell a friend they might want to cut the grass, and they don't turn around to call you a 'Lawn Nazi'. Point out a problem in someone's pipes, and you're not labelled a 'Plumbing Nazi'. No. There's a stigma that's been attached to the decent upholding and championing of our beautiful, glorious, wacky old language and that, my friends, is everything that's wrong with society today.
Well, that and the fact that tax evasion, when done under a dog's name, is fine and dandy... but that's another matter entirely.
Tuesday 7 February 2012
Ultimatum
Everything was fine; all was well. Nary a crease nor a tear was to be seen in the great shirt of life, and everything was just dandy. That is... until it happened.
It started off as a normal morning, and why shouldn’t it have been? Most mornings are, on the whole, normal; every day, millions of people fail to make the news owing to the gloriously quotidian, mundane, banal nature of everyday, bog standard, good-enough-for-99%-of-us life. Interesting things happen to other people, and I was quite content to stay out of the 1% to which odd things do indeed happen. However, fate, old fickle free-spirited fate, had different plans for me that day. Oh, did it ever.
So, as I said, things were just ticketyboo, until I decided that what I really wanted on the piece of toast (Hovis, Best of Both; two minutes. Golden brown. Perfection) that had just leapt enthusiastically from the toaster (where else?) was some jam. Quite why I wanted jam was, quite frankly, beyond me. My limited-spending habits (some people call it Scrooge-like penny pinching; I call it thrift. Besides, I’ll be the one laughing when all my savings go through the roof, especially as now in 2007 their position in Iceland’s National Bank looks as strong as can be) meant that all I had in the fridge for said toast-related purpose was Sainsbury’s ‘Red Jam’: a mere pinch at 26p for 300 grams of colourings, questionable fruit and broken dreams. But it would have to do.
As jamming (Not that kind. Back away, Marley) convention dictates, I placed the jar on the kitchen surface, then proceeded to open it. The actual opening process went off without a hitch. However, on opening it, my Red Jam found itself a friend in 3cm of striped yellow and black evil, as a wasp decided that cavorting with compote was just a swell idea.
This left me with a problem. My toast, rapidly losing its comforting warmth, was in sore need of some jam. My jam, rapidly gaining character in the form of insect dribble, was in sore need of some wasp removal. My new mortal enemy, rapidly climbing the rankings in my Big Book of Grudges, was in sore need of death.
Luckily, I had a crossbow readily at hand; I feel no kitchen is truly complete without one, and it helps to deal with such dilemmas as this (‘dilemmas’, incidentally, is an ugly word, and I really feel it needs replacing. But enough of my lexis unattractiveness based tangent, and onwards with my saga).
I picked up Gwyneth (that’s the crossbow; I felt it needed a name, as all good weapons do, but panicked when choosing one. And since I panicked out loud, it would only have served to confuse the crossbow if I were to try and rename it. And a confused crossbow is not a good crossbow, as any child could tell you) and aimed it at the wasp. I had an ultimatum in mind, which was going to end in glory or jam. The day, I could sense, was mine.
“You there. Wasp. Yeah, I’m talking to you.” I tried narrowing my eyes menacingly, but didn’t really have the knack. All I ended up doing was blinking at the wasp, which it may or may not have found terrifying. In all fairness, it probably wasn’t praying that its god would be merciful at that point.
“I know. I’ve got eyes and ears, haven’t I?” I narrowed my eyes menacingly in surprise. Not so much at the fact it could talk (I’ve always harboured a suspicion to that extent. There must be more to their evil than meets the eye), but rather at the fact that it sounded Andrew Marr with a slightly blocked nose.
“Ummm... Yes?”
The wasp had, by now, stopped moving and was staring at me, and I couldn’t help but feel that it was the kind of thing that could narrow its eyes without losing sight temporarily. My anger at this was piqued.
“Good. Glad we got that established. Now, put that blasted thing down, and for God’s sake get a grip of yourself. I’m just a wasp; my eating a little bit of this red goo-”
“Jam.”
“-won’t make it all go off, now, will it?”
“Yeah, but, my jam, things may go... bad?” This wasn’t on. I was being flummoxed by a bloody insect. Sadly, though, not bloody in the REVENGE!!! manner; just in the exceedingly irritating manner.
“Sound reasoning and flawless articulation from the human race, I see. I can understand why you’re the second best race on this planet. Ha Ha.”
More than my honour, and breakfast, was at stake, now. This oik was sassing humanity. And only I (well, and Gwyneth) stood in its way. I thought of people mistreating kittens to get into my angry mode.
“Now, look here, you,-”
“No. You look here. I am giving you a choice, you malformed squirt of a shaved ape. Either you let me be, and allow me to eat, quite happily and peacefully, this delicious red goo-”
“Jam.”
“from which I will leave in my own good time; or, you shoot me with that bow of yours and –and let me be really very clear– bad things will happen”
I made a noise roughly equivalent to pfftachoo ; the disdainful apathy I had had in mind somewhat spoiled by an impromptu sneeze. Then, just as it looked like it was going to launch itself into a tirade of wasp-supremacy, I shot the rascal. And then, my heart froze. I went white.
The shot was perfect; the wasp had been what is technically described as ‘smushed’ by Gwyneth’s power. But that wasn’t the problem. Lying around the smushings were fragments of glass, bits of sticky label, and, oozing all over the surface... red goo. Jam. I screamed.
Ultimately, it had been right, that wasp. I had dared to mess with it. And bad things had happened.
Fin
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