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Language today is a wonderful, funny and complex thing. It is so second-nature to us now that it's hard to imagine a world without it. It's incredible, really, and if you don't think it's a bafflingly complicated and amazing thing, just think about how it must have started. Once upon a caveman, there was no 'language' other than the most basic of primal communication;. angry noises, warning shouts, horny grunts, et cetera, but nothing you could use for anything useful like describing a sunset or insulting a turtle. Its evolution was slow to begin with no doubt, and the total amount of language to exist at any one time would have fluctuated enormously depending on how much was being passed on to the next generation of bitey, rapey, arse-scratchy, stick-hitting humans and how many of them were dying from things like disease, cold and each other.
Language starts simply. Imagine you're an early, bewildered looking savage with not much of anything going on outside of your own beard, then one day you point your dirty knuckled digit at a big, yellow, warm thing in the sky and go 'eurgh.' Then when it goes down, you go 'aurgh.' If enough of your tribe does the same, and passes these familiar grunts on to the next generation, they start to become recognisable words or phrases that represent consistent ideas, in this case big shiny warm thing go up, big shiny warm thing go down. Before you know it, you're pointing your poo-tipped finger at trees and women and feet and spiders and waves and your genitals, and bam!, you're in language town.
Fast-forward to now, though, and we've got all kinds of words like 'form,' 'kinds,' 'intricate' and 'sentences' and we can use them to form all kinds of intricate sentences. Word is the word for word, for instance. We need language to learn language and think about language and discuss language, so I think its important we take care of this profoundly old and well guarded gift that has been passed down to us from our ancestors from the very beginnings of our rapid, mad evolutionary dash to a world of chocolate, satellites, blogs, whiskey and telly. It's one of the most ancient and powerful tools of our species, and it's here like it always has been, to be utilised by humanity in what ever circumstances we now need it.
That being said, here's a whole bunch of ways that people use it or don't use that get right on my boobs.
- People who tell you to follow the 'rules' of language. Nobody owns words or punctuation or grammar; nobody patented the comma; there are no rules. If its makes sense, use it however you want. Fuck being told you can’t start sentences with and. Or because. Or or. Because it’s acceptable. And I don't care you if you disagree.
- Fuck not making up your own words when you fancy it. Your made-up words share the exact same origin as every other word in history, why can't they become part of the ever-shifting cloud of human glossary?
- Regardlessly, fuck you if use sickening portmanteaus like 'Brangelina,' 'Bennifer' and 'TomKat.' They are individual people, not cheeky moron scrabble scores. How would you like it if I started calling us Paulcunt?
- Fuck censorship.
- Fuck the Grammar Police. If you attack someone’s argument for their spelling and grammar when you know what they mean instead of responding to it, you’re cheap.
- Sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can never hurt you (apart from through much longer-lasting psychological damage.)
- Rihanna lyrics. We get it. Fucking. Now stop telling 9 year-olds.
- Sticks and stones might break my bones, but whips and chains excite me. NO. THIS DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING. JUST STOP.
- While you're there, could somebody nip in and quickly explain to Alanis Morrisette what irony means, please.
- Really, really, really fuck off if you mock someone for not being able to speak your language properly if you don’t speak theirs. They are still one odd sounding sentence smarter than you.
- Fuck the the unasked for tricks your brain performs that lets you understand somehtnig even when words are are repaeted or even scrmabled up. You sneaky brain, you.
- Fuck not being allowed to use the words nigger, coon, wog, paki, spic, fag, dyke, flid, cripple, spastic, retard, mong, etc. If you can’t use them, you can’t change what they mean. However, fuck you much harder if you use those words in a derogatory way then blame ‘political correctness gone mad’ when people criticise you for it. Political correctness hasn’t gone mad, people are just telling you that you’re a twatend.
- Why can't there be more words like bed and shark that look like what they define? bed. See? shark. Yeah. Boob even seems to show three different angles of boobs, for tit’s sake, so why can’t other words? Vagina could be iivii or something. Actually that looks more like two couples carrying an upside-down tent. Ignore me.
- The word racecar is OK, I suppose, but strap-on is no-parts backwards. Ohhhhh.
- Fuck you if you don’t think it’s funny when villages are called Bum or Piddle or Shitstain. It is, and if I can’t nick the sign I'm at least getting my picture with it.
- Fuck newspapers that write f**k. What’s the fucking point?
- Spork and shart are legitimate words. If it’s a spoon and a fork, it’s a spork. If it’s a shit and a fart, it’s a shart.
- Fuck you if you constantly avoid using longer words that are the most appropriate because you're worried that people might not understand them -- you're helping to kill off our language. Similarly, if you avoid using appropriate slang, cultural references or foreign words out of snobbery, you’re stopping language from evolving. We have dictionaries and Google now, screw the Stupids. However, if you who use longer words than necessary just to sound impressive, especially if you use them wrong, I hate you. The bassist for The Killers just used the word 'disseminated' on the radio to explain how his band went in different directions. I was so annoyed I nearly sharted.
- Fuck the Welsh village Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogo-goch. No one likes a show-off.
- Fuck trying to preserve your dying shitty language in Cornwall or Wales or wherever. What’s the point? To re-affirm your traditional sense of national identity? Sounds to me more like a club I’m intentionally not invited to. Fuck off.
- The word phoenix.
- No, fuck you SpellCheck red squiggle, it is pheonix. Right click. Add to dictionary.
- Sorry SpellCheck, we’ve all had a drink. I didn’t mean what I said. I need you. Red squiggle again, babe? You don’t even consider yourself a real word? Right Click, Add to Dictionary. Let’s never fight again.
- Fk ovrly cndnsd txt spk. Stop it, there are more enjoyable things that my brain could be doing than decoding your fucking number plate nonsense. Its fine, as long as I know what u mean, just dt2mcho2ws uno?
- People who always describe every little thing that goes wrong in their life as ‘a nightmare.’ It’s not a nightmare, you’re just damaged to the point of not recognising your warped priorities.
- Fuck whatever reasons have and are preventing the international adoption of a universal international language in schools across the world, despite several scientific systems having existed for decades. Why aren’t we talking about this? Oh. See? It’s a big silly, cycle of silly.
Finally, this looks like a bum with a little poo:
)).
Thanks.
