Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    LOL: Losing Our Language
    LOL: Losing Our Language
    LOL: Losing Our Language
    Ebook90 pages1 hour

    LOL: Losing Our Language

    By Jack Brennan

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    LOL is a tongue-in-cheek look at language trends in the wireless age through the jaundiced eye of a self-hating Luddite and grammar scold.

    LOL: Losing Our Language is an irreverent guide to what's funny about the American English vernacular in the new millennium. LOL sheds crocodile tears over the fate of our language as it bends to the will of such pervasively destructive influences as adolescent bloggers and semi-literate pop culture icons. If you believe the recent wholesale changes in the vernacular are a sign of the impending apocalypse, LOL is required reading.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPost Hill Press
    Release dateDec 6, 2016
    ISBN9781618689061
    LOL: Losing Our Language

    Related to LOL

    Related ebooks

    Humor & Satire For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Reclaiming My Book

      Aug 17, 2022

      Reclaiming My Book
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Art of Translation

      Feb 13, 2019

      AFTER a recent translation conference, a young colleague brought up an interesting question: “I keep hearing people say that they translate from the Spanish, they translate from the French. Why the?” Why indeed. This was asked of a carful of people,

      12 min read

    • Article

      Cormac McCarthy Returns to the Kekulé Problem

      Nov 30, 2017

      Robert Musil, in his Man Without Qualities, wrote that a Soul is “That which crawls away and hides whenever someone mentions algebra.” According to his friend, Elias Canetti, Musil “felt at home and seemed natural among scientists,” as distinct from

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Beauty Of LANGUAGE

      Feb 4, 2021

      What does a Jerusalem artichoke have to do with Jerusalem? Why do we fall head over heels when that’s the right way up? And doesn’t having your cake and eating it make total sense? If you’ve ever pondered any of these linguistic curiosities, the answ

      3 min read

    • Article

      Table Talk

      Jun 1, 2023

      Table Talk
      11 min read

    • Article

      On Semicolons And The Rules Of Writing

      Jul 10, 2018

      1. Kurt Vonnegut’s caution against the use of semicolons is one of the most famous and canonical pieces of writing advice, an admonition that has become, so to speak, one of The Rules. More on these rules later, but first the infamous quote in questi

      6 min read

    • Article

      Nothingism

      Mar 1, 2019

      Nothingism
      11 min read

    • Article

      Springtime for Introverts

      Mar 26, 2020

      Springtime for Introverts
      4 min read

    • Article

      That C word

      Feb 15, 2022

      That C word
      3 min read

    • Article

      Fuck The Research

      Jun 12, 2021

      Fuck The Research
      6 min read

    • Article

      Fuck THE Research

      Jun 12, 2021

      Fuck THE Research
      6 min read

    • Article

      Fuck THE Research

      Jun 12, 2021

      Fuck THE Research
      6 min read

    • Article

      Across, Down & Together

      Jul 9, 2020

      Across, Down & Together
      5 min read

    • Article

      Bosker Days

      Mar 22, 2021

      What happened to all the jokers? If your first thought is Batman, then my point is made. I was thinking of those jokers, of that joker over there. The word that is used to mean men in a way that is slightly jocular, gently contemptuous. It’s a long t

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for LOL

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      LOL - Jack Brennan

      lolFront.jpg

      A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

      Published at Smashwords

      ISBN: 978-1-61868-905-4

      ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-906-1

      LOL:

      Losing Our Language

      © 2016 by Jack Brennan

      All Rights Reserved

      Cover Design by Christian Bentulan

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

      Image13192.PNG

      Post Hill Press

      posthillpress.com

      Published in the United States of America

      A Note from the Author

      First, my credentials: I have spent decades attempting to memorize the entire English language. In my opinion, this alone over-qualifies me for the job. I am also one of those word nerds who actually sit around reading the dictionary, or what we word aficionados are temporarily calling a dictionary reader (like I said, it’s temporary). But rest assured, gentle reader, you’re in good hands because I’m definitely way into the whole dictionary thing. To get an idea of how I feel when leafing through the dictionary, picture Donald Trump recumbent on a faux zebra-hide daybed while perusing a catalog of precious-metal bathroom fixtures from the Dubai Hammacher-Schlemmer—that’s me with my Webster’s.

      Fortunately for my ilk, the English language is vast enough to accommodate the most insatiable appetite for words (and to fuel my obsession with elegant variation—the unsung queen of all literary devices). The downside to so much variety is that an endless (limitless?) list (array?) of word choices (options?) can also lead to (cause?) equivocation (vacillation?), and eventually (sooner or later?) inertia (paralysis?). Nevertheless, a surfeit is always better than a dearth…usually…I think.

      Although we have hundreds of thousands of words and phrases at our disposal, if you believe the fate of a few dozen is so inconsequential as to preclude forming the basis for an entire book, you’re dead wrong. Well, perhaps half dead wrong would be more accurate, but trust me, there’s a book here. My thesis is as simple as it is sibilant: The rich are supposed to get richer, yet the well-heeled English language, especially as spoken in these United States, is showing signs of precipitous dissipation (okay, maybe sibilance has the edge over simplicity here—my bad). As I see it, the main threat is collateral damage from our cultural stampede to embrace the wireless age. How else can you describe an entire species suddenly abandoning their advanced language skills because portable, opposable thumb-based communications technology is currently all the rage? Moreover, every single middle-aged person on the planet just spent the last twenty years getting up to speed on a normal keyboard. There are Mongolian herdsmen who can type 65+ words a minute, for crying out loud. I certainly don’t envy the poor schmuck who has to tell a descendant of Genghis Khan that he just wasted the best years of his life developing finger dexterity because now fingers are out and thumbs are in.

      Granted, even before the PC and the Internet arrived, American English was experiencing an Oscar Wilde level of dissipation, but now we’re in Mickey Rourke territory—or so the thesis goes. The loss of the words themselves is less of a problem than the growing indifference to what constitutes acceptable English. I would dearly love to offer you a comprehensive definition myself, but I hope that you will, in lieu of a responsive answer, settle for my word as a gentleman that I know acceptable English when I see it (see credentials, above). If this makes me a proponent of linguistic prescriptivism (you’ll find the Wiki definition manageably succinct), well, so be it.

      As much as I’d like to blame everything on those perfectly coiffed, stylishly dressed, intelligent, sophisticated and driven punks who came of age with the Internet as their nursemaid, I kind of blew that opportunity when I admitted we were already over-relaxing our usage standards before they showed up. In any case, it was only a short leap from there to the complete abandonment of standards that is the natural consequence of constant and instantaneous communication. This worries me. Yes, I know these same smug text addicts are not communicating exclusively via their smartphones, but let’s not spoil my lovely thesis by dragging inconvenient truths into the picture. And yes, scintillating conversation still occurs when people are face to face, but I wonder, somewhat melodramatically, for how long? Is the witty rejoinder an endangered species? Was my decision to major in English an even bigger waste of time than the Mongolian herdsmen’s folly? With my head spinning from these nightmare scenarios and reflecting on the fact that all those strangers who don’t appreciate my unsolicited grammar lessons now have the perfect excuse to ignore me by staring intently at their portable screens, I decided I had an amorphous duty to create a compendium of interesting and useful words and phrases that appear to be on their way out for no good reason (relax—I’d never describe something as interesting unless I was 100% sure). Then I thought, well that’s

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1