If we haven't regretted already the mistake in delegating to American teenagers the sole reponsibility for all neologisms in the English language, we should start now.
Example: "The funnest iPod ever."
"Funnest?"
A combination of the worst of the advertising industry's attempts to be 'hip' together with its congenital laziness.
Phrases like that make me want to bite things, starting with the keyboard, then the desk, the walls, house bricks, and advertising agencies. By which I mean their buildings. Their 'HQs'. 'Command centrals.' Boardrooms.
I want to bite them, but then I fear I'll start slobbering over them because by that stage I'll be displaying all the symptoms of rabies.
Bite. Bite, do you hear me? Bite bite bite.
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6 comments:
Yes.
bite things.
Also, hip-hop yo-bro 'Hood talk is truly frightening.
I still haven't calmed down...
I'm with Annie O. Hip-hop is not language as we know it.
Also on the biting list, 'like' as in 'You know, like, she's a real blonde, like'.
nnest into Guugle:
"I'm a big fan of the Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing daily podcasts -- she does a terrific job, day in and day out, of breaking down major grammar gaffes in a very interesting and clear way. After the big "Let's Rock" event on Tuesday, Grammar Girl had to jump to the rescue on Apple's commercial use of the word "funnest" to describe the iPod touch -- as many language elitists noted, "funnest" isn't quite a real word.
Believe it or not, Grammar Girl is suprisingly forgiving -- she says that fun, while originally a noun ("we had fun"), has made a transition in the last century or so to an "attributive noun" which can be used as an adjective ("we had a fun party"). And while old-timers may flinch at the words "funner" and "funnest", the correct way to modify one-syllable adjectives is in fact by adding "-er" and "-est" to the ends. So technically, "funnest" is grammatically correct, even if it isn't exactly accepted; Grammar Girl calls it "grating and horrifying."
She finishes today's podcast, however, with a scary note for language traditionalists -- it could very well be that Apple's usage of the word is just what "funnest" needs to go over the edge into regular acceptance.
No it doesn't. Grammar girl needs to be bitten until she gets what language traditionalists are on about. And don't strat me on 'like', which I foudn dropped into a newspaper column today for no other reaon than to make the (self-admittedly) middle-aged 'journo' appear hip.
Going forward, at the end of the day, I would have to say that this is, like, the funnest thread I have ever posted in.
:)
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