Thursday, November 18, 2004

Heteroglossic Nightmares and Slippery Grammar

Someone told me that apparently I write "color" but I disagree. I currently have a staff of 168 people scanning all my writing to make sure that I spelled colour in the English and Canadian spelling version of the word and that's a lie. No, I'm pretty sure though that I've always been taught and have written it in this way. However, being in the middle of an increasingly globalized world, slangs and dialects and different ways of speaking can infiltrate into your psyche and you can adopt logics and systems of thinking without even knowing it. We've all seen people go off to another country and come back without there accent: they robbed you eh? Well, you got something off the residents too. If I did write "color" in one case, it would probably be for this reason.

I think I write "colour" but for "realize" vs. "realise" I use whatever key is closer at the time on my keyboard. Actually, I usually use "realize" more often because that's what's in my Canadian dictionary and I like the "iiiiizzzzzz" sound. Like the Outkast song "Roses" when he's like: "then realizzzzzzze that reeeeeeal guyzzzzzz like real down to Mars girlzzzzzz yea weeeell" I say eyez too for this reason, although I write it as "eyes". Man, this is a crazy language. It would be wrong for me to write my name with three "r"'s but I put up with two. Perhaps it's right for some. Maybe for you. I dare you to secretely write it on a napkin somewhere.

There are a lot of cases where the way people talk actually makes a lot more logical sense to me than my language does even though I refuse to speak a proper, consistent, and sound language. I cannot physically do it anyways. On the other hand, language that's taken for granted actually means a lot less then we give it credit. I cannot always be literal. As soon as I walk in and stub my toe on the leg of the table, I'm not sure if I've had an accident with furniture or collided into a body part. People think before they speak. I just do it like Nike. For example: I say "hey, look, see how the man walks down the road?" Someone migt respond: "yeah, that man walk". For a second, there might seem to be an agreement in his affirmation "yeah" but is this gentleman/fine lady disagreeing with me by affirming something else, that the man "walk"???? Are they starting a verbal battle? Why did I say the man "walks"? They could ask. Am I not pluralizing the man? Should the subject not be "men" if I wanna talk plurals instead if they walks? "They walks down the street" seems rational because there are more than one person, so walks with has an 's' right? No the English that I speak and write has strange spellings too.

Why isn't the word "lime" spelled lyme, it rhymes with rhyme? I think my clock talks. It waches me up and then I wock to school. I struggle my braynes trying to figer owt the propper reesun 4 all this. It's just rules. It's interesting to see how the rules change though as people break them. A significant influence to spelling is msn and the manual labor involved in writing sentences to make them shorter. Did you notice that I didn't write "labour"? So, there's wtf, btw, jk, etc (what the f+ck, by the way, just kidding etc.) and there are many others. It's interesting. I encourage everyone to ponder. hmmmmmmmmmm.

2 Comments:

Blogger Lioness said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

1:53 a.m.  
Blogger Lioness said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

1:57 a.m.  

Post a Comment

<< Home

Who Links Here