In praise of one-syllable intransitive verbs that offer superb economy

Here's an entertaining article from Slate that, well... doesn't suck.

Although I have been known to rail against the dumbing-down of our language, the author presents a convincing argument. I found this section particularly persuasive:

"When someone says Bill Gates is a geek, do you picture him as a circus performer biting the head off a live chicken? Of course not. The word's root meaning has been replaced with a new connotation. Similarly, when I call Paris Hilton a moron, I don't mean she's mentally retarded, and when I call bungee jumping lame I don't mean it's disabled. What once was offensive is now simply abrasive. Language moves on, and the sucks-haters are living in the past."

I might offer a dissenting viewpoint about Paris Hilton, but maybe that's just quibbling. And, as a matter of fact, I have often developed a mental picture of Bill Gates biting the head off...oh, wait, no...that was Ozzy Osbourne. Goshdarnit, I'm forever getting those two mixed up. (Hmm, has anyone ever seen them together in the same room?)

I'm not a language purist, but neither do I take a laissez faire attitude. I remember being chastized by my first-year university English professor for using the word relate as an intransitive verb, in the sense of to react in response, especially favorably: "I just can't relate to these new fashions" (dictionary.com). Perhaps she was right, in that uptight proper Queen's English kind of way. She was also probably the kind of person who would correct you for ending a sentence with a preposition. (Go here for a denunciation of that school of thought.) But the vast majority of people who use the language understand and accept relate being used in that sense.

Words and their connotations are organic; they evolve over time, as the above article ably demonstrates. I also feel that language is fairly flexible. I've probably committed a few syntactical and grammatical errors in writing this blog entry, but likely nothing (I hope) that is truly unacceptable, unless I was writing for an audience of grammarians and linguists. Or should that be "unless I were writing..."? Whatever.

Where I draw the line is between proper English and correct English. For instance, it drives me up the wall when I hear people failing to make their plural subjects agree with their verbs. There's many instances of this. See? I hear it all the time, even from people who should know better, such as television reporters. It seems to be a growing trend, and it's very annoying. It just seems to stem from laziness. Is this language butchering on its way to becoming naturalized, so that it becomes an acceptable way to speak? God, I hope not. I blame the Internets.

There's aspects of grammar and syntax that shouldn't be messed with!
Or is that with which one shouldn't mess?

And don't get me started on the ubiquity of absolutely. Whatever happened to responses such as of course, definitely and even good ol' yes?

Let's try an experiment. Let's all start using the word indeed where everyone else uses absolutely, and see if we can get it to catch on. If enough people use it in important settings, and if we use it in the company of people who get on the media enough--politicians, actors, police spokespeople, TV journalists--maybe...just maybe...we can replace absolutely with indeed. We can Spock-ify the language! It will be a cultural coup, indeed!

In the meantime, here's a really handy online resource for common errors in English.

Word up.