Having Words
/Words are the most essential ingredient to my "business." Times change, language evolves, but is there a trend toward superficial communication? I've heard more than one parent talk about their teens sitting with a group of their friends TEXTING instead of TALKING to each other. Teachers have noticed that students become anxious during a conversation. Is "<3" really the same as "love?" Yo.
COLUMN 21
By GLYNIS VALENTI Times Leader Staff Writer
A good deal of my life relates to words. Though I’m generally a visual person, words help me paint images and stories through description, connotation and metaphor.
I enjoy the histories and sounds of words and often look origins up when I’m writing, thanks to my seventh grade teacher Mrs. Hart, who introduced me to etymology. It’s intriguing how many of our words have grown from ancient Roman or Greek roots and how their meanings have evolved over centuries. One of my favorite words is “inspiration,” whose origin is the Latin “inspirare” meaning “to breathe in.” Isn’t that beautiful? To breathe in that which leads to art, music, dance, inventions. I have visions of “living and breathing” one’s work.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there seems to have been—and I’m not particularly fond of this phrase--a “dumbing down” in and of America. Maybe it’s all over the world at this point, but somehow we’ve gone from this Valentine declaration by Margery Brews in 1477, “My heart bids me ever more to love you truly over all earthly thing,” to texting “I <3 u.”
I’ve noticed the change while trying to find definitions and alternate words in dictionaries. It probably began in an effort to give students a portable reference guide, but most dictionaries-- paperbacks and online—now read like, basically, “Cliff Notes” versions. My friend Rich posted an article on Facebook about this shift and the author’s surprise at the difference between his dictionary and “Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary” from 1828 and 1913. I tested this for myself.
Under “inspiration” in the above-mentioned 1913 dictionary, one of the definitions reads, “the act or power of exercising an elevating or stimulating influence upon the intellect or emotions.” In “Webster’s New World Dictionary” the corresponding definition reads, “any stimulus to creative thought or action.” They aren’t quite the same. One is descriptive; the other feels like the corners have been cut.
Granted, the paperback dictionary was designed as a quick fix, but I’m wondering if there has been too much “quick” so that it has become the norm. After all, one can get immediate information as it unfolds right there at the source, and with the right buzzwords it’s trending in minutes. Too often, though, people form conclusions based on the face value of “Cliff Notes” and buzzwords rather than the unabridged versions of, seemingly, every situation.
Since so much of my life is about words, I am sensitive about choices and take great care in choosing them to convey exactly the meaning I want to present. Obviously thoughts are energy, and energy and intent are sent out through words. For instance, when someone says, “I love you” it probably means “to take delight or pleasure in; to have a strong liking or desire for, or interest in; to be pleased with.” One feels that warm and fuzzy elation of good intent.
Words have that kind of power. Selecting them wisely is especially important when the speaker knows little about the person and circumstances to which his words are directed. Consider the word “ugly,” meaning “deformed, offensive to the sight, hateful, repulsive.” No good can come of deflating someone’s spirit. In fact, “Think Before You Speak” is a local school program that addresses this issue as bullying because words and their energies can be devastating.
As I grapple with Umberto Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum,” a daunting but humorous 670-page mystery also recommended by friend Rich, I’ve learned about a new app for smart phones which seems to be the ultimate (“incapable of further division or separation”) in “Cliff Notes” communication: “Yo.”
If you wept over the decimation of the English language during the rises of Valley Girls and Ebonics and cringe at texts like “CUL8R” and “jk,” well, brace yourself. “Yo” is apparently the be-all, end-all of phrases now, which, probably unbeknownst to the app’s developers, dates back to Middle English.
According to the app’s description, verbatim (grammatical errors included,) “Wanna say ‘good morning?’ just Yo. Wanna say ‘Baby, I’m thinking about you?’—Yo. ‘I’ve finished my meeting, come by my office’—Yo.” What began innocently as efficiency has mushroomed into brazen and unapologetic laziness.
I hope there’s a mind-reading app available, too, because a single “Yo” appearing out of nowhere on my phone is not enough information. Am I supposed to meet someone at Panera? Do I need to reschedule a photo shoot? Do I have an admirer? A stalker? How does one determine whether it’s an “I love you” yo, or a break-up yo? As the app’s description points out, “The possibilities are endless.”
So not only have we decreased face-to-face encounters through email and texting and sanitized the definitions of our language, but we have depersonalized conversation by attempting to distill all emotion, intent, and meaningful interaction into one silly word—which, admittedly, would eliminate the need for dictionaries altogether.
A boggling one million people have downloaded the app in its first two weeks but will most likely have to talk to their recipients anyway to decipher those cryptic messages. Though the app is probably a joke, are we really moving away from beautiful language and our essential connections to it and to each other? Do I hear a yo?
