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Prioritizing
Linguistic Robustness
by Mad Dog
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Politicians talk
about regime change when they really mean overthrow a government and
refer to friendly fire as if there can ever be something warm and
welcoming about a chunk of lead embedding itself into your body |
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They say English is one of
the most difficult languages to learn. Of course “They” are usually
Americans who are trying to learn another language and need an ego boost
because they can’t tell their hola from an olé or say merci
when they should be asking for mercy because they’re mutilating
someone’s native tongue. Sure English is tricky, what with words that
are spelled alike but pronounced differently, such as though, through,
and tough, and words which are spelled identically but have different
meanings, which doesn’t begin to explain why the present is such a
good time to present a present. But what really makes the language
difficult is that people don’t say what they mean.
When I was growing up I made a sign
and hung it on the wall above my desk. It said: Eschew obfuscation. Of
course I didn’t come up with this on my own—hey, I was in fifth
grade and had to look it up exactly like you just did—but I
appreciated its irony. And yes, I did know what irony was back then,
even though sarcasm was my stock in trade, which helps explain why I
spent so much of my youth in my room alone without dinner, having
nothing to do but look at that sign over my desk. If I had it to do over
again, trust me, I’d put a Playboy centerfold on the wall instead.
Apparently people don’t like to
eschew obfuscation. Or maybe it’s that they prefer to eschew having
anyone know what they’re really thinking. Politicians talk about
regime change when they really mean overthrow a government, refer to
friendly fire as if there can ever be something warm and welcoming about
a chunk of lead embedding itself into your body, and enjoy using words
like “untidy” to describe looting and anarchy in Iraq. Business
people are just as bad. They synergize when they could combine, downsize
rather than fire people, and like being on the same page, even when
there isn’t a piece of paper in sight.
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It may mean he
intends to have the city give out nice prizes if you buy a home. Other
than your property tax bill, that is. Who knows, maybe you’ll even be
able to get a consolation prize if your bid isn’t accepted. |
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Combine business and politics and you have a real problem. Gavin
Newsom, a run-off candidate for mayor of San Francisco who has
experience in both business and politics—a plus in some people’s
book, a double whammy in other’s—was quoted during the campaign as
having promised to speed up the “visualization process” for housing
construction at the same time he will “incentivize homeownership.”
I’m not sure if both of these can happen simultaneously or not, since
I honestly don’t know what either one means.
I suspect the first will entail
hiring coaches to teach citizens how to sit in the lotus position and
conjure up mental images of front-loaders, carpenters, and trucks full
of drywall, to be followed by the distribution of bumper stickers that
read: “Visualize World Housing Construction.” The second may mean he
intends to have the city give out nice prizes if you buy a home. Other
than your property tax bill, that is. Who knows, maybe you’ll even be
able to get a consolation prize if your bid isn’t accepted. Hopefully
they’ll hire Carol Merrill to show us what we might win. That would
make it fun, and it’s about time someone injected fun into home
buying.
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In other words, English isn’t the hardest language to
learn, though it may be the hardest to use without forcing the listener
to envisioneer and leverage a newly repurposed and value-added paradigm
shift. |
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The question is, how can we clear up this grammatical
obfuscation? Don’t look to the schools to help—children don’t
study English anymore, they take classes in Language Arts. Whatever that
means. Fortunately they do know how to use computers, so maybe the
Bullfighter software put out by Deloitte Consulting
(www.dc.com/bullfighter) will help. This is a free program much like a
spellchecker which reads your document and flags 350 “bull words,”
including leverage, utilize, re-engineer, and seeing red. Just kidding
about the last one. Even though it’s actually about bulls, it’s okay
to say it. I think Bullfighter is a great idea and hope that it’s a
robust program so you’ll be able to prioritize your disintermediation.
And trust me, there’s nothing worse than unprioritized
disintermediation. Except, of course, being hit by friendly fire.
We might also try using more of our
brain when we speak. You know, like the Chinese do. Sophie Scott, a
psychologist at England’s Wellcome Trust (motto: “We spell gud.”),
discovered that when people speak English they use the left side of
their brain’s temporal lobe, while native-speaking Chinese use both
sides. In case you were resting your entire brain during that particular
environmental science class—I mean, biology class—the left side of
the temporal lobe controls piecing sounds into words while the right
controls President Bush. Just kidding. Actually it’s the far right
that controls him. But that’s irrelevant since everyone knows politics
has nothing to do with using the brain.
Scott says this means Chinese is more
difficult to understand and speak than English. In other words, English
isn’t the hardest language to learn, though it may be the hardest to
use without forcing the listener to envisioneer and leverage a newly
repurposed and value-added paradigm shift. Excuse me while I chew on
that obfuscation.
©2003 Mad Dog
Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country.
Read them using both sides of your temporal lobe.
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