(no subject)

[which_chick]

I love English. (The language, I mean.) It's such a delight to work with, the sprawling whore who takes all comers. (If I wrote copy for porn film covers, I'd have to be physically restrained from writing "takes all cummers" there. Good thing I'm more of a class act than that.)



English is perfectly willing to allow words like bifauxnen if enough people decide that there needs to be a word for the girls who dress (and act) like pretty boys (bishounen) in anime. It's a good word, bifauxnen, sounds like the real thing yet gives the definite sense of fake because it's ripping off faux (for "fake") from the French. English is ALLOWED to invent new words and rip off other languages. English doesn't have some sorry-ass Académie Française-like bunch of wankers telling everyone what is approved and what is not approved in English. English is open-source that way -- anybody can add to the code. If your addition is useful enough to enough people, it spreads so that you can say bling-bling and lots of people will understand you instead of giving you blank looks.

Interestingly, even if your addition to the language is something only a narrow group of people are interested in, you can still use it and it's even more useful because as well as making it easier to talk about your pervy fanfic or your scale model trains or your computer casemods or your method for sticking easyboots (name notwithstanding, they are not in any way, shape, or form easy) to the hooves of your equine or the relative merits of aluminum, plastic, nickle, and bamboo knitting needles with other, likeminded souls, your specialized vocabulary helps you exclude nonbelievers from the conversation until they've learned enough of the language and invested enough time to be not-entirely-clueless on the matter at hand. I know I hate it when nonbelievers start clawing out their eyes going For the love of God, Montresor, don't you have anything BETTER to do? when they've parsed enough lingo to understand that the matter under discussion is whether or not one should wet beet pulp before feeding it to horses. *sigh* (It's so annoying when people do that. My name's not fucking Montresor and my damned catacombs are getting full.)

Comments

[brni.livejournal.com]

and english loves you (really, it told me over a latte just the other day). :)

i find it amusing that other languages tend to actually use english whenever they want to invent new words or express new concepts (the word for refridgerator in serbian is "frigidair" (tho i'm not sure of the spelling)), even if they aren't american concepts (see "pokemon").

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

We also spend twelve years teaching our children enough English, American, and world literature that we can understand the common allusions and metaphors which make our communication both rich and functional. And I'll have my amontillado in a brandy snifter; I have something of a headache ever since Uncle Vanya left.