Hear me out #10 (Sentence recap: stop kneecapping!)

To celebrate International Women’s Day, I decided to write this month’s language-related blog post about one of the many, many issues I’ve noticed when it comes to language and gender (shout out to all my other sociolinguists!). This issue is only one instance of gendered vernacular that contributes towards taking a measure of free will out of speech for a particular demographic– which sucks BIG TIME!

“Legs in Lace”, Jenni Granholm

Ever read over an email, text or, heck, an Instagram post for a “fluff check” before sending it on its merry way into the dangerous digital world?

This involves scanning your writing for any superfluous language that you’ve added out of habit to make your sentences sound more “peachy-keen” (read: more appropriate for insecure men, i.e., less demanding or assertive).

Such habits aren’t so easy to kick.

And studies show that this habit most often plagues women.

DUN, DUN, DUNNNNN… and that’s what we call a gender issue, people!

Topics include, but are not limited to: peachy-keenness, boss ladies, owning your emails, and the j-word.

Hear me out #9 (“Got the morbs” and other Victorian slang)

The January blues: we all have ’em.

Maybe it’s a form of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and we’re all craving a bit more sunlight in the hope that it’ll warm the cockles of our hearts and give us some much-craved motivation… Maybe it’s the realisation that the magic of Christmas is over for another year (or at least, the more realistic, nine months!)… Maybe it’s the wall we hit after the drama of New Year and the clean slate and all of the expectations that come along with the midnight fireworks and purchasing of a new 12-month calendar… Maybe it’s all of these things combined… *shakes head in dismay*

The January blues are categorised as “not full-blown depression” but a “melancholy which looms over the entire month of January”.

When you think about it, it’s really no wonder: most people have to wait longer for their pay cheques to come in; it’s darker, colder, rainier and, tbh, there’s not a huge amount to look forward to. AND, to make matters worse, it’s really no surprise that the most depressing day of the year, known as Blue Monday*, falls in January (this year it was the 15th!).

*Nope, not the New Order song. Absolute tune.

This leads many of us to feel down, desolate even– the New Year’s resolutions we made may keep us going for a short time, but more often than not they are lost in the fog of January.

HOWEVER, believe it or not, the concept of Blue Monday (or even just Blue January) is not a new one; historians believe the concept has been around since Victorian times (that’s referring to the Victorian era, so when Queen Vic was on the throne, so 1837-1901).

Traditionally, in literature of the 1830s, Blue Monday referred to “the hungover state of the labour workforce after a weekend spent drinking”, and the association of the colour blue with a depressed state of mind (and, more generally, the working class!). In the 1860s, the term began to be applied, more specifically, to all mondays in the month of January, in which most labourers found themselves at risk of being out of work due to the tightening of pockets of their bosses following the expensive festive period.

If you found yourself in this situation, out of work in January, it wouldn’t be uncommon to say you’ve “got the morbs”.

Topics include, but are not limited to: slang, being jammy, temporary melancholy, and parrots.

Hear me out #8 (Passive voice HACK)

The word passive gets a pretty bad rap. We throw it around to vent about friends who can’t stand up for themselves, and we combine it with aggressive to describe those social wimps who express anger indirectly rather than just being upfront. When it comes to writing, many of us are haunted by this word; maybe a teacher forbade “passive constructions”, or maybe you always struggled with them at school– passive constructions can be tricky.

What is the passive voice?

After reading many examples of the passive voice (and occasionally falling victim to it!), I’ve decided that we’re all afraid… afraid that we’re doing it wrong… afraid that Susie Dent is going to give us a good talking to (read: beat us with her grammar books).

Often labelled (by teachers) as a bad writing habit, the passive voice is akin to the active voice’s less popular sibling. Not as cool and a bit annoying.

Think back to primary school which is, for many of you, over a decade ago (yikes!)– Do you remember learning about subjects and objects and actions and whatnot? You see, in the active voice, the subject is doing the action (the verb) while, in the passive, it is being acted upon by some other performer of the verb. Simple, right?

WRONG!

Loads of people struggle to come to terms with this grammatical construction and, believe it or not, many continue to be unsure well into adulthood…

Topics include, but are not limited to: voice, being a “wet paper towel”, teachers, and zombies.

Hear me out #7 (Swearing isn’t offensive; it’s plosive)

I love swearing. I bloody love it.

Cursing, cussing, mother-ducking— it’s all the same! Like epicene pronouns and the past tense of squeeze (are you team squeezed or squoze?!), swearing has forever been subject to debate by both the linguistic community and the general public: is it rude and offensive, or is it a creative freedom that every language user is at liberty to use as they best see fit?

You call them swear words; I call them “sentence enhancers“.

In my opinion, swear words can make or break a sentence. Yes, you read that right: f-bombs are the glue that holds even the finest of sentences together!

Need to take an especially scathing comment from a mild burn to one that requires a figurative lathering of aloe vera? Throw in a curse. Need to really hammer a point home amongst peers? Toss in an appropriately inflected tosser. Need to land the perfect joke? Drop in a mother-ducking expletive (or two!).

DISCLAIMER: To celebrate National Cursing Day (15th October), this blog post is dedicated to effing and jeffing. Some swear words will be written explicitly and many will be heavily implied (and included in images and gifs). READ AT YOUR OWN RISK, FOLKS!

Topics include, but are not limited to: arbitrariness of the sign, arse biscuits, educatedness, and moist plinths.

Hear me out #6 (“Whatchamacallits”: 26 of the most weird and wonderful words in the English language)

Learning English can be tricky, regardless of whether you’re a native speaker or learning it as a second (or third or fourth!) language. Pronunciation is a bitch and spelling is so bloody opaque that you’re better off forgetting the rules and just guessing half the time.

Once you’ve nailed spelling and pronunciation, you’ve got semantics (meaning) and pragmatics (context) to learn and those ones can be straight-up confusing.

This meaning-issue was brought to my attention by my Polish friend who questioned the English language’s lexicon: Why does English have a word for “to throw someone out of a window” but not for “the day after tomorrow”?

The former word being defenestrate (this week’s Word of the Week!) and the latter one being… I don’t actually know…

Topics include, but are not limited to: slangwhangers, crotch-watching, buttocks, and lexicography.

Hear me out #5 (The “chaos” of English pronunciation)

English pronunciation is a cruel, cruel mistress and something that even native speakers struggle with their whole lives. This blog post attempts to identify several pronunciation debates that have split the nation, broken up couples, heck, even monopolised Instagram story polls *gasps*.

Topics include, but are not limited to: GIFs, Barack Obama, scones, and poetry.

Hear me out #4 (How to evade “Death by Synonym”: A Guide)

Synonyms are weird and strange and bizarre and, come to think of it, rather queer.

For instance, if someone invites you to their “cottage in the forest” it sounds all nice and cozy, but if they invite you to their “cabin in the woods” then you’re pretty much going to die.

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Topics include, but are not limited to: holiday homes, ass phoning, Fathers, and “Death by Cinnamon Synonym“.

Hear me out #3 (“Humans” vs. “Humen”: English plural rules)

English: a synopsis

Ah, the English language: every grammarian and etymologist’s worst nightmare.

We’re not always your worst nightmare… not all of the time…

Not only is English one of the most widely spoken languages on the planet* (almost 1.3 billion people speak English!!!), but it’s one of the hardest to learn. This acquisitional difficulty is purely based on the fact that our orthography (fancy word for spelling) and pronunciation are opaque (read: so bloody tricky!).

Topics include, but are not limited to: Trainspotting, Vikings, elves, and niblings.

Hear me out #2 (“Clearly misunderstood”: oxymorons can be confusing)

What is an oxymoron?

An oxymoron* is a figure of speech, often used in rhetoric, in which two words of apparently contradictory meaning appear in conjunction (i.e., opposites, side by side). Oxymorons are similar juxtaposition, in which readers are encouraged to compare and contrast two opposing things– famous examples include several proverbs (e.g., “All’s fair in love and war”, or “Beggars can’t be choosers”) and the iconic opening sentence from Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

If you take a look at the etymology of the word, you’ll see where its meaning has come from: mid-17th century, from Greek oxumōron (of oxumōros “pointedly foolish”, from oxus “sharp” + mōros “foolish”). SO, you see, the word itself is an oxymoron; we linguists would say that it’s an autological word (a word that expresses a property that it also possesses).

*Pronounced “oxy-MORON” (or /ˌɒksɪˈmɔːrɒn/) for those of you who, like me, were wrongly led by their English teacher to believe that “oxs-SIMORON” (or /ˌɒksˈsɪmɔːrɒn/) was the correct pronunciation for years until someone corrected you. Sorry but, is it just me or does “oxy-MORON” just sound plain daft?! Some might even say… moronic…

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Topics include, but are not limited to: (oxy)morons, “faking it”, losers, and Dolly Parton.

Hear me out #1 (What’s the collective noun for “collective nouns”?)

What is a collective noun?

Collective nouns are, quite frankly, a very fascinating quirk of the English language, dating back hundreds of years. In linguistics, a collective noun is a collection of things taken as a whole; think “a class of students”, “a pride of lions”, or “a batch of cookies”. Most people are familiar with words such as group and bunch, which are frequently used in everyday speech and can be used to refer to people (“a group of people”), animals (“a group of dogs”), or things (“a bunch of things”)– even bananas (“a bunch of bananas”).

Beatles Banana, Stephan Brusche

Topics include, but are not limited to: harlots, soufflés, terms of venery, and pugs.