ON BEING RUDE AND IMPATIENT

I met an old friend yesterday. He was a kid in radio when I was already a self-described “legend.” Today he is a very successful lawyer and I am someone who once was. He was, and still is, a very funny man. He “did” me – angry, impatient, and abrupt.

When I am asked, which is not often any more, what makes a good Talk Radio host – my answer is “You have to be able to get angry quickly, or in extremis: very angry very quickly. My wife says I am utterly lacking in both patience and tolerance. So be it.

I have just risen angrily from in front of my TV set where I was watching one of my favourites: The Food Network. Was I angry about the food? Certainly not. It was, in fact, very very good. But the cook? That’s another story entirely. It is the story of how they have massacred, and we have let them do it, the English language. Americans, having adopted it as their mother tongue, have proceeded to decimate it, bowdlerize it, misshape it, and mutilate it until it is almost unrecognizable!

The female chef did it all: she said “erb for herb. It is this practice that make Huron and urine homonyms. She referred to “the oil” in the way that civilized people long ago decided that it was not “thuh oil” but “thee oil.” She added baysel – which we call baa-sil, to her salad. The long “a” is especially prevalent in their version of our language.

But how about the "soft" a? They say “plahza” and Viet Naaahm” when it is more correctly Viet Nam – which is how the Vietnamese say it. The paradox is that they abandon the soft "a" when they mispronounce “Adolf” as “Ay-dolf. Then of course there, and it was commented on by an American who equally deplores the destruction – the name of the country In the news as “eye-ran” which is right up there with the English pronunciation of Eye-talian.

One of my favourites is still “hollow-een. As in “Hollowed be thy name…”

One of my saddest realizations is that Canadian commentators on TV seem to have been educated by watching U.S. TV so they Americanize the language also. They say "pruh-meer" for "premiere. Which adds to the fact that is not only Americans who have corrupted “chez longue” into “chez lounge” And “hor’s d’oeuvres into “hor durve” rhyming with curve.

The critics of my hair splitting will tell me that English is always evolving. But the principle of evolution is that we adapt the species to deal with changing conditions. We improve our ability to survive. If that stuff with the language is “improving” I am turning into primordial jelly.