Single Syllable Syndrome

 I hate "smart" phones? Why? How shall I count the ways? "Smart" phones are actually making people stupid. They are destroying our ability to actually engage others in conversation. The day is going to come when the "smart" phones will all fail, and we will be left with a world of stupid people.

Our conversations have become a string of single syllable words. I will be honest. I love words and I really love big words. I am one of those guys who reads the Word of the Day and tries to lob it into a conversation somewhere. For most of my career, I used to keep a two-volume dictionary on the office desk. I love words!

One day years ago at Tex & Shirley's, several of us were having a conversation and I tossed some word in just to get everyone's attention. One woman asked me what the word meant. I gave her the definition. She responded, "Are you sure that is the correct definition?" Before I could answer, a young man said, "The son of a bitch keeps a dictionary on the desk! Are you serious? Of course, he knows what it means." Twenty years later, that still brings a smile to my face.

When I was in the fifth grade at Alexander Elementary in Tampa, the word to know how to define and spell was "antidisestablishmentarianism". If you wanted to be considered a serious speller and a real geek, that was the word. If you were challenged to spell it, you had to spit it right out. There was no taking a couple of minutes to sound it out and choose the letters. You had about thirty seconds to spell it before the other nerds would start ridiculing you. There were days that I would practice spelling that aloud as I walked back and forth to school. Remember that on the days you might think that your school days were bad.

One day a kid who worked for me was talking about school and I asked about whether they still taught spelling. He told me that they did and that he was a "pretty good speller". Before you jump the gun on my story here, I did not ask him to spell "antidisestablishmentarianism". I'm not that heartless. However, I did tell him "Hell, I don't even think that you can spell 'spell'." He looked insulted and replied, "Of course I can spell 'spell'. It's S-P-E-L" The others around started laughing and he just looked at me. I said, "Go look it up in my dictionary." He came back a few minutes later and said, " I am going to kick my English teacher's ass." I talked him out of that and gave him a dictionary a few days later as a gift. I wonder if he ever used it.

Twenty years ago, that was shocking to me, but not today. Kids don't need to learn to spell, the computer will spell the word for them. People who "text" habitually are learning and devising a whole different language. When I was a kid, we talked about the difference between our form of English and Elizabethan English. With my flip phone, I don't text very often. I see text messages on other people's "smart" phones, and I am left wondering what language it is. Ask a high schooler today to read something in Elizabethan English and wait for their heads to explode!

I don't advocate bringing back Elizabethan English, but we do need to bring back multi-syllable words and complete sentences. We might even be able to bring back paragraphs at some point in high school. While we are at it, I think that kids might be able to grow their vocabularies if we omit "emojis" from messages. I just don't give a rat's ass about how many smiley faces I get. Give me some words!!

Later this week will be my rant on acronyms. I was just going to form an acronym for "Acronyms Single Syllables", but that was just for cheap laughs!

Say it with me, antidisestablishmentarianism!!