Catholic and Enjoying It!
First on deck: Bernard Aparicio of Dappled Things writes:
The lastest Dappled Things is now online. Among many other things, it includes a fun essay that seems to me very much in the spirit of Catholic and Enjoying It! It’s called “‘I’ve, like, got to get there, like, now’: A Rant on Language, Unintelligibility, and Irreverence. Here’s a taste, if you will excuse the longish quote:
• Once upon a time, the word “like” had a soul. Modern tongues have since beaten the word like the proverbial dead horse, badgering it to the meaningless status of non-verbal filler. “Um” and “like” can be used almost interchangeably.
This is an offense into which we all fall, and far too often. People no longer speak or say, they “say, like,” or simply “was, like.” The frequency with which the word appears in everyday conversation reminds me of a hazing ritual my father endured in the Naval Academy. When so directed by an upperclassman, young plebes were forced to recite sundry lyrical compositions, sometimes interjecting the word “sir” after every word. As thus (in response to the question “why didn’t you say ‘sir’?”):Sir, sir is a subservient word surviving from the surly days of old Serbia, when certain serfs, too ignorant to remember their lord’s names, yet too servile to blaspheme them, circumvented the situation by surrogating the subservient word sir, by which I now belatedly address a certain senior cirroped who correctly surmised that I was syrupy enough to say sir after every word I said, sir.
Some particularly unfortunate plebes would endure an even more intense ritual of recitation by interjecting “sir” after every word (Sir, sir sir is sir a sir subservient sir . . . etc.). My father can rattle off this complicated little formula with astonishing rapidity to the great delight of his offspring who consider it a sign of great paternal experience and wisdom.
Hope you like it!
Have a blessed Advent!
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