Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Generation Gap

I was watching a soap the other day. I used to watch DOOL all the time. I got started watching it because my teenage kids would watch it after school, and then it got changed to 1 PM and they couldn't watch anymore. My job was to record it for them. Well, the VCR recorded it, but with the technology we had at the time, I would wind up watching it. This was the year of my first "retirement."

At any rate, on the current show, one of the new, young characters (one I did not recognize) was saying to Victor Kiriakis (still played by John Aniston) "why did you text me?" to which Victor replied, " I didn't, and when did text become a verb?"

It was a beautiful line. What is happening to our language? Does any one remember the theme song for the "Flintstones?" Remember the line, "Will have a gay old time?" And as far as I am concerned, "tweeting" is for the birds.

Well, it isn't just the current generation. When I was in elementary school, I was doing a little report on airplanes, and I looked up "jet" in my mom's old dictionary. It said, "a narrow stream of water."

I think that instead of taking our old words and giving them new meanings, these youngsters should think up their own words. It worked for radar and laser.

No comments:

Post a Comment