Right, then

[gothwalk]

There is no central authority for the English language. Therefore, I'm claiming it. I am now IT as far as English is concerned. You have queries on English, come to me, and I'll ignore most of them. This is mostly because I'm taking on this authority with two things in mind, and one footnote.

First and foremost, the word 'fail', and all its variants, are now, hereby and forever, excised from English. They no longer exist.

Second, the pseudo-word 'meh' is likewise sentenced to destruction. It is returned to being a nonsense syllable, carrying no meaning. It did not have far to go.

Footnote: 'Bleah' is on a last warning.

Carry on, then.

Comments

[wolfette]

how about "bah!"?

[sciamachy.livejournal.com]

I like "Bah!" though I often follow it with "Mooh!" and "Oinkh!"

& I'm sorry Drew, but I fall on the side of descriptive linguistics - language is ultimately a democratic thing, a fluid, living thing that defies prescriptive linguistics. Prescriptive linguistics is rarely listened to by the majority: it's the lone voice of linguistic conservatism, Luddites trying to chuck their clogs & spanners in the machinery of change. Language isn't degrading - it's evolving. People make things easier for themselves over time. Beauty or ugliness, and judgements of quality don't really come into it - it's massively subjective. I lost all respect for prescriptive linguistics when I found that they'd tried to shoehorn the English language, a mongrel mix of Germanic & Romance languages with bits from pretty much everywhere in the world, into the grammar rules of Classical Latin, a dead language even at the time! Anyone speaking English then would have known it had its own grammar, which isn't the grammar it has now either, nor the grammar it will have in 30, 50 or 100 years' time. It's this endless adaptation & versatility that makes language so damned cool.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear. The things today's prescriptivists furiously battle to preserve are often the same things that past generations' self-appointed language guardians struggled to defeat. (Or, oddly enough, they're fighting against something that they incorrectly perceive to be a perverse modern innovation, such as singular "they," due to a lack of being widely read or linguistically well informed.) (Not that I'm accusing gothwalk of being in with THAT Safirean crowd!)

Oddly, it took actually getting a master's degree in English for me to fully accept that position, but there you have it. I admit some things irk me, but I try not to be too curmudgeonly about it. It definitely takes some effort, though.

[gothic-fraggle.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear, hear! And to help ensure their survival, I shall teach these words to all my students tomorrow. And include them if I ever write a coursebook. There are more non-native speakers of English in the world than native. My evil plan cannot FAIL.

Moi.