Always a slow blogging day when you make yourself quotable. Said this to a friend at work today:
I think learning the English language has been the cause of more of my cynicism and misanthropy than any other pursuit, including my frequent dealings with other people.
whose learning? you’ve learned it quite well, so i will assume you mean “the resistance of some to learn…”.
kind of reminds me of one of my favorites: “people who think they know everything are particularly annoying to those of us who do.”
btw, your favicon.ico looks suspiciously like the logo for this.
another Paul, this one Greenberg, writes:
“Whatever happened to the once strong, vital, unique American language?
It hasn’t been seen in some time. It’s been completely obscured by the thicket of “you knows” and “whatevers” and other verbal tics that now cover the language like kudzu.
In recent years, a tumorous mass of text-message techno-lingo has only added another layer to the overgrowth. Sometimes you wonder if there’s still a language somewhere underneath all that mess trying to get out – or if it has simply rotted away. And with it, any hope of coherent thought.
Years ago a less-than-great book with a great title – ‘The Inarticulate Society’ by Tom Shachtman – offered three reasons for the general decline of American as she is spoke. He claimed the decline could be traced to ‘three interlocking cultural courses that influence and exacerbate each other.'”