I heart language evolution.

I'm a big fan of verbal communication. Not only can I cuss like a sailor, I can also sail! Ok, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Although I was on the Stage Harbor Yacht Club float one year in the Fourth of July parade. Kind of a big deal, but whatever.

Just look at all those friggin' yachts

My romance with the spoken word began with poetry. My parents were all the time reading to me in a not so subtle attempt to shut me up. My father's big contribution was Dr Seuss while my mother favored an omnibus containing the collected works Shel Silversetien and Robert J Service (among others.)
My favorite stuff by the good Doctor were One Fish Two Fish--I could totally read that without being able to read yet, and of course, The Lorax. C'mon son, the premise was flippin genius and just heavy handed enough to get through to a kid like me. Probably also explains the summer I spent trying to save trees in Eastern Oregon.

My Mom's poetry choice was a lot less silly and colorful than my Dad's. She was all into the grittiness of life and shit. Have you ever read The cremation of Sam Magee? Well,
"There are strange things done 'neath the midnight sun
by the men who moil for gold.
And the Arctic trails have their secret tales
that would make your blood run cold."
If an opening stanza like that doesn't compel a kid to read the Hobbit as soon as their brainwaves are big enough, nothing will.

She also used to love telling me she would sell me to the gypsies if I was bad. I was like, whatever, I'm your best shot at early retirement. Plus, really, Ma...?

 But then she totally whipped out:
The Gypsies are coming, the old people say
To buy little children and take them away
Fifty cents for a fat one
Twenty cents for a lean one
Fifteen for a dirty one
Thirty cents for a clean one
A nickel for a mean one

You can go ahead and laugh, but her once idle threat was now in a book. <GASP!> And I had it on good authority that books were a good authority. She of course thought it hilarious that I now feared being sold into slavery. Fun fact, later editions of the poem changed gypsies out for googlies....uh, if you're wondering why, please refer to above gif.

You mean you didn't have a favorite
 part of the dictionary entry?

My next fascination, linguistically speaking, were etymologies. I first encountered them when I learned that the guy who invented the toilet was named John Crapper. Not able to see the chicken for the egg, I thought it was ironic that we said crap to mean shit and shit was something you put in the toilet.
(I was quite clever for my age.)
I soon became fixated on uncovering new root words, it was basically my favorite part of the dictionary entry. Hey, this was before Google-times. If I had been old enough to drunkenly dispute whether that was a Culkin in the lead role or not, we would have had to skip right to hugging it out and admitting that we had no frickin' clue.  Remember, even though the internet rocks, "Man is still the greatest computer, and women are even cooler." -JFK

Hey, it's all right. You wanna brewski, Broski?

The next sweet-ass thing I learned about was probably word chain devices from my man, Steven Pinker. My linguistics class was trash, because the professor was basically crazy by then. But his TA was on his game and gave me a copy of the Language Instinct which I read voraciously, two summers later.
Word Chain devices allow you to take one word from each column to generate a phrase, sentence or concept.  Here is an example, as well as the way he defines it:

Still with me? Well, than here is another example:
Pretty nifty, right? These things are super fun and if you make one, please, please take a picture and let me have a looksy. They're sort of like reorganized flow charts, if that inspires you.

Lastly, I would just like to say...
 I've always been a fan of the 'you're' and 'your' rules but I'm award-winningly bad at spelling. I therefore tend towards pity for the folks who fall short of even my poor example. I have to strongly dislike a person, and there can be no [relevant] information in their argument which could be used against them in the court of the thread, for me to resort to commenting on their grammatical fluidity.

And that my friends, is how you win teh internets. You're welcome. If anybody need me I'll be in the next room, thought provoking myself.

You have read this article Brad Neely / Gollum / grammer / Poker Face / stage harbor yacht club / That's Racist / The Language Instinct / the Lorax with the title I heart language evolution.. You can bookmark this page URL http://trendcelebrity2014.blogspot.com/2011/10/i-heart-language-evolution.html. Thanks!