the language report

Do you know what uptalking, bumsters, and blogging are? Would you know how to behave at a bootycall, or what to do with a killer app?

Susie Dent offers a round-up of recent developments in language. She deals with new words and linguistically interesting quotes from the world of computers, fashion, text messaging, business, the royal family, and from both recent Gulf Wars. There's a selection of terms coined in the last hundred years, and it was interesting to note that ground zero was first used when the Americans used their Weapons of Mass Destruction on the people of Hiroshima [ironies of history?].


But the selection is heavily oriented towards 2002-2003. I was amused to see that one of my favourite new slang terms completely hatstand (mad) is from Viz comic - also the source of the deeply vulgar and outrageously funny Roger's Profanisaurus.

She points out quite rightly that new terms are being coined at an amazing rate - but that many just don't last. However, I think sex-up and dot-com will stay, as will visible panty line and blogging - which means creating a Web log, by the way.

But it's difficult for a print publication to keep up. No mention here of free-running, flash mobs, and dogging, all very recent, which we featured in one of our recent newsletters.

Contemporary UK politics provides surprisingly little, whereas celebrity quotes has this humdinger from Joan Rivers on the much surgically enhanced Cher:

"If you want to know what she will look like when she's dead, look at her now."

In terms of street cred, Ali G scores high with Booyakasha! and ride the punani, but the section on new idioms - all fur coat and no knickers - yields up surprisingly few new contenders for permanent acceptance.

She rounds off with some observations on grammatical correctness, on the apostrophe, and on fillers such as Innit? and like - as in She was like 'Don't look at me!'

She is quite right to note the informality of email grammar. Who wants to be bothered pressing the shift key when you know you'll be understood if you type the shop seems to hav bin closed for a cuppla dayz innit

There are also some interesting comments on new vocabulary and even new usages as in uptalk [turning almost every statement into a question] and Estuary English. She finishes with some examples of 'new language' coined in film and television shows.

This is a short, lively, and readable introduction to recent developments in demotic language. And if you didn't know, bumsters are very low-cut trousers, and a killer app is a very successful software program; but if you don't know what a bootycall is, you are unlikely to be invited to attend :-)