Language in transition

Perfectly good phrases that have gone by the wayside...

Does anybody else miss "So long!" as a goodbye greeting, or "Howdy" as hello? How about, "How's Tricks?"

How about my childhood version of "So what?" which was, "Big Dingo!"

On the other hand, I'm enjoying, "Wicked"'s nationwide usage, expanding out from Boston, where I grew up. I don't know why it's use is spreading. Did a television show have a character that used, "Wicked" to mean "wonderful" or "very" as in, "Wicked Lovely"?

A regional phrase here in Foyil is, "Spot on!" meaning, exactly, as in, "Your advice was spot on!"

I won't copy it here, but Tom Wolfe's overview of "F--- patois" in " I am Charlotte Simmons" was spot on for the usage of the word as an all purpose, all parts of speech catch-all term when I was a youth. I had never counted the ways this useful word could be handled, but I could even add to Tom's list others that I remember from my days as a juvenile delinquent.

Naturally, in the backwaters of New England, there was likewise an "s---" patois, a lengthy list of uses for another word that could mean almost anything, but when used in context left no doubt as to intention.

American English almost doesn't exist as a translatable language. I realized this when I was teaching English as a second language in Japan. How many times did I have to say, "It doesn't mean anything!" or "I can't explain it" about words and phrases that have no concrete, word-for-word meaning.

How do you explain, "Yo!", especially the difference between, "Yo!" and "Hey!" Subtle, isn't it? How do you explain "Ya think?" or "Whatever!" or "Not!" How about, "And I care because why?"

On the other hand, perhaps that is what makes English such a useful trade language in a day of globalization. You don't have to know the meaning of the words, and if you are in an everyday situation, you often know what is meant whether you understand any of the individual words or not.

Perhaps having 80 ways to say, "Goodbye", none of which actually mean anything literal, will be a good way to smooth over all those awkward international moments?

And being able to use two all-purpose words to replace every adjective, adverb and verb will mean no one has to learn a second language.

Won't that be wicked?