A friend posted an article on Facebook regarding the lack of usefulness, in the corporate world, for an English degree.

Ah I wish it were not so.

Like fingernails across a chalkboard, the misuse of the language grates on the nerves. Not every one's nerves to be sure, but on those who likewise majored in English or in some past life spoke it well. Too often that is not the case today with the spoken language sounding too often like a foreign one.

The worse offenders seem to come from two different widely diverse spheres: the street and the ad room. Curiously they offend for exactly the same reason: they wish to create a shortcut to either save energy or separate themselves from those 'outside' the language community.

"Wsup?" is answered by 'noh.' Speaking like this, a street gang now has enough energy saved up through two unvocalized syllables to do whatever street gangs do with their unspent energy. Oh yes, that can't be good.

Or is it 'oh no, that can't be good.'

Advertising executives make verbs out of nouns and cute word combinations, like Te-bowing, going postal, greening, fueling (as in 'fueling potential'), lunchables, chewnola (a treat that 'sends your dog to a world all his own.')

So it is not so much that new words are being created to suit and separate, it is that the made-up words are stupid and when we insist upon placing them in our own vocabulary we become dumber.

And that's what I think about it.

The rest of my Life Lessons in a soon to be written posting.