#404 Colloquialism

I was talking to a guy yesterday, American by anyone’s standards, a fine upstanding member of his community, involved in a service club. But he was born in Denmark. Having spent his formative years there, he missed out on all those sayings that kids learn by osmosis in their native language. Words we all take for granted, like tough, and bitchen and gnarly. Words that are sometimes known as idioms and sometimes as colloquialisms. A dialect, a bit of regional patter, a turn of phrase, the slimy organic undercoating that makes our language American and not the spot of tea, up and down staircase-littered, English from England. I say, knock me up after I go to the loo won’t you, and we’ll meet in the tube. The guy expressed a little regret that he didn’t know Americanisms as if he’d grown up here. I tried to reassure him by pointing out there’s only one letter of difference between idiom and idiot but he didn’t get it. I’m not sure I did either. Idioms can also be like professional jargon. I was at a meeting yesterday where some of the speakers were from the government. Just a little heads up. If you’re at a meeting where they have break-out sessions, and one of the sessions features speakers from different departments of the government, take a cup of joe. The secret to being a good government administrator must be to learn how to talk in the most circuitous manner possible so as always to be circling the fairly simple point at hand but never quite getting to it. One of the speakers was so long-winded the next long-windiest speaker actually tugged his coat to warn him he was out of time. And so oblivious that he acknowledged he was out of time and then spoke for another 5 minutes. One speaker said that bureaucratic jargon was clogging state publications so they were going to rectify the problem. We have this new computer program, he said, and it’s going to help us implement the simplification plan by plaintalking everything. He actually used the word plaintalk as if it was a single word and then he used it as a verb. Like he was cutting something or chopping something. He was plaintalking it. Probably uses that new Will Rogers software or perhaps Davy Crockett-checker. The guy wasn’t even aware he was using bureaucratic jargon when he used the word plaintalk like he did. But it was fun watching the guy act as if his department was doing something meaningful to help the public. And to act as if he was saving costs for everyone with this massive computer assisted overhaul of state publications, when all they really need are good editors. With all the newspapers closing down, there ought to be a couple available. Offer them a permanent job with medical benefits, throw in a stale Danish like they had in the newsroom every morning and the state could probably get ‘em, um, dirt cheap.
America, ya gotta love it.