#539 Triple Tonguing

The other day I had occasion to MC an event.
Let me use the phonetic word “Emcee.”
MC the initials stand for Master of Ceremonies, so it’s really incorrect to say I MC’d an event as if the initials were a verb. I master of ceremonied the event?
Hardly.
In the process of emceeing the event, I had a guy come up and compliment me on my performance. “It’s odd,” he said, “some people just freeze when they get in front of a crowd but you make it look like the most natural thing in the world, and keep on yammering like there’s no tomorrow.”
How nice.
Let that be my epitaph.
He yammered like there was no tomorrow.
I yammer. Because what is an emcee but a professional yammerer?
Kill me now Lord, I have arrived at the gates of heaven. I am a professional yammerer.
Yammer is a ridiculous word. But it’s real. It’s of Dutch origin and it means to complain or lament. America changed it to mean to run off at the mouth.
It’s always cool when a nonsensical word turns out to be real.
Like I was listening to an old song from the Scottish group The Proclaimers the other day and the guy sang, “If I haver, I’m gonna be the man who’s havering to you.”
He pronounces it hey-ver. Haver? What the heck is haver? It sounds cool. I want the opportunity to say haver meaningfully.
So I looked it up.
Haver is a chiefly British term that means to vacillate or equivocate. Why the guy in the song would want to be equivocating with his proposed love is not explained.
But it’s also a Scottish word that means to maunder. To chatter aimlessly.
Again, why one would want to suggest to his intended love that they chatter aimlessly together is not up there with the top ten things to which most lovers aspire.
Perhaps Scotland is different in that regard. And chattering aimlessly while one tours the highland heath may be incredibly romantic.
I just know that if I emcee in Scotland I won’t be a yammerer anymore.
I’ll be a haverer.
America ya gotta love it