Why 'Cool' is still cool
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Unrelated, I have always been fascinated with how fuck has managed to stay both vulgar and popular for 100's of years.
BTW, not saying don't use it. If that's who you are and that's how you speak, that's cool :)
If your wife asks how she looks, don't say "ok," and if your coworker asks about their presentation, don't say, "it was neat."
I also like using "fantastic" instead of awesome and often get strange looks, but a bonus of being older is I don't give a crap!
Words like "awesome" are somewhat hyperbolic. They have a short existence because they become predictable and passé.
"Cool" never lost its impact because it never had one in the first place. It's just cool.
Besides there are lots of counter-examples of similar moderate words that were popular and faded out (swell, neat, jiffy, groovy, hip, dandy, gnarly, hairy, a-ok etc).
Take the word "dope" right now, which is often used as a synonym for "cool". What's the likelihood of a word like that breaking into the mainstream and lasting?
So ... why does everyone start a sentence with "So". Both verbally and in written media. This has bugged me for quite a while.
I've also been indoctrinated into it's use. It definitely assists conversation but ...
"Exactly" is another one (in London anyway). Recently "exactly" has come to mean absolutely anything. E.g. "I don't know what you're talking about but I'll say 'exactly' and nod my head as a lead in to what I want to say' or just to be sounding like I'm still in the conversation"
Weird how words like these become viral.
Mild rant over.
Regarding the use of 'So..' to lead in a sentence: this is an hideous Americanism that must be stopped from further penetrating our borders at all cost. I exaggerate, of course. But it is an Americanism; I do not like it.
It's a less obnoxious way of saying "Hey you". Because saying "Hey you" when you're standing in front of somebody, a foot away, at conversational distance, and you were both just conversing two minutes ago is weird. But necessary. Because phones.
That 'exactly' is used to acknowledge what someone said and then to lead in to a related but different thing. Or sometimes as just the acknowledgement.
Leading 'so' seems to me to be a softener. "So...that's not what I meant, but it's reasonable", "So...here's what I've got. Tell me what you think", "So...we've got a problem.". I don't think anyone uses leading 'so' to say something positive except to ironically lower expectations. "So...we just signed a million-dollar contract".
It gives people a chance to realize that something else is coming that's not wholly positive, I think. I don't really know. It's something I've picked up in SF and I use it all the time even though I'm fully conscious of how strange it sounds.
I hear it so often sometimes that it's like a flashing command-prompt in a conversation.
If so makes conversation easier, what's the harm? That you and some others think it sounds uneducated?
Not that I agree with either group, but it's not exactly hypocritical what they say.
Saying X is bad while yourself adopting it would indeed be hypocritical. But saying X is OK up to your (or your generation), but bad if it continues is merely selfish or conservative.
It's more like them saying "it stops here", is in the first case "selfish" (since they're in, but want others out) and in the second case "conservative" (since they inherited an impure language, but want to stop it from evolving), but not necessarily hypocritical.
It's not illogical either: just because something started as "X" ("a nation of immigrants" for America, "an impure mix of words and linguistic influence" for the English language) it's not a logical necessity that it should continue to be so ad infinitum.
Verbally, because it signals you're speaking and gives you a little time to think your next words (like "eeer", "mmm", etc we also say).
It spreading uncontrollably would be it being language cancer?
What it would be for it to be language cancer would be for it to spread uncontrollably?
It seems sort of like a definitional thing, rather than a cause and effect thing, or even logical implication?
They seem like different words that mean the same thing, I.e. synonyms.
To say that it is one because it is the other is like to say that blue is blue because it is blue.
Which, is true in a sense, I suppose, but seems a little odd.
The major factor that influences the equilibrium of this cycle is number of speakers and number of adult learners. Languages with lots of speakers change more slowly, and tend to be getting simpler especially if they are assimilating new speakers (think English as it is becoming the global lingua franca.) Small insular languages with few second language learners tend to get more complex and idiosyncratic.
Source: studied linguistics for a few years.
If history is any indication, in 100 years American English will have some precise ways of expressing things, some loose ways of expressing things, and various groups of people will be unreasonably upset with one situation or the other.
If you're interested in the mechanisms of language change, I found the (2000) 3rd edition of Jean Aitchison's _Language Change: Progress or Decay?_ both readable and worth reading. There is a 4th edition, published in 2013:
http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/languages-ling...
And if you don't trust my anecdata, look up the German and Japanese language reform. I don't speak much of those, but they have stronger ruling bodies over their language, making it easier to track change in language. It appears the reforms slowly make the language simpler, based on feedback from the populace.
An explosion of jargon and slang doesn't make a language simple, it adds layers and layers of exclusivity and nuance.
Throw a word like "rotate", and it's just a matter of memorizing what the word means. Throw in a "simple" word like "turn", and it has a gazillion different meanings for every situation. It's a total nightmare for language learners.
'Turn' has many meanings because it has been used too often for reducing the number of words in sentences. You only have two choices when you want to do this: invent a new term (and totally confuse everyone) or use a related term (and let tome of the existing meaning bleed through.) Both of which make the language more complex.
One thing he mentions in the series is that languages tend to become more simple over time as they come into contact with others. This makes sense--if you're bringing people into a community who don't know the language then they're going to simplify it and that will spread. The languages that are the most complex are the ones that are most isolated. Here's a blog post about it: http://lingblog.com/2013/12/23/can-the-structure-of-society-...
but I'm pretty sure "hep" would be considered a synonym of cool that predates it.
So why didn't "hep" become the everlasting "cool" word?