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Putting on airs is easily detected by those of us who don't. Those who put on airs go to the Cinema to see a Film (or, for the younger ones, to a Strip to see a Flick) and those who don't go to a Theater to see a Movie. Those who put on airs select and purchase; those who don't choose and buy. It's partly a matter of semantics, which each generation thinks they have to utterly change for themselves. But it's partly just putting on airs.Some of this can be blamed on computers, and I do love to blame everything I can on computers. When I became the proud .... no, terrified .... owner of a computer several years ago, I began to see why some of our perfectly good language with perfectly clear meaning is changing. Everyone was speaking in computerese. The only thing I understood was "multi-tasking". All mothers know what that is.
"Select" is now in favor instead of that old reprobate, "Choose". I, however, choose to use "choose". I have always chosen to choose and I will continue to choose to choose, not select.
"Purchase" is now much preferred over that old tramp, "Buy". We should not be so low-class as to "buy" any more; we should "purchase". Only louts "buy"; that is, among all of us citizens who, ipso facto, became "consumers" a generation ago. I, however always buy whatever I buy and choose to buy rather than purchase it.
It's all like calling our stuff, if we have any, "items". I really don't need or want to itemize my stuff. It's just stuff that I choose and buy. Except what I got for Christmas. Or, excuse me, for Holidays.
But all word use certainly can't be blamed on computers. I suspect some of it started in recipe books written by women who went to college in order to write recipe books. Or, excuse me, Cookbooks. (If they are "Cookbooks", why aren't they "Bakebooks"?)
For example, all such books and kitchenware instructions instruct to "place", not "put". "Place one cup of rice in the cooker", it says. I don't know about you, but I put, pour or dump. "Place two cups of flour in a large bowl", it says. (Instructs? Demands? Suggests? Begs?) Excuse me? As in "place one pile of sand here" to build a sand castle on the beach? I tend to think of placing something as placing one something. I'm inclined to do something more sensible with a whole cup of or pile of something. But at least a recipe can weasel out of what it started by "add"ing everything else.
In my view, people who put on airs don't generally use weasel words (except for the media, but those are not people); they are too intent on being elitist with more formal semantics. Why? In my view, because they know that's the only way we lower-class beings can tell the elite from ourselves. Why? I have a view about that, too. You knew I would.
There is very little formality left in modern daily life, not to mention no manners at all. No gentility, no "correctness", if you will. Only old people see this, because we remember when there were these things. The whole world dresses like sloppy children and acts like juvenile delinquints. We have no manners, no sense of propriety or discretion. When there is no formality, then things and events that are special or important don't feel that way. To oversimplify (one of my worst traits - the other is to over-complicate), we don't wear white gloves any more, so we "select". Maybe we put on airs because we lack any reason to. Think about it.
When it comes to the new pronunciations of all of our old and perfectly good words, names and places, however, that is to be blamed on the elitist media, upon which I do love to blame everything possible - even more so than on computers. If you are under thirty, you won't have any idea what I'm talking about, but those of us considerably older remember the original words and names.
The word Harass (rhyming with "your ass"), for example, has become harass (rhyming with "terrace"). No, honey, when I've been harassed, I've been HarASSed. My old Oxford American Dictionary of 1979 has it right, so I can prove that one.
In news and politics, these changes are now well-entrenched:
Iraq = ee-rock instead of eye-rack
Iran = ee-ron instead of eye-ran
The Chinese despot who was named Mao T'se Tong is now Mao Zedong - and I suspect that one came about because today's journalists can't spell, as all of us who CAN spell have noted. At least they seem to know phonics, if lazy ones, in the translation to Zedong. But they did learn to spell the Iranian dictator's name, I'madinnerjacket, better than I care to. I'll give them credit for that. They need it, since they know nothing about proper English usage, either, and somebody must have told them that one sentence = one paragraph, even if it's two words long. I have no idea what most of them think a normal-looking paragraph is. I don't want to know, actually.And the latest - I nearly died laughing. When the country of Chile was in the news, it suddenly became Chee-lay' instead of Chilly, which it had been for as long as people have been eating another chile. Now it's pronounced like the corn chips, so I guess it's related.
This is entirely different from the habit of peoples of the world of changing the names of their cities and countries willy-nilly, as they are wont to do, keeping map printers and globe makers in business by constantly having to make new ones. That is those peoples' business, not ours.
Did you know that Istanbul (Turkey) used to be Constantinople? It did. There was a cute song about it in the 1940s. That's how I knew. And, as if we didn't have enough confusion, Peking is now Beijing, Bombay is now Mumbai, Burma is now Myanmar, and heaven only knows what all those former Soviet-bloc ".....istans" used to be. We don't care; we don't live there. And since it is painfully apparent that our kids are not taught geography in school any more anyway, I suppose none of us will be put on the spot having to help with their geography homework.
I'd like to suggest that we help them with English instead. While schools (giving them the benefit of the doubt here) still teach it. Otherwise, and this may not be a bad thing, the practice of putting on airs will be over. Because the kids can't spell, capitalize or punctuate any of them.
Thanks for reading.