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The year ended on a positive note for English because December 13 was Plain English Day, an occasion for celebration for people who hate those letters to the editor that begin with ‘Dear Sir, Through the esteemed columns of your esteemed newspaper I humbly wish to draw the kind attention of the honourable members of the intelligent public`85.’ There is actually a Plain English Campaign in the UK that works at simplifying language, especially the jargon of officialese. It even gives out the Golden Bull awards to those who refuse to write simple language. So, why not initiate such an award in India too? Anyone who has tried to type an affidavit will empathise wholly. The word ‘couch potato’ raised a storm of protest this year and the British farmer wanted to delete it from the dictionary. Now, it looks as if the word ‘spinster’ looms large on the storm-horizon. The objection is that spinster poses a threat to all those Carrie Bradshaw types (Sex and the City) out there. In this era of political correctness, setting out to eliminate all words offensive to some group or the other would mean that one fine day language itself can be eliminated entirely. The New Oxford American Dictionary has
declared ‘podcast’ the word of the year. While ‘podcast’ itself
is a portmanteau word created by blending ‘iPod’ and ‘broadcast’,
the news item that announced this development created another blend from
‘computer geek’ and ‘orgasm’ by using the word ‘geekasm’ to
signal the complete domination of the cyber world. When ‘podcast’
was created, alternatives such as ‘blogcasting’ and ‘audioblogging’
were suggested but they were not as popular and catchy so they were not
picked up by the language user. So, ‘podcast’ will soon be seen in
the dictionary. Sudoku, too, was in the running this year and missed the
honour by a whisker. |
