I must be cool – they bleeped me

Well that just ___ing ___sses me off.

As a journalist I’m a user and defender of the English language (all examples to the contrary). But I do seriously object to its abuses.

Look, I can put up with people’s misspellings, the misplaced apostrophes, and hell, even the textifying of the language. But what I hate more than people being “offended” at swear words is those who manipulate this offence to make their non-swearing look cooler.

Now, before I go further, I want to say that I have no objection to swearing. I don’t swear a lot myself; and when I do it’s usually ABOUT something rather than AT something. I think that’s a big factor in the offence stakes.

What amuses me is that America – producer of 90 per cent of the internet’s pornography, where on average 81 people a day die from gunfire – considers itself the great upholder of language morals.

These days they will bleep out anything. Hell, you can’t even say “asses” on American TV without it being bleeped out.

But what is worse is the bleeping out of perfectly non-offensive words, so that it seems as if the person swore; thus making them seem cooler in the eyes (and ears) of the audience.

The most blatant example of this is a promo ad for Discovery Channel show Mythbusters. It features a line from presenter Jamie Hyneman where he says: “I love it when we blow s(bleep) up.”

Now you’d think they were bleeping out the word “shit”. Because some people still find any reference to bowel movements offensive (instead of just, maybe, inappropriate).

Yet they leave in just enough of the word so that if you’re listening carefully you’ll hear not the word “s(bleep)t” but “s(bleep)f”. Meaning he’s said: “I love it when we blow stuff up”, and they’ve bleeped out the word “stuff”. Just so that he sounds cooler.

How fucked up is that?

Of course rappers have been doing it for years. And I laughed out loud the first time I heard Fall Out Boy singing: “this ain’t a scene it’s a god (blank) arms race”. They’ve bleeped out “damned”? Should they maybe have said "gosh darned"? Take us all back to the 1950s?

Now, you show me the modern six-year-old who has never in his or her life heard the word “fuck” and I’ll completely back down. But personally, I think we have bigger things in this world to worry about than being offended by swear words; which, like it or not, are a legitimate part of our language.

Although, I stress here, swearing should always be ABOUT stuff, not AT stuff – particularly people. That is the line of offensiveness I don’t think you should cross. Though it’s a bit of a lame arse one anyway; I mean, if you want to insult someone verbally, use your imagination and come up with something that doesn’t need swear words. Swear words in an insult are cheap and lower the user in the eyes of the linguist.

Anyway, I’ve rambled enough. I’ll leave the last word to those heroes of New Zealand folk music; Flight of the Conchords, who recognised the stupidity of it all years ago.

You, believe me, me you. Me. Damn.

I make my living at language – primarily English; which is fortunate, because I don’t actually have any other languages hiding up my sleeve.

Early in life I found a love of writing, but fell asleep in the English classes when the teacher tried to tell me about sentence structure. Verbs, adverbs, adjectives, pronouns, proverbs(?); generally, I still have to look up the meanings.

But I love the language. I love playing with words and meanings and twisting things in strange and unusual new directions.

Now, my point – and I do have one – is that some phrases in English just do my head in. Everyone knows what they mean, so the fact they don’t make any sense never seems to be an issue. Unless you’re like me and have a brain that slams on the brakes and goes “what the bloody hell was that?”

One phrase in particular gets me every time. It is grammatically correct according to 1600s phraseology, but actually only started being used in the early 1900s. It’s this – believe you me.

What?

Now my father used this phrase often. Except he had no real education so made it fit by adding an extra word – “believe you and me”. Which kind of made sense. It works in the “we have both reached an agreement on this point and believe it, and you should too” way.

But later in life I discovered my dad had put me wrong (as he did in so many ways – “Yes, Davy Crockett was real, but Daniel Boone was just made up” being just one example).

The true phrase was: “Believe you me”. Which is technically correct on the old verb-subject-object stage, but not on the modern subject-verb-object platform. But it’s just so out of place.

It’s not even like Shakespeare wrote it and it stuck. No, apparently it didn’t even turn up in the Oxford English Dictionary until 1926. This made me think maybe it was originally a proper phrase, but it got damaged in the trenches during the First World War.

It was originally something like: “I believe you should come with me”. But it was hit by shrapnel and the field surgeons had to do some emergency editing; lopping off some words so it ended up just: “believe you me”.

It limps into the English language (first recorded use in 1919), bruised and bleeding. But it recovered well and became instilled as part of day-to-day speech. I’m not saying we should get rid of it, but just ask that you be aware of it and see if it starts doing your head in as it has mine.

So, believe you me, the point is made.

Now you’re talking my language

New Zealanders have a distinct accent. Our trans-Tasman cuzzies like to remind us of this by insisting we say “fush und chups” and “sex” instead of “six”.

That’s OK. We can take it. Just please (and I’m going to swear here, so brace yourself) for fuck’s sake stop trying to imitate it.

The worst case lately has been on Aussie TV series Underbelly, which in its second series examines the activities of the Mr Asia drug ring in the 1970s and 1980s. The key figure in the story was a Kiwi named Terry Clark, who set up a Melbourne-based import/export business – importing heroin to Australia and New Zealand, and exporting addicts into holes in the ground.

Actress Anna Hutchison plays an important role as Alison Dine, a New Zealand kindergarten teacher who ended up running Clark’s network for a bit while he was in prison. Hutchison can pull off a Kiwi accent; primarily because she’s a Kiwi.

But Katie Wall, who plays Kiwi lawyer Karen Soich, cannot do a Kiwi accent to save herself. She sounds like an Aussie trying to do a Kiwi accent. Which she is. But what’s worse is that she sounds like an Aussie trying to do what an Aussie thinks a Kiwi accent sounds like. The result is this bastardised combination of Aussie “eeee” and Kiwi “uuuh” that is just revolting to listen to.

The thing is, if she’d just done an Aussie accent, I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

An embarrassing confession here: I went to Canada in 1996 and spent two weeks in Montreal. I then spent a week in LA to do touristy things. While in LA I was in the hotel elevator and heard this small group of people talking. I had been away from South Pacific accents for a while, but this was familiar. I said: “Hey, are you guys Aussies?” and they looked at me funny and said: “Nah, mate, we’re Kiwis”.

I couldn’t tell them apart.

Ever since then I’ve maintained the difference between our accents is three weeks.

But this special message goes out to Katie Wall: If you can’t do it, don’t try. You’re right up there with Dick Van Dyke’s cockney on Mary Poppins and Meryl Streep’s “Deengo ate moi baaeybe”. Which, if Katie was doing it Kiwi, would no doubt have been: “a dungo aite muh boibbie”.