Doo De Doo De Doo

As you probably know by now, I love the English language. Particularly its ambiguities of spelling. Homonyms are my bread and butter. Which is funny in itself, because I currently have no bread or butter in the house, and have never used a homonym to make a sandwich, and yet you understood exactly what I was getting at.

Hmmm.... a homonym sandwich with cheese and Marmite. Could work.

This particular post was prompted by my good friend Cindy, with whom I have spoken to on the phone a couple of times.

Now, for a Kiwi, half the fun of talking to an American is gently making fun of their accent.

"Say duty"

"Doody."

*snigger snigger*

"Say data."

"Dayta."

*snigger snigger*

I never claimed to be particularly mature. Let it go.

This can even be localised. Nothing's funnier to me than asking a Southlander to say purple. "Paaarlpul." Ah yes, the good ol' southern accent.

Accents can be funny. But on the whole we can understand each other.

But then there are the funny stories of people going into a sh0p and needing somebody to translate English into English so everyone can understand each other through the accents.

I've heard that one of my favourite films, Trainspotting, was nearly given subtitles in America, even though it is simply English with a Scottish accent. I've read American reviews of the film saying: "Don't worry, you can work out what they're saying after about half-an-hour."

Watching the DVDs with the subtitles on can be interesting, too. I think they've cleaned up their act a bit now, but there used to be times where the character would say: "I'm fucking sick of this fucking shit!" and the subtitle would read: "Gosh, I'm upset about this!" ... Like deaf people aren't allowed to swear.

Right. Well, I didn't have a point, and I feel I've made it.

I hope you understand my written accent. I could read it aloud, but you probably wouldn't understand me.

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.