USE YOUR WORDS

"All slang is metaphor and all metaphor is poetry." -- G. K. Chesterton

You can't go to college and earn an English degree without a love of words. Words are currency to English majors. They can create good or evil, move civilization forward, foster love or hatred, and tell amazing stories and so much more. Whether spoken or read, the right words can literally change lives, and to some, there is nothing sadder than having the words to express a thought or feeling and being unable to say them or have them heard. A friend said once, “Words mean things” and he was right. The best collection of words I've ever seen are in Fitzgerald's book "The Great Gatsby" when Nick describes the Buchanan estate on East Egg Long Island

“We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall"

Growing up in an Irish family,  our words were never chosen too carefully, but rather ceaselessly put forth with lots of color and imagery that was as natural as breathing. Thick accents aside, there is never a question of how an Irishman feels about something, give it a minute, he'll tell you. It gets difficult, however, when the words we choose mean one thing to us and quite another to someone else. Slang, for all its poetic value, can screw up the communication process.

I am lucky enough to have friends from all over the country, but my southern friends have been the ones that bring language to life more than anyone else, but also confuse me more than anyone else. No one but a down-home Mississippi girl could say, "Well the trouble with that one, bless her heart, is that she walks around most of the time like she's got a goat in the garden." A "goat in the garden" is what we up here call a "wedgie." If she hadn't then explained what it was, I might have believed that this poor soul she was talking about was plagued with runaway farm animals destroying her flowers, kind of like the turkeys we have that wander around town, in and out of everyone's yards.

Also, I learned that it's not always a nice thing when someone says, "Bless your heart." That's how my Southern friends are though, even when they might want to ding you a little, they still want to be polite about it.

Of course it's never correct to say that someone speaks "American" because that isn't a language, but really, if you look at some of the words my British friends use versus the words Americans use, a case could be made for calling what we speak here in the States something other than English. The toilet is the loo. If you "knock someone up" in England, no one has to get married at the end of a shotgun, and if a kid is giving someone a little back talk, the Brits call that being a "cheeky monkey" and that sounds kind of cute doesn't it? It seems way better than some of what I may or may not have called my own children in some of my weaker moments.

Go into any grocery store, grab one of those metal things with the wheels, what's that called? Well, it's a "trolley" in Britain, but even we Americans call it something different depending on where we are. I call it a carriage, but my sistah friend Regina from Philadelphia says it's a buggy and that babies ride in carriages, which is also wrong because everyone knows babies ride in strollers. Please, like Philadelphia is an example of how to talk? "Youse" is not a word.

On a hot day in the city of Brotherly Love, what do they do? Go for "water ice." There's some genius, isn't all ice made from water? Wake up and smell the Dunkies my Philly sister---that is slush.

Naturally, some slang terms are best avoided, and they won't be printed here. My rule is that if I have to look it up on the website "Urban Dictionary" it's likely not something I should say in polite company.

There are hundreds of ways people express themselves with words, and we aren't always going to be understood by everyone. Go anywhere outside of Massachusetts and ask for tonic or a frappe and no one will know what you want. Tell them you're going down to the packie and most people won't have a clue. Southerners, Brits, Midwesterners and Massholes, it doesn't matter. People use words that paint a picture of who they are and where they come from. Try to be wicked good at making words your own personal form of poetry; the right ones can make all the difference, even if they are slang. 

Use your words; don't keep them to yourself. Write them, speak them and make sure they are heard. Vague answers and one word replies are not communication.