THE ENGLISH THAT OX4D DOES NOT TEACH !

I recently received a comment for my post, it read- "SMH, TMI !" It was too cryptic for my grey cells, so I googled it. As it turns out, it means- Shaking my head, too much information.


I read in school that grammar evolves continuously, and adapts to the accepted usage of every generation. The purists accept these contemporary changes, however these take few years to be effected. But the English that I refer to here is not the grammar we learnt in school, or the vocabulary we read in our books, but the hip-happening turn of phrase that we hear, read and type everyday. It is different from the colloquial language spoken by the natives, it's the universal hip language, spoken by people, generally miles away from the native land. It is the latest fad, evolving faster than the Apple app innovations, and spreading like wildfire.
If you aren't in touch with this cool intertext lingo, you are so out of the 'game'. And it's not just written, it's spoken too. The more fluent you are with these words, the "cooler" you are. If you don't hang with the cool kids, you can always go back to twitter, facebook, tabloids and the spam of some texts and mails to get your daily dose of slangs. Also insightful in this regard can be sitcoms like 90210, gossip girl, entourage and so on. 

                                                            


Here are some of the 'cool' slangs that I came across -
A3- anytime, anywhere, anyplace
It's sick- It's awesome (contrast is in)
The Shit- The best or the the greatest (same principle as above)
Ma- My ; Ya- You  ( I may not dance like Jamaicans but I can copy their accent! )
FUGLY- extremely ugly (like they used in the movie)
Postmodem Depression- when u stay away from the internet for a long time (like several minutes)
UNSULT- insult given as a compliment (invented by The Simpsons)
Sinlaws- parents of the live-in boyfriend/girlfriend (they are a reality now)
What's The Beef- what's the problem (sounds more fun)
MIA - missing in action
PTA- pain in the ass
FTW- f*** the world (I don't give a damn, how cool is that)
JK- just kidding
STFU- shut the f*** up
AFAIK- as far as I know (now sent in official mails)
XOXO- hugs and kisses (courtesy: gossip girl)
DKDC- don't know don't care
ADOD- another day another dollar
FML -   f*** my life
KISS-   keep it short and simple (seems to be the bottomline of it all )


Every decade has its own slangs, but the intertext slang is the fastest growing cult, it's catching up everywhere. It's shorter, faster, and as I mentioned 'cooler'. People are using it not only in chat boxes and texts, but in official-unofficial mails, letters, and in day to day conversations. It would not be uncanny to imagine that some day this lingo might even take over English as we know it, turning our Oxford Dictionary into an Ox4d one !

Of Love, Hate, and Everything in Between..

" Why don't you have the time to call me anymore?" "What are you so busy doing all the time?" "I can't believe you forgot my birthday!" I heard my friend speak these lines as she spent her days weeping, dejected, getting out of a long, yet broken relationship. Now my friend, I'll call her Alex, is a feeler. She is almost mentally wired to take all her decisions based on how she feels about the situation. Alex spent weeks thinking, caught up in the battle between her head asking her to let go and her heart asking her to cling on to the deep love that was there once, and fearing the break-up would lead to an ego death and emotional deficit in her life. I sat with her through a lot of this, wondering the strange unexpected courses that love can take, and how difficult it is to fall out of it.

After much deliberation, I feel I have had an epiphany, I'm going to formulate it into a theory.

It's because love is the most intense emotion we feel, and because we have so much at stake, that it is so closely related to fear. We fear those whom we love because they are the ones who can hurt us the most, and when they do, it's not such a big leap from that realized fear to hate. So it is no irony any more that Alex now hates the one she loved so dearly once, probably as fiercely as she loved him!

I feel romantic love, and I mean the true romantic love here, is no more or less crazy than parental love. Just as our parents continue to love us the same way they did when they first held us and looked into our tiny half-open eyes, even if we eventually grow up to become crappy adults; this love keeps us from breaking out of the once blissful but eventually crappy relationship. Just like Alex, we are caught up in the never-ending head-heart battle, till we reach the ultimate emotional breaking point.

But are we deceiving ourselves? For self-deception is also deception.