Friday, March 21, 2003

Okay y’all* are right. I’m

Okay y’all* are right.  I’m getting too caught up in cerebrations and not caught up enough in celebrations.  What the world needs now is love, sweet love.  And one of the things I most love is words.  (Is that grammatically correct?) I noticed it yesterday when I was crossing out “bookkeeper” on an org chart and writing in “accountant” and I realized that “bookkeeper” has three matched pairs of letters in a row.  Pretty cool.  Then I noticed that “accountant” has four letter pairs (of which three are non-contiguous), and I actually spent a few moments wondering whether that made “accountant” a cooler word than “bookeeper.” But instead of resolving the question, I started writing down some words I really enjoy reading, using, saying, spelling (in alphabetical, not preferential, order):

Ambergris
Burgeon
Chitenous
Chryslis
Corposant
Euphoneous
Extrude
Feculent
Gustatory
Manichaean
Mesozoic
Moribund
Penultimate
Perspicacious
Plinth
Protruberance
Prurient
Ululate
Vicissitude
Voluptuary

Just seeing them all lined up together gives me a warm feeling.  I don’t even feel the need to blend them into a single cumbersome paragraph.  Each one deserves its own paragraph.  But not now.  I have some beers to drink.

*I’ve long held the opinion that the english language needs a second-person plural pronoun.  “You” is ambiguous.  There’s I/we, he-she/they - this is sensible, consistent; there’s precedent in other languages.  I think “y’all” is the right choice - pithy, concise, established (in some regions) already, and grammatically consonant.  For those who deride it as a regionalistic colloquialism, I say this is the nature of language, to evolve, to absorb - even the french are adopting english words, why can the english adopt their own words?  We all know what y’all means.  Or mean.  Oh don’t be mean.  Time to go.