Amglish In, Like, Ten Easy Lessons_ A Celebration of the New World Lingo - Arthur E. Rowse [3]
Made in the U.S.A.
Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.
—Sarah Palin on Twitter, July 18, 2010
With her words above, the former Republican vice presidential nominee was trying to urge people to reject a proposed Muslim center two blocks from Ground Zero in New York City. She immediately drew some flak for partially misidentifying the issue and maligning Muslims. So she toned down the wording in a subsequent tweet.
But her worst crime, judging from press reaction, was to make up the term refudiate. Grammarians were shocked. Journalists exploded. “There’s no such word,” they shouted in print and on Twitter as they relished one more chance to show that the feisty former Alaska governor was out of touch with reality.
The flames temporarily singed Palin into hastily substituting the word refute. When that didn’t work, she fired back, adding an old gem from former president George W. Bush and some slang for getting too excited:
“Refudiate, misunderestimate, wee-weed up. English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin words too. Got to celebrate it!”
Write on, Sarah! It’s time to celebrate the new lingo that’s sweeping around the world. All nitpickers should put their picks away. Let’s face it, formal English is dying. A new, much less formal language is taking over this country and the world. And it’s time to welcome it with open arms. In fact, there’s no way to stop it.
IN PRAISE OF PALIN
Asher Smith, a reporter for the Huffington Post, was notable in his objection to the firing squad lined up against the former Alaska governor. “Hand it to Palin,” he wrote. “Refudiate is catchy and sounds right to the ear.” Smith had a point. Palin’s word could be considered more logical than many words already accepted in the famously illogical English language.
What was so wrong about combining refute and repudiate? Palin had used the word a few days earlier on The Sean Hannity Show without arousing any reaction. Palin obviously assumed that was enough approval to make it an OK word in today’s environment. She knew that the ultraconservative host would not allow a verbal abortion on his program.
And what about Palin’s abbreviation for please? This slimmed-down version of the word was propelled by the advent of texting and has become so universally understood and accepted, especially on Facebook and Twitter, that none of her detractors even mentioned it. Language establishment leaders may not have been plsd, but they are no longer able to control the spelling of many wds, especially now that so many people are alluva twitter about language.
THE QUIRKS OF ENGLISH
For centuries, Americans have been trying to deal with the mysteries of the language their forebears heedlessly brought with them from England in the seventeenth century. No other language has ever been stitched together by so many sight-impaired, hearing-impaired, tongue-impaired babblers into such a crazy quilt of rules and traditions.
Numerous books, including many recent ones, have been written to show people how to comply with the increasingly outmoded requirements. Some sell well perhaps because of the large amount of grammar guilt still harbored by many people. But the only thing that has improved is the failure rate of national language tests.
What makes English so fascinating is not the impossible challenge of finding perfection so much as its large number of irregularities, defects, peculiarities, and just plain illogical requirements, not to mention the difficulties of pronouncing and spelling it.
People from all parts of society have tried to use their native language without error. But nobody has yet been able to do so, no matter how hard he or she or they have tried. There will always be some defect or quirk that prevents perfection. Take Mark Twain’s words for it. When he considered