My Husband & I

Some people have a strange tendency to emphasise a word that shouldn't be emphasized, have you noticed? My big bugbear is when someone says: "Three hundred and sixty-five days OF the year..." when we don't really need any stress putting on the word 'of' at all. I'm not sure why people do this, but they're probably the same people who would say: "We're going to take this product TO the market..." or some such similar nonsense. What worries me about this (and yes, dear reader, I may even lie awake at night, grappling over such matters) is that language, as a living beast, adapts itself to modern use and aberrations such as this very soon pass into the common vernacular.

Take 'going to' for example: I notice that even some BBC newsreaders have taken to replacing this with the ubiquitous 'gunner' (as in: "They're gunner take this product TO the market..."). This is something I deplore and, whereas I doubt if my own speech usage is as perfect as Her Majesty's, I do try especially hard to avoid this one. I often say to people: What do you mean by using that word? A "gunner" is someone who might become engaged in combat during a conflict; a "gonner" (as it is sometimes pronounced) is an accepted colloquialism for someone who is shortly to become no more (as in deceased); and I have a friend whose name is Gunnar (which strangely enough, is Old Norse for 'warrior of war'). None of these words is a suitable substitute for 'going to', so I am fairly confident that this is not what people mean when they stray into its use.

You may be pondering on why I have decided to raise this matter now, when I have not posted a blog for several days (ed: Ahem, isn't 'blog' an example of the type of colloquialism you claim to deplore?). I suppose I should be recording the events of my week instead of using this rather public platform to rant about the vagaries of modern language. Well, my week has been hectic and heavily populated. I've had a lengthy and draining (evening) Board Meeting; drinks and dinner with friends; sailing in Thursday evening's race (we won – yay!); and a multitude of other trivia to deal with. I was never so happy as this morning when I was able to stay in bed for a while with a book and a cup of tea. I love the weekends. Although, have you noticed how common it is for people to say something like: "I'm having an early night this evening, with a good book and a glass of wine"? A lot of us would say this without thinking, yet it's rather crass don't you think, since how many of us would choose to go to bed with a bad book?

Oh, here I go again. I'd better finish now and get this posted as soon as possible. Yep, I'm gonna post this entry TO the web, right now.

p.s. The picture? Ah well, this is related to my next rant. Pigeons. Don't get me started.