The “SNUCK” Campaign

So I grew up in a household where proper English was ALWAYS spoken. My parents may not have been mature or particularly educated, but they had mature, educated parents and neither was particularly delinquent. This propriety of the English Language (aside from my dad occasionally teaching me a wrong word on purpose: aka: DORF instead of dwarf) was strong enough that all through Junior High and High school, and through every standardized test I ever took, I cruised easily (or passed out of) grammar lessons because the right way 'just sounded right'. There was nothing to learn.

Sure, there are a couple homonyms that have caused me trouble (particularly rein and reign or bate versus bait—yes, some of my poor characters have had baited breath, implying some grotesque worm diet). But if there was a SOUND difference, DARNED IT! I knew my stuff!

I recently got back a manuscript from my good buddy Leigh where I use (more than once) 'snuck'. She left me the sweet note, “Is it okay to use snuck now? I was taught sneaked, but I've seen this a lot recently.” (she never called me a moron once, which I appreciate).

SNEAKED? Are you FREAKING KIDDING ME? The proper word is SNEAKED?


Now I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, home of the most accent-free English in America... okay... so there isn't much accent anywhere west of Colorado... The whole west knows how to SPEAK. They do it without a lot of silliness... no R pronounced 'Aaaah', no R added to WASH. No ABOUT pronounced ABOAT (thank you Ontario for your influence on neighbor Michigan), no kindygarden. No T in the middle of a word softened to a D (something was forgodden? Seriously?--silly midwesterners afraid to ASSERT THEMSELVES!!!). Out west they can TALK!

And I swear to you SNUCK is what the English Language is supposed to have adopted. I think it was a dictionary writer prank that stuck SNEAKED in there and a whole bunch of ninnies FELL FOR IT and taught their students!

You know... I'm not the only person who believes this. Take THIS from the Urban dictionary:
SNUCK: common mistake for the past-tense of sneak (the real past-tense is sneaked, but sneaked sounds retarded so it should be snuck)

sneaked sounds totally gay so let's change it to snuck

But besides the Urban Dictionary stamp of approval... lets just look at the definition.

Sneak
Sneaky
Sneaking
Sneaksy (thank you Gollum)

All sort of sound... you know... sneaky!

SNEAKED.

****EPIC FAIL***

Sneaked does NOT sound sneaky. It sounds like an English teacher! How many sneaky English teachers have you had in your life? Well okay, I've had a few (RIP Sylvia James and Judy Chavez—you both ROCKED!)... but that doesn't change my argument, because remember, I LEARNED SNUCK!!!


Digression: Mrs. Chavez's greatest dream was to play one of the witches in a stage production of Macbeth. Man, she was cool.


So what about you? Any words in the English Language that somebody claims are WRONG but you are willing to go to bat for?

Anything that makes you shout RULES SCHMOOLZ! THIS JUST SOUNDS BETTER!



Gollum
Teacher pic

Taff Teachings

Yay! It's Delusional Thursday, which means I don't have to pretend I am a sensible writer who blogs about things that will prove helpful to others.*grins* I mean, it's not that I don't like to blog about serious stuff, it's just that it's not really in my comfort zone, me being the slightly (very) crazy loon that I am.

So today boys and girls, I am going to make a start with your Taff lessons. Now Taff, for those of you who are ignorant of the term, is a Welsh thing. In the southern part of Wales, not too far from where I dwell, is an area referred to as the Taff Vale. Essentially, it is a small part of Wales peppered with lots of little villages. People from the Taff Vale have a language all of their own. Well, it's more a difference of dialect than language actually, but you know what I mean (or at least, you will do).

Taff speak, as I like to call it, is fairly simple for the most part. A variant of English, it's not so hard to learn; you just have to remember a few little rules.

Taff rules (or Taff Rules! if you are a graffiti artist who dwells in the valleys).

1 - Swear. A lot. Almost every sentence should have a swear word in there somewhere. To tone it down for blogging purposes, I tend to use words that rhyme with the original cuss word, and I swear a bit less than I should (but still more than is probably acceptable. *shifty*).

2 - Drop your h's from the beginning of words, and drop your g's from the end of words. Other letters are sometimes missed from the beginning or end of words too, while some letters change sounds - 's' becomes 'z' for instance - but it is far easier for you to see a block of text written in Taff to understand this rather than try to explain every single thing. The h's and the 'gs are the most important, so you should remember this, and then you can work from there.

3 - Make several shorter words into one long word (not forgetting to substitute those quirky letters). We Taffies tend to roll several words into one when we speak, and this is probably one of our most noticeable trends.

4 - Remember the core words/phrases of Taff speak and use them abundantly (see Taff dictionary below).

5 - Swear. A lot. Yes, I know this was rule number one, but it needed repeating. Most important!

6 - The most simple rule of all - type the words literally as they sound in Taff. Obviously most of you are not native Taffies, so this might sound like it would be difficult to do, but fear not, it is really very, very easy! All you have to do is misspell most of your words (see Taff text sample below [below the Taff dictionary below]).


Basic Taff Words and Phrases

Clart - Male person
Clit - Female person
Butt - friend/mate
Mucker - alternative for friend/mate.

like, innit - usually placed at the end of almost every sentence, eg: "I iz right ducked off now, like innit?"
youknowzitmakezsense - a very popular phrase here in the Kair of Diff (for the meaning of 'Kair of Diff', please review next phrase). One of those several words in one thingies - 'you know it makes sense'.
The Kair of Diff - what Taffies call 'Cardiff', which is the capital city of Wales, and also where this Taffy lives. *nods*
lush, tidy, bangin - all variations of describing something that is brilliant, lovely etc.
well '_____' - usually in place of 'very', as in, "Bluddy 'ell, that dinner was well lush, like innit!"
anallat - another popular phrase, this is another one of those several words in one thingies - 'and all that'.
I do - usually added to random phrases, normally when we say we like something - "I loves choclut I do, I loves it!"

I think that is most of the basics covered - definitely enough for a first lesson at any rate. Here comes that Taff text example now, so brace yourselves....

Oi oi butts! Tara yer, intraducing you to the way we speaks yer in the Kair of Diff. Itz probbly goin a lirrle bit ovah yer headz, like, but dunt fret allabourit coz soon it'll all make sense. Fer sum reason, like, lotzapeeps seem to really like this Taff speak, and I reckon they 'as good taste like, coz I bluddy loves it too, I do, I bluddy loves it. Anywayz, although I like 'xplained about the basic rules ov Taff speak, I fort I'd talk a lirrlebirrabou the clarts and clits ov my nayberood. You see, most of us Taffies likes a good rave like, wiv plenty of beer and stuff to gerrus in the right mood. We likes a good rave, we do, especially the clits coz they get to be true to their roots and be total slags. Now a Kairdiff slag is not a propa slag, itz just a nickname for the clits wot like to wear short skirts, and tops that flash their boobage. Youknowzitmakezsense!

Anywayz, dunt be purroff by the fact that we likes swearin, beer and raves like, coz mostly we iz a funluvvin communitee who just happen to be common as muck. Just becoz we swears alot and are a lirrlebi rowdy, we iz a nice bunch really, like innit? I mean, itz not like we iz bluddy crimnals for duckssake! Anywayz, I fink you probbly got the gist ov what we Taffies are like, like, so I iz goin terleeve it there I fink. Dunt want to confoose you more than you probbly already are, like innit?

*****

Now for the good news! If you can understand the above two paragraphs, then you're well on your way to becoming fluent in Taff speak! How cool is that? (Er, maybe not very cool at all if you're not at least a little bit loopy). Further lessons are probably not going to be very useful now that I think about it, as I have explained almost everything you need to know in order to speak Taff. The way forward, if you choose to become proficient, is to practice. *nods* Further reading of Taff speak in general can be found on my blog under the genre label of 'Taffing' (youknowzitmakezsense!), including the debut post which introduced the unsuspecting public to Taffness in the first place. I hope you've enjoyed today's lesson, and I also hope that Taff speak will one day become a universally known language used by one and all.

Well, I can dream, can't I?

Taffy Tara over and out.

Internet First Impressions

It's kind of weird, when you think about it - all of you reading this post right now this minute will be forming an impression of me, the writer, as you go along. Since I don't have my own blog (unlike most of my partners in crime here), I'd say it's a safe bet that most of you don't have any idea who I am (yet...). Most, if not all, interactions that begin on the internet are based on a written form of communication. Just a bunch of letters on a screen, but behind which is an actual, real person. And yet...

Let me jump to a subject currently near (if not at all dear) to my heart: roommate hunting. I live in a great city (Boston, MA), I have a pretty nice apartment (anywhere I get my own bathroom is like a palace to me), and it's in a fantastic neighborhood (green space, public transportation, cool neighbors...). However, I'm also a musician (read: chronically broke) and single, which means that in order to have all these lovely living amenities, I need roommates. Enter Craigslist. *fanfare* I've had quite good luck in the past finding perfectly nice people to live with (the only verifiably psycho roommate I've had I had already known for 8 years when she moved in... oops), but this go-round it's a really bad time of year to have an empty room - everybody is leaving for the summer and no one wants to move in. But we're getting a decent number of responses - and this is where the writing comes in.

It is REALLY REALLY HARD to take someone seriously (at least for me) if they can't spell or punctuate worth a damn, especially in something as potentially life-altering as sharing living quarters. Even if your normal style is casual and peppered with abbreviations and acronyms, when you're trying to make a good first impression on someone, spellcheck is your friend (am I allowed to be amused that Firefox flags "spellcheck" as misspelled?). A typo here or there won't disqualify you, nor will a misplaced comma trigger the "delete" reflex, and if English is your second (or third or fourth) language that's a whole 'nother story... but a one-liner like "omg i need a rom rite now please anser" won't actually get you an answer (yes, I received that email, and boy did it hurt retyping it just now). If I'm going to be living with someone, I want to know that they have the ability to communicate - whether in oral or written form. Too many roommate problems crop up because people talk around things or ignore them while they fester - not a recipe for a peaceful home.

Now, since we're talking about first impressions here (okay, okay, I'm talking... no royal 'we' here, I promise), I wouldn't like all of you to get the idea that I'm some kind of mad Grammar Gestapo or anything. I like a good LOLcat as much as anyone (more than many, honestly), and there are some decidedly odd constructions spilling out of my mouth at any given point in time (hell, sometimes I have trouble staying in one language long enough to finish a sentence). But when you're actively trying to convince someone that you're a sane, stable person whom anyone should be happy to live with, because you're capable of paying the rent on time and not leaving things in the fridge until they turn into unidentifiable smelly mush, you want to take a bit more care about things, yeah? (We are not going to get into the online dating thing. That is another order of magnitude ENTIRELY.)

I think this is why, of the friends I have gotten to know online (though some have broken out of the confines of the computer to throw real-life wild parties {did we actually break that door hinge, you guys?}), most of them are WRITERS. People who can use words as they were meant to be used - to express, rather than obfuscate, meanings and feelings and ideas and, like, y'know, stuff. Hence you will find me here, hanging out with other mad Burrowers, mostly spouting oddities but occasionally wearing the serious hat (like I sort of am now - I think of the serious hat as a slightly tatty black bowler, though, which makes the whole thing less serious, really). All of the buddies-who-are-Burrowers originally caught each others' eyes on message boards, out of text alone - whether it was terrifically clever, surpassingly silly, or just plain weird (the phrase "naked Crisco Twister" comes to mind here, for which I am clearly going to blame The Tart). The clarity of expression, no matter our individual styles - that's what I'm getting at here, and that's what is lacking in so much online communication. If that makes me a wee bit of a snob... I guess I can live with that, but I won't be living with someone who can't string together half a dozen words intelligibly.

So, am I one of the 17 people on the planet who uses semicolons in text messages? Has the sentence "Why am I detailing Latin etymologies in my kitchen at half past midnight?" come out of my mouth recently? Did I get used as a dictionary by my mother over the holiday weekend while she was reading a book I lent her in the first place? Clearly the answer to all these is "yes", but oh well. I will leave you then with some truly inspired and favourite examples of what you might call gibberish, tosh, bosh, rubbish... or just plain fun.

The first verse of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky (the first poem I ever memorized):

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome-raths outgrabe.

Kurt Schwitters' Ursonate (which must be heard to be believed - seriously!)

And the guy at whose feet I grovel for sheer wordy exuberance (and where I got the tip-off for that last burst of insanity) - the phenomenal Stephen Fry! To whom I have been listening rather too much this week. I claim only a minor digression for the addition of these items to the end of this post... I'll leave the major ones for Mari.