THE LANGUAGE OF BABY BOOMERS

An Introductory Note

One of the most interesting and rich contributions to the English language comes from the baby boomer generation. The worlds of politics, business, medicine, law, technology, military, music and entertainment, street usage, toys and fads, social trends, fashion and media are just a few of the sources of the great spate of neologisms, or newly-coined words.

A PERSON NAMED "BOOMER"

Part of the most populous generation in American history, a baby boomer (we'll call her Boomer for short) entered the earthly stage in 1950. During the first decade of her life, she was unaware that a multitude of brave new words were making their way into her world and becoming enshrined in American English dictionaries -- air show, desegregation, carbon dating, egg cream, hi-fi, H-bomb, idiot box, jet set, junk mail, karate, knee-jerk, Little League, nerd, overkill, panic button, quantum leap, queen-size, show-and-tell, snow blower, tank top, urban sprawl, veggies, wash-and-wear, world-class, and yellow pages.

But as she became an adult, then a soccer mom, and, ultimately, an empty-nester, she began to realize that a gazillion neologisms -- around five thousand new words each year! -- were altering the way she looked at the world and occasionally requiring a reality check. Stressed out from life in the fast track spent networking with yuppies, yumpies, and dinks, she disconnected her cellular phone and paid some megabucks to go to a fat farm. Feeling like a couch potato, she stopped her feeding frenzies and gave the high five to grazing on nouvelle cuisine.

As newly minted words added to the currency of the language of the wicked awesome 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Boomer felt as if she was having a bad-hair day every day in a world in which the parts of speech and meanings of words transmogrified under her very eyes and ears. FAX, Fedex, microwave, scroll, and Xerox had turned into verbs, and Bill Murray got slimed in the 1984 blockbuster Ghostbusters. Crack meant more than just a small opening, and ice more than frozen water, and going postal became not just a decision to mail a letter.

A pocket wasn't just for pants, and a bar code was no longer just ethics for lawyers or the etiquette of behavior in a cafe, and rap wasn't just '60s talk. Zapping was not something that futuristic ray guns did but something that people did with a microwave or a television remote control (along with surfing). A set point was no longer just a tennis score, and spin was not just what a tennis ball did, especially in the hands of the spin doctors.

IRA no longer stood just for "Irish Republican Army," CD s were no longer just certificates, and PC came to signify both personal computer and politically correct. A pound was no longer just a unit of currency or measurement but, in the words of James J. Kilpatrick, my colleague in columny, "the little thingamajig above the 3 on a standard typewriter or computer keyboard. It looks like a blank tic tac toe game that has had too much to drink."

Known as "elephant's ear" in Sweden, "small snail" in France and Italy, "cat tail" in Finland, "monkey tail" in Holland, "spider monkey" in Germany, "cinnamon cake" in Norway, "little dog" in Russia, and "shtrudel" in Israel, the @ -- or "at-sign" -- has become a standard symbol in electronic addresses. Used for centuries in the sense of "each at the price of," the @ has taken on the locative sense of "at."

In fact, the hot new technology of the computer thoroughly befuddled the meanings of back up, bit, boot, browser, crash, disk, dot, hacker, hard drive, hit, mail, memory, menu, mouse, net, park, prompt, provider, scroll, spam, surf, virus, Web site (no longer just where Charlotte lives), and window. As the wonders of the computer impacted on her mind, she acquired a new user-friendly vocabulary: clip art, desktop publishing, emoticon, floppy disk, ink-jet, Internet, keypad, kludge, laptop, morphing, mouse potato (a couch potato attached to a computer), number crunching, software, spreadsheet, and voice recognition.

To add to these sound bytes, bit-map, chat room, HTML, home page, netiquette, netizen, URL, VCR, World Wide Web, zettabyte -- and, of course, millennium bug (shortened to Y2K) -- all debuted in dictionaries in the 1990s.

No wonder that Boomer began feeling like a dissed gomer, dumbed-down dweeb, bummed out newbie, totally loose cannon, and ditzy airhead. As the Me Generation (a term invented by the writer Tom Wolfe) grew up and grayed, our disoriented Boomer found that the business of America appeared to be business, and the business of business was to devise a lexicon of new terms to describe new fiscal realities. The second half of the twentieth century was a "golden" age of commerce -- golden handshakes, golden hellos, and golden parachutes.

The increasingly proactive world of business also gave us ATMs, baby Bells, bank card, debit card, domestic partner, entry level, Euro dollar, family leave, glass ceiling, intrapreneurs, maxed out, pink collar, PIN, power breakfasts and power lunches, and power ties, program trading, quality circles, queen bees, telemarketing, and white knights. But Boomer found that life among the movers and shakers was fraught with the perils of greenmail, hostile takeovers, junk bonds, leveraged buyouts, and poison pills. It was also a decade of considerable monkey business -- sleazebags and sleazeballs engaging in insider trading, often leaving paper trails that led to smoking guns and white collar prisons.

Boomer was bombarded with hundreds of high-tech brave new words for a brave new world of science and technology. She found herself playing telephone tag with such cutting edge dictionary entries as blusher, bullet train, call forwarding and call waiting, CAT scan, COBOL, cold fusion, faux pearls (and faux anything else), fiber-optic, fuzz-buster, global warming, greenhouse effect, laser, makeover, meltdown, microwaveable, nuclear winter, quark, super collider, tanning booth (and bed ), voice activated, voice mail (a new oxymoron), and voiceprint.

As Boomer grew up, she found that medical breakthroughs broke into the headlines almost every day: alternative medicine, arthroscopy, attention deficit disorder, bikini cut, genetic counseling, geriatrician, ibuprofen, in vitro fertilization, liposuction, liquid diet, live liver donor transplant, Lyme disease, mad cow disease, minoxidil, passive smoking, PMS, product tampering, Prozac, seasonal affective disorder (which yields the bacronym SAD), sunblock, taxol, and toxic shock syndrome.

For a while, she joined the fitness craze and became a triathlete who built up her abs and glutes with low-impact aerobics, aquacise, dancercise, and jazzercise. At the same time, Boomer was troubled by the spread of AIDS drugs through the decade and the population -- ARC, AZT, HIV complex, homophobia, and safe sex (had it ever been safe?); crackhead, crackhouse, freebase, gateway drug, ice, and narcoterrorism.

Our Boomer became swept up in an age marked by considerable political and social change, and this change in turn left its mark on the American language -- action clothing, Afrocentric, bag lady, blended family, carjacking, charter school, codependent, condo conversion, Contra, co-parent, designated driver, designer jeans (genes, or anything else), distance learning, disinformation, Ebonics, exit poll, extended care, gentrification, gerontocracy, glasnost, global village, gridlock, happy hour (which usually lasts longer than an hour), health spa, high top, homeschooler, Kwanza, mall rat, managed care, no-growth, quality time, POSSLQ, rust belt (or bowl), seatbelt laws, significant other, single parent, singles bar, stepfamily, superfund, surrogate mother, touchy feelie, and trophy wife.

Boomer learned to come to terms with glitzy, in-your-face new entertainment terms, such as acid rock, action figure, boom box, breakdancing, bungee jumping, cable-ready, camcorder, channel surfing, clear channel, colorization, closed and open captioned, docudrama and documusical, extreme sports, gangsta rap, ghetto blasters, hackysack, high top, infotainment, laser and compact disks, line dancing, MTV, new wave music, new age anything, road rage, slam dunk, snowboarding, sound bite, snowboarding, televangelist, ten-speed, and veejay.

Lucky Boomer. Throughout her life, a growing interest by foodies in ethnic and regional cuisine added a menu of new words to the American palate, food court, and vocabulary. The American obsession with food is reflected in the neologisms bagel chips and bagel dogs, biscotti, blush wine, brew decaf, buffalo wings, callaloo, chimichanga, corn dog, enoki, fajita, farfalle, frozen yogurt, green goddess dressing, ice wine, latte, mesclun, microbrew, oat bran, primavera, ranch dressing, sea legs, shiitaki, smoothie, surimi, and wine coolers -- many of which are comfort foods, not junk foods. Boomer wasn't really distraught, and certainly wasn't ready to quit the day job or go postal or ballistic.

In fact, this whole business of linguistic change was a no-brainer to her. She knew that, just as one never steps into the same river twice, one cannot step into the same language twice -- that, even as one enters, the words are swept downstream into the future, forever making a different river. Or, to switch the metaphor, she knew that language is like a tree that sheds its leaves and grows new ones so that it may live on. Changes in our vocabulary occur not from decay or degeneration. Rather, new words, like new leaves, are essential to a living, healthy organism. A language draws its nutrients from the environment in which its speakers live.

Throughout history, as people have met with new objects, experiences, and ideas, they have needed new words to describe them. During the second half of the twentieth century, the tree of American English experienced a riot of new growth -- a sign that our multifoliate language is deeply rooted in the nourishing soil of change.

Thanks to R. Lederer

A BRIEF LOOK AT THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH

from Merriam-Websters Dictionary

The history of English is conventionally, if perhaps too neatly, divided into three periods usually called Old English (or Anglo-Saxon), Middle English, and Modern English. The earliest period begins with the migration of certain Germanic tribes from the continent to Britain in the fifth century A. D., though no records of their language survive from before the seventh century, and it continues until the end of the eleventh century or a bit later. By that time Latin, Old Norse (the language of the Viking invaders), and especially the Anglo-Norman French of the dominant class after the Norman Conquest in 1066 had begun to have a substantial impact on the lexicon, and the well-developed inflectional system that typifies the grammar of Old English had begun to break down.

The following brief sample of Old English prose illustrates several of the significant ways in which change has so transformed English that we must look carefully to find points of resemblance between the language of the tenth century and our own. It is taken from Aelfric's "Homily on St. Gregory the Great" and concerns the famous story of how that pope came to send missionaries to convert the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity after seeing Anglo-Saxon boys for sale as slaves in Rome:

Eft he axode, hu ğære ğeode nama wære şe hi of comon. Him wæs geandwyrd, şæt hi Angle genemnode wæron. Şa cwæğ he, "Rihtlice hi sind Angle gehatene, for ğan ğe hi engla wlite habbağ, and swilcum gedafenağ şæt hi on heofonum engla geferan beon."

A few of these words will be recognized as identical in spelling with their modern equivalents -- he, of, him, for, and, on -- and the resemblance of a few others to familiar words may be guessed -- nama to name, comon to come, wære to were, wæs to was -- but only those who have made a special study of Old English will be able to read the passage with understanding. The sense of it is as follows: "Again he [St. Gregory] asked what might be the name of the people from which they came. It was answered to him that they were named Angles. Then he said, 'Rightly are they called Angles because they have the beauty of angels, and it is fitting that such as they should be angels' companions in heaven.' "

Some of the words in the original have survived in altered form, including axode (asked), hu (how), rihtlice (rightly), engla (angels), habbağ (have), swilcum (such), heofonum (heaven), and beon (be). Others, however, have vanished from our lexicon, mostly without a trace, including several that were quite common words in Old English: eft "again," ğeode "people, nation," cwæğ "said, spoke," gehatene "called, named," wlite "appearance, beauty," and geferan "companions." Recognition of some words is naturally hindered by the presence of two special characters, ş, called "thorn," and ğ, called "edh," which served in Old English to represent the sounds now spelled with th.

Other points worth noting include the fact that the pronoun system did not yet, in the late tenth century, include the third person plural forms beginning with th-: hi appears where we would use they. Several aspects of word order will also strike the reader as oddly unlike ours. Subject and verb are inverted after an adverb -- şa cwæğ he "Then said he" -- a phenomenon not unknown in Modern English but now restricted to a few adverbs such as never and requiring the presence of an auxiliary verb like do or have. In subordinate clauses the main verb must be last, and so an object or a preposition may precede it in a way no longer natural: şe hi of comon "which they from came," for ğan ğe hi engla wlite habbağ "because they angels' beauty have."

Perhaps the most distinctive difference between Old and Modern English reflected in Aelfric's sentences is the elaborate system of inflections, of which we now have only remnants. Nouns, adjectives, and even the definite article are inflected for gender, case, and number: ğære ğeode "(of) the people" is feminine, genitive, and singular, Angle "Angles" is masculine, accusative, and plural, and swilcum "such" is masculine, dative, and plural. The system of inflections for verbs was also more elaborate than ours: for example, habbağ "have" ends with the -ağ suffix characteristic of plural present indicative verbs. In addition, there were two imperative forms, four subjunctive forms (two for the present tense and two for the preterit, or past, tense), and several others which we no longer have.

Even where Modern English retains a particular category of inflection, the form has often changed. Old English present participles ended in -ende not -ing, and past participles bore a prefix ge- (as geandwyrd "answered" above). The period of Middle English extends roughly from the twelfth century through the fifteenth.

The influence of French (and Latin, often by way of French) upon the lexicon continued throughout this period, the loss of some inflections and the reduction of others (often to a final unstressed vowel spelled -e) accelerated, and many changes took place within the phonological and grammatical systems of the language.

A typical prose passage, especially one from the later part of the period, will not have such a foreign look to us as Aelfric's prose has; but it will not be mistaken for contemporary writing either. The following brief passage is drawn from a work of the late fourteenth century called Mandeville's Travels. It is fiction in the guise of travel literature, and, though it purports to be from the pen of an English knight, it was originally written in French and later translated into Latin and English. In this extract Mandeville describes the land of Bactria, apparently not an altogether inviting place, as it is inhabited by "full yuele [evil] folk and full cruell."

In şat lond ben trees şat beren wolle, as şogh it were of scheep; whereof men maken clothes, and all şing şat may ben made of wolle. In şat contree ben many ipotaynes, şat dwellen som tyme in the water, and somtyme on the lond: and şei ben half man and half hors, as I haue seyd before; and şei eten men, whan şei may take hem. And şere ben ryueres and watres şat ben fulle byttere, şree sithes more şan is the water of the see. In şat contré ben many griffounes, more plentee şan in ony other contree. Sum men seyn şat şei han the body vpward as an egle, and benethe as a lyoun: and treuly şei seyn soth şat şei ben of şat schapp. But o griffoun hath the body more gret, and is more strong, şanne eight lyouns, of suche lyouns as ben o this half; and more gret and strongere şan an hundred egles, suche as we han amonges vs. For o griffoun şere wil bere fleynge to his nest a gret hors, 3if he may fynde him at the poynt, or two oxen 3oked togidere, as şei gon at the plowgh.

The spelling is often peculiar by modern standards and even inconsistent within these few sentences (contré and contree, o [griffoun] and a [gret hors], şanne and şan, for example). Moreover, in the original text, there is in addition to thorn another old character 3, called "yogh," to make difficulty. It can represent several sounds but here may be thought of as equivalent to y. Even the older spellings (including those where u stands for v or vice versa) are recognizable, however, and there are only a few words like ipotaynes "hippopotamuses" and sithes "times" that have dropped out of the language altogether.

We may notice a few words and phrases that have meanings no longer common such as byttere "salty," o this half "on this side of the world," and at the poynt "to hand," and the effect of the centuries-long dominance of French on the vocabulary is evident in many familiar words which could not have occurred in Aelfric's writing even if his subject had allowed them, words like contree, ryueres, plentee, egle, and lyoun.

In general word order is now very close to that of our time, though we notice constructions like hath the body more gret and three sithes more şan is the water of the see. We also notice that present tense verbs still receive a plural inflection as in beren, dwellen, han, and ben and that while nominative şei has replaced Aelfric's hi in the third person plural, the form for objects is still hem. All the same, the number of inflections for nouns, adjectives, and verbs has been greatly reduced, and in most respects Mandeville is closer to Modern than to Old English.

The period of Modern English extends from the sixteenth century to our own day. The early part of this period saw the completion of a revolution in the phonology of English that had begun in late Middle English and that effectively redistributed the occurrence of the vowel phonemes to something approximating their present pattern. (Mandeville's English would have sounded even less familiar to us than it looks.)

Other important early developments include the stabilizing effect on spelling of the printing press and the beginning of the direct influence of Latin and, to a lesser extent, Greek on the lexicon. Later, as English came into contact with other cultures around the world and distinctive dialects of English developed in the many areas which Britain had colonized, numerous other languages made small but interesting contributions to our word-stock.

The historical aspect of English really encompasses more than the three stages of development just under consideration. English has what might be called a prehistory as well. As we have seen, our language did not simply spring into existence; it was brought from the Continent by Germanic tribes who had no form of writing and hence left no records. Philologists know that they must have spoken a dialect of a language that can be called West Germanic and that other dialects of this unknown language must have included the ancestors of such languages as German, Dutch, Low German, and Frisian.

They know this because of certain systematic similarities which these languages share with each other but do not share with, say, Danish. However, they have had somehow to reconstruct what that language was like in its lexicon, phonology, grammar, and semantics as best they can through sophisticated techniques of comparison developed chiefly during the last century.

Similarly, because ancient and modern languages like Old Norse and Gothic or Icelandic and Norwegian have points in common with Old English and Old High German or Dutch and English that they do not share with French or Russian, it is clear that there was an earlier unrecorded language that can be called simply Germanic and that must be reconstructed in the same way.

Still earlier, Germanic was just a dialect (the ancestors of Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit were three other such dialects) of a language conventionally designated Indo-European, and thus English is just one relatively young member of an ancient family of languages whose descendants cover a fair portion of the globe.

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