GENERATIONAL WORDS

 

Language is a living organism.

When I learned English (starting in fifth grade) my teachers, all of them, would have dinged me for referring to a single individual as “they” or “them.”

 

But it’s more than the new pronouns. I learned that generation Zers use the word interesting as a negative, when you don’t want to say someone or something is peculiar in a negative way. To me, interesting is one of the highest compliments.

 

I learned that ending a text* with a period may be grammatically correct, but Zers find it negative and admonishing.

*Speaking of texts, lol and lmao

 

I learned that referring to another as being on the same wavelength is a radio reference that makes me a hundred years old.

 

I learned that rad, short for radical, is high praise. Not being empathetic to radicalism, this feels wrong. Sue me.

(Speaking of, “sue me” is also very baby-boomerish.)

 

Yikes is an expletive/interjection only grandmas use.

 

Bad used to mean bad. Then it became good, as in very good. It’s back to being bad again, depending on the community.

 

Ms., once a neutral replacement to Miss/Mrs., is moving towards Mx. and replaces Mr. also.

 

Language is a living thing, and that’s cool.

 

At least cool, which replaced warmly wonderful, has stuck around since the 1950s.

The Revival of the Telephone Conversation

The Skype/Zoom form of communication was once a novelty, and then a secondary way of conducting business. COVID-19 made it the primary way.

My kids, generation Z/ Millennial, use text for “not in the mood or place to be seen” exchanges, and faceTime/Skype/Zoom for “let’s hang out” times.  It never seems a consideration to use the phone the way we did, for voice only. To be fair, until Email that’s all we had for instant exchanges.

But having to stare at a screen and having it stare back at you for hours on end during these times of minimized in-person connectivity has brought about a kind of screen fatigue.

Young’uns, as well as us old fogies, are using the phone to call and talk, no screens. I didn’t think I’d see that again.

Other strange rollback is the minimization of using public transportation. That was the hip/environmentally correct way to go only a year ago. Now it’s best to drive the family car and better be in it alone, sans family. One car to a person? The horror. 

And remember the reusable grocery bag? That was the conscientious way to go. Now it isn’t allowed. So if you walked to the store, just let them give you those darned disposables to take your food back home.

But of all these things, it’s the sight of young adults using the phone in voice-only mode, which makes me think I went to sleep and woke up in 1990.

I wonder how to reflect all of these^ in my current WIP.