Language of the Apes

My newest guilty pleasure is all the ridiculous quizzes they have on Facebook. I even take them and click “Skip” instead of “Publish” so no one thinks I’m a bigger loser than I am, sitting home drunk on a Friday night taking ridiculous Facebook quizzes, like “How Black are You?” (100%, Thank you very much!).

I clicked on one such quiz recently that promised to give me a Full Personality Analysis. Since my therapist was out of town last week, I figured, great! However, I couldn’t even start the damn quiz, because immediately upon attempting to read the first question, I was confronted by lots of new words I’d never seen before, like “emediately” and “unappritiated.” This was after I had to skip over the misused punctuation, missing prepositions and stumble through the lack of spaces in between words and phrases. I mean, “words” and “phrases.”

My brother and sister can’t even spell “you’re.” It is a really difficult word though…and it’s not like in the top ten most commonly used words in the English language or anything. And speaking of the “English language,” what the hell is happening to it?? The first problem was spell check… so now no one needs to know how to spell things correctly. Then it was texting, so no one even needs to spell at all.

Of all the things I love that are becoming extinct (stationery, sun bathing, trans-fats…) I think the English language is probably the most important. However, I eventually recognize a lost cause (once I’m bleeding, battered, and completely exhausted), and this is a lost cause. What’s the point of trying to teach the difference of the verb tenses of lay and lie when people don’t even understand simple sentence structure?!? Deep breaths, wwhhhooooohhh ok. There’s nothing to be done. Our only choice at this point is to breed into the new culture, or run- run far far far away and live in the mountains somewhere where they’ll find our descendants 1,000 years from now speaking very properly (and kill them on sight).

I think it’s a good thing though. At the beginning of every language is a period where it slowly evolved from another language, like an awkward teenager going through puberty. English itself didn’t become what it is today until like 500 years ago. So, my guess is the English that we speak in America today is slowly going to devolve into a combination of English, Ebonics, and Spanglish. Although at the rate we’re going, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it completely devolved into a language of numbers and stick figures.

In the effort of trying to build a bridge to the future, I took the Full Personality Analysis quiz. And somehow through my screams and whimpering, and mounting feelings of rage and speechless awe, I finished it. I even expanded my vocabulary to include words like “cyrcles” and “eanugh.” And I was happily surprised to find that the outcome of the quiz was correct. I am unique and indescribable. At least these people have some cognitive ability, although if they could express they-selves in a way that don’t give me a massive headache and the urge to bludgeon someone with a dictionary, son, I would love it. I can’t wait for the future. Where’s the aspirin?