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February 22, 2005

language is krunk, yo.

i've always been fascinated with the fluidity of language. it's a living thing, both changing and being changed by time, place, speaker, and listener. since i've started volunteer teaching an adult literacy class, i've had to think about language even more, often in uncomfortable, junior-high-grammar-rules ways. students will take the most random vocabulary word discussions and come up with complex questions for me, which i usually answer in two ways:
1. i make something up from memory shreds of misty, arcane rules i don't really recall but that somehow i just Know This Is Right, So It Is, and everyone agrees.
2. i just admit i haven't the slightest clue Why This Rule Happens but i'll get back to you next week, okay?

i had to settle on option 2 regarding that stupid, ridiculous rule about not ending sentences with propositions. i claimed that this was an outdated tradition that just makes you sound awkward and starchy, causing you to wrestle words into annoying sentence structures. rules should naturally grow from real-time language usage, and not be forced upon it! yeah! set those propositions free! my students still insisted on some sort of guideline. fine, i said, i'll get back to you.
well, i did my research and discovered that in the 18th century, some crabby guy with too much time on his hands named Robert Lowth decided to make up a bunch of English grammar guidelines following Latin rules. Mr. Lowth was a big fat dork, because English doesn't come from Latin, it's sort of an old musty Germanic language. however, this didn't stop him from going off on the supposed errors in others' writings; by others, i mean people like Alexander Pope, John Donne, and even the King James Bible. Mr. Lowth clearly thought he was all that, and now his overinflated ego still haunts poor English students to this day. people, stop worrying: prepositions are fine to end your sentences with.

okay! enough grammar! you're thinking, with glazed-over eyes. let's get to krunk! fine then, i won't bore you with the guidelines i'll take to class this week. so all this rumination about language made think about the origins of words, of idioms, of slang. i just finished working on a show where the cast (average age: 18 yrs.) liked to say "krunk" all the time. the problem was that the usage was decidedly not consistent. from context alone, krunk could refer to a value judgement ranging from straight up da bomb (the most amazing, wonderful thing ever), to seriously wack (the worst possible). see, once "krunk" became the slang word of choice amongst the cast, only a few really knew how to use it properly, and the rest just repeated it whenever they guessed it might work -- mostly wrongly. (i will refrain from pointing out the krunk-abusers' ethnicities...)

and there you see the problem: i just used the word "proper" in relation to slang usage. yes, even slang has rules, though they change with every new fad and music video. we all know that just as our parents didn't understand our slang, we most likely won't understand our kids' either, unless we listen very carefully and are willing to ask questions that will earn a disgusted eyeball-roll.

that's how language is a ticket in: in to a group, in to a culture, in to a society where what you say labels you as either in the know or way out of it. a kid asking "yo, is my shirt krunk?" and trying to guess what it means based on the answer is no different from my students asking me if they can end a sentence with a preposition. neither wants to be outside. both want to be accepted.

and just for the record, krunk basically means crazy good. well, at least for now it does.

Posted by hadashi at February 22, 2005 1:01 PM

Comments

Posted by: emily at February 23, 2005 4:42 PM

Posted by: hadashi at February 26, 2005 1:01 PM

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