Keeping up with the vocabulary
I’ve always thought I handle change fairly well. Not that I particularly like change. As an old- school conservative am content to see things basically stay as they are until someone can convince me otherwise. I think it’s because, inevitably, change requires adjustment and adjustment requires effort and as one gets older effort is increasingly in short supply.
Goodness knows I’ve seen enough of it. Born in the radio age and in an era where phones had an operator on the other end of the line, I‘ve marveled at the development of computers, wireless transmission, self-driving cars and astronauts living in space. I’ve worked as a journalist, a sailor, a teacher, a civil servant, a bar manager and as the operator of a theatre. Each new form of employment required a different set of skills and the learning curve was often steep but I managed to change nevertheless. But now I’m stumped, and it’s all words.
You see, I no longer understand the vocabulary of my life. It was easy at first. “See Dick run. Run Dick run. Jane has a cat,” the words jumped off the page in grade one and as I moved through school the words became longer. I developed an understanding of syllables and where to place the emphasis in words like “popsicle” so that it didn’t sound like something dad rode to work.
By the time I got to university I was throwing around terms like “dialectical materialism” and “the elasticity of demand” and actually understanding them, though some of my professors might take exception to that last claim. I could read Shakespeare and enjoy it. Philosophers became comprehensible, well, with the exception of Spinoza but then nobody understood Spinoza not even his wife. Life made sense at least in a literal way. Not any more.
Knowing the difference between principal and principle is no longer enough. Today I am faced with trying to use “Diltiazem-cd” and “Rosuvastatin” in a sentence and remembering to take both every day. Where I once had to simply differentiate between horizontal and vertical hold on my television set I now have to comprehend “250 Gb bandwidth”, “25 Mbps” and “Home hub 2000 modem” before I can even decide whether to switch from Videotron to Bell.
Nor is it only in the area of science that I find myself truly at a loss for words. Many of you will have followed the difficulties of University of Toronto professor, Jordan Peterson, who refused to use gender neutral pronouns such as “ze” and “hir” instead of the standard he or she. For his pains, Peterson was duly flogged in the media for days. I’m still trying to figure out what the “Q” stands for in LGBTQ.
Even the good old, once reliable, Oxford English Dictionary, considered by most as the definitive guide to the English language, is having trouble keeping up. In the last edition “chatoosie”, “gin daisy” and “widdly” all made the cut. It turns out a “chantoosie” is a female singer. (There is actually an Australian pop group called Chantoozies which features four female lead singers. I don’t know if they refer to each other as “hir” or not.) A gin daisy is a cocktail made of gin, lemon juice, sugar and a drop of grenadine. As to the widdly, your guess is as good as mine.
The point is, not only am I slower in adopting new mechanisms, whether it be an ipad or Skype or a self-driven paint brush, but I am increasingly unable to communicate with those who are active participants in this headlong rush to a world of artificial intelligence.
At this rate, by the time I reach eighty, I’ll need an interpreter, or a ten-year-old, just to turn on the stove.