Coloring Outside the Lines

I am walking around the department store, when my six-year-old daughter Isabella stops me and utters the words: “Mommy-Huggy”.

I am absolutely mortified, and ask her: “Honey, how many languages do you speak?”

She thinks for a second, and then answers: “Three.”

Just as I am starting my spiel about how, if one knows that many languages, one certainly doesn’t need to use baby words, she interrupts me: “No, wait; Three-and-a-half.”

“What?”

She goes on to explain that, where grandma and grandpa live, ‘dinner’ is called ‘supper’, and I realize: she’s figured out dialect. When did that happen?

It is true that there are many different variations of English; I found that out myself when, years ago, someone held a door for me, I said thank you, and the other person responded with a hearty You Betcha! Back then, I had to ask my husband to translate on a regular basis. I have learned a little more about the sounds of the region since then, and can understand most of those colorful expressions that you don’t find in any high school vocabulary book. I know, for instance, that Well, I suppose ends a conversation. I understand that Well, I’ll be! expresses surprise, and that Jiminy Christmas has nothing at all to do with the holidays. I also found out, through trial and error, that when people say How are you? they don’t really care how your day is going; it just means hello.

Although these regional oddities don’t bother me much, nothing gets me more worked up than misuse of language in general. A small cup of strong coffee is not an expresso, you can’t substitute of for have, and everybody should learn the difference between then and than. And yes, I’ll say it: text messaging doesn’t help. OMG! LOL! Using these types of abbreviations whenever the mood strikes us doesn’t allow us to express more, it makes us express less. It’s a way to rubber stamp the language until there is no originality left.

Of course, I am anything but innocent; I, too, have moments of word poverty, when my grammar sucks, my spelling takes a vacation, and my colloquialisms are invented on the spot. I, too, color outside the lines.

My biggest weakness is the Hm that I substitute whenever I feel like it. Hm, I say to myself when I walk away from a particularly nasty bit of writing, and it means: Not now.

Hm, I’ll say when I open the fridge and see nothing I like. Hm, when my husband doesn’t clean up after himself, and Hm, when I want to watch CNN but can’t because Lou Dobbs is on. If other people notice it, they might get irritated; I don’t know. Nobody’s ever said anything. Until they do, I’ll happily Hm my way through life, subconsciously abbreviating all my private thoughts, and speaking my own version of baby talk.