Without any undue story-buildup, let me present some interesting phrases which are easily encountered in day-to-day conversation and which make a person, not so gifted in the mental faculties like me, think about their meaning and even relevance to the present situation:
1. "Like whatever dude" : I hereby contest that mankind in all its humble ingenuity has never ever come up with a vaguer concoction of words. To even think that a set of just 3 words could convey so much vagueness is overwhelming. Look at the sentence. 'Whatever' in itself is probably the single most confused and vague word ever invented by man. It points to no one in particular. It references no particular direction of thought. And worse, it simultaneously tries to point to and reference every possible subject under the sun. If I were given the authority of replacing 'whatever' with something else, I would rather have decreed that whenever someone needs to use 'whatever', he would rather just maintain silence for 2.3 seconds (written as "Like -------- dude"). See, it communicates as much meaning with a negligible waste of energy. Nevertheless, then the speaker is trying to equate some situation with 'whatever'. Now, I would not have gone nuts if 'like' was a normal word. 'Like', in modern societies is spoken not as a verb or a preposition but as a conjunction (for eg. 'and') and is just used to join sentences so different from each other that every such usage of 'like' is disturbing the sleep of dead victorians all across the world. Nevertheless, even if we take this usage of like in the prepositional spirit, what is the speaker trying to convey ? I might have asked him, so how was the food ? Pat came the answer, 'Like whatever dude', and I with an obviously stunted social comprehension factor is left in the lurch to ruminate over the multitude of possibilities that the food could have tasted like.
Crap!, I thought academia was difficult and art was difficult and a million other elaborately planned human pastimes were difficult. I never thought that I would be so stumped by just 3 words. To the proponents of modern language, I present to thee, my head on a platter :).
P.S: I thought that I would include a few more phrases but this one turned out to have a lot more potential than I expected. So others will have to wait.
1. "Like whatever dude" : I hereby contest that mankind in all its humble ingenuity has never ever come up with a vaguer concoction of words. To even think that a set of just 3 words could convey so much vagueness is overwhelming. Look at the sentence. 'Whatever' in itself is probably the single most confused and vague word ever invented by man. It points to no one in particular. It references no particular direction of thought. And worse, it simultaneously tries to point to and reference every possible subject under the sun. If I were given the authority of replacing 'whatever' with something else, I would rather have decreed that whenever someone needs to use 'whatever', he would rather just maintain silence for 2.3 seconds (written as "Like -------- dude"). See, it communicates as much meaning with a negligible waste of energy. Nevertheless, then the speaker is trying to equate some situation with 'whatever'. Now, I would not have gone nuts if 'like' was a normal word. 'Like', in modern societies is spoken not as a verb or a preposition but as a conjunction (for eg. 'and') and is just used to join sentences so different from each other that every such usage of 'like' is disturbing the sleep of dead victorians all across the world. Nevertheless, even if we take this usage of like in the prepositional spirit, what is the speaker trying to convey ? I might have asked him, so how was the food ? Pat came the answer, 'Like whatever dude', and I with an obviously stunted social comprehension factor is left in the lurch to ruminate over the multitude of possibilities that the food could have tasted like.
Crap!, I thought academia was difficult and art was difficult and a million other elaborately planned human pastimes were difficult. I never thought that I would be so stumped by just 3 words. To the proponents of modern language, I present to thee, my head on a platter :).
P.S: I thought that I would include a few more phrases but this one turned out to have a lot more potential than I expected. So others will have to wait.
6 comments:
@ankit: I think these 3 words convey the greatest degree of apathy to the subject in discussion or the world in general. It's a state of mind which most of the people are living in these days...what say?
I guess its more a state of boredom as well as utter confusion of thought.
I guess I should start incorporating it in my speech as well :).
Btw I hope that the perpetuator of this syntax is still alive, inspite of being in your reach...?
haan aab airport wali rant kab likh rahe ho? haha
So sorry for replying so late but I was out of town...
@Aabeirah: I think you are right... It does show how apathic people have become but I had written this just for humour's sake. Hence any serious interpretation, although entirely unintended, nevertheless is surely welcome :).
@Anurup: I thought of ending the life of the poor soul who uttered this sentence but then I thought, to uphold fair judgement, I might have to pretty much annihilate most of the human population :). I don't think I have that much time :)...
@Amitesh: Airport waali rant likhta lekin waapsi ki yaatra ekdum jhakkas ho gayee isliye dimaag thanda hai
@ankit kyon?... kaun badnaseeb tumhare bagal me baith gaya/gayi?
Ye Inflicter of Damage on Unsuspecting Pure* Souls, Ye should start calling yourself "iRock"
* to be pronounced Poor
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