Commentary by H.G. Listiak

Thursday 09/04/2003

Welcome to my world, where at best I consider myself an almost failing but none the less, a student of the English language, the most difficult in the whole world. The bench mark for the language is the Oxford Dictionary published of course at Oxford University in England, where they keep adding words, some not even English, to make our spoken tongue even more complicated. The new Oxford Dictionary is out with 3000 new words that are supposed to reflect our quote, "Scientific and Cultural Changes", totally confusing those who are nerdish enough to still play scrabble. Yes, nerd is now an official English word, so is geek, which used to be a carnival freak but is now a computer related term. The numbers 24 slash 7 are somehow now a word, with bad-hair-day now one hyphenated word. Tony Soprano's boob bar is now an official English word, the phrase Bada Bing is listed as an effortless act. Slow witted makes you a Muppet, and eeyorish is one with a gloomy outlook on life, courtesy of Winnie the Pooh. Blog, short for web log, is the latest word, as is Ego surfing, which is searching the Internet for references of one's self. Prairie dogging is official, referring to workers in cubicles who raise their heads over the partitions to see what's going on, and it doesn't even have to be English to make the English dictionary any more. Chacha is Hindi for Uncle, Dou Dou is West Indian for a dear one, Sicbo is a Chinese dice game, and Bashert is Yiddish for fate. All of them are now official English words. Purchasing the New Oxford Dictionary quickly turned from Bada Bing to Eeyorish for me when I looked at the price tag for the 20 volume set, $2,862.00 dollars. Since I don't have a rich Cha Cha, and I'm not good at Sicbo, I'm forced to go Muppet and pass; as I see it…I'm H.G. Listiak.