Weird Lingo. Please Stop.

            With a changing world, we can expect a changing language. Regardless if what is changing is the dialect, accent, diction, sentence structure, style, tone, or the linguistics of the language, it is happening before our very own eyes. My sister, a Spanish Education major at the University of Northern Iowa, who in fact just graduated this past weekend, is someone who understands language and where it comes from. She is extremely interested in the roots and history of Spanish, where and how it’s used, the cultural aspect and relations with Hispanic cultures, and finally educating people on the Spanish language. I respect her deeply because she is well educated in this topic and deserves to get a job in order to put her passions into action. She understands real language, with real words, used in a correct manner.

            Some of my fellow classmates and underclassmen think they know everything about the English language, and those brainiacs probably even think they are fluent in Japanese by now… let me tell you, your hard work will pay off, but you haven’t learned everything yet dearies.

There are also the street kids who think they’re cool and use slang and other weird lingo to express their emotion and sound “cool.” Swerve, swag, ballin’, YOLO, ratchet, beast, whether new or old lingo is nevertheless, annoying.

While trying to pay attention in my AP Spanish class a couple of weeks ago, Jose, the sophomore Peruvian native continues to tap on his desk, kick his legs, and whisper “swerve” over and over. At first it was just irritating and I could ignore it, however after he continued to make nonsense comments after anything someone said, I simply said: “Jose! Stop trying to make yourself look cool by using a fake word!”

All I am asking for, and all I am trying to explain, for you, my reader, is to understand that it’s better to sound educated and smart by using correct grammar… promise me, it is! It’s ok to sound grammatically correct and for people to say: “Wow! This girl knows what she’s talking about!” Americans often complain that our education system is far behind Great Britain, Japan, China, and India to name a few. But if we allow our children and siblings to talk like that, and don’t bring any notion of change, we are only encouraging them and telling kids that it’s ok to talk like that.

Pick up a dictionary. Pick up a thesaurus. Get knowledge. Be proud of your education. Appreciate the education we get for free. Don’t take it for granted. Please: make the weird lingo stop.  (437)