This is a long blog, so bear or bare with me if you choose. Henry Thoreau and Robert Frost asked to “simplify, simplify, simplify.” We are certainly doing that with popular word choice. American English is indeed a living, limber language. It borrows from any other language it pleases, changes its own so-called rules or methods of organization and what is acceptable and what is not, and just makes vocabulary up where none existed before. You have to love its robustness while wondering how anyone can ever learn it. English is willing to change with its times, being quite susceptible to popular culture. As we busily add to the language, we also delete much of the wealth and subtleties of English. While there is nothing new in saying this, the speed at which this happens surpasses previous evolutionary language change. This can put a writer and reader in a quandary.

A classic example is the language change on the local television news and weather. As a former journalist, I subject myself to the debasement of watching what no normal young person in their right mind would watch, hence all the senior citizen drug commercials every three minutes. Where we live in southwest Washington, we endure four major network stations, all based in Portland, Oregon. These Yumpy Portlandias usually compete with each other by using the same format of having two narcissistic news anchors, a weather person (a.k.a. “Chief Meteorologist,” blessed by thy name), a fired-up usually semi-comic sports broadcaster, and, depending on the time of day, various others reporting on traffic commute times, health issues, more health issues, did I mention health issues? and what is trending on the Internet. In other words, except for the usual gang shootings and city hall and court house beats, there is no “hard news” unless it is pilfered from the national network outlet, which will repeat the stories in the following half hour anyway. Just in case we are not paying attention, Friday night reports repeat over the weekend and on Monday. To their credit, the stations do occasionally feature worthy investigative reporting to keep their hand in when it comes time for regional broadcasting awards to be doled out.

Under FCC regulations, all these stations must pretend to work as a service to the community in return for using the air waves that belong to all of us. Each broadcast “team” tries to convince us of the great job they are doing, by adopting such slogans as “We Are on Your Side” (how do they know which side I am on?), “Watching Out for You” (They had better if they tick me off one more time!), and “This Is Home” (Then why don’t you watch your language, find some news, and please wipe off your feet!) They all now hope that we will become part of their “teams” by communicating to them our own news stories to help them fill their news-less space. This has led to endless stories of parents posting some gripe with different schools. Do we really care if Johnny missed a bus?

The Weather Shtick Vortex of Poor Speech misses the bus too. Do egotistical weather announcers on television hear what they are saying? Talk about word padding to sound important and to stretch out the time they have to compete with the news anchors! It used to be that we could expect rain, but no longer. Now we can expect rain events, or have a rain scenario, or have rain issues, or experience rain conditions, or we will enter a rain mode!

Or even worse, “I think in my own mind, we are going to enter a rain regime either in the midday time frame or going towards the evening hours. We can even expect steady rain at times.” First of all, if the chief meteorologist thinks in his own mind, where else would he think–in his big toe? Sounds like it. Secondly does he or she know the difference between regime and regimen? I think, in my own mind, NOT. And if it only rains at times, how can the rain be steady? Probably all that was really meant was, “We can expect rain around noon or dusk.” And I’m sure the rain will be ongoing, to use the darling word of all announcers. It used to be that rain could continue or linger, but no longer. All things must be ongoing, wiping out all other words in the English language. It’s an ongoing problem. Oops! We can’t say problem any longer either. We now only have issues. And if the weather is really bad, “it can be concerning.” I didn’t know that weather had feelings so that it could be concerned. I suspect that these announcers mean the threat of weather can be disconcerting, or the announcer was concerned about the bad weather, but what do I know! Lastly, they usually say that a weather front or something is going to try “and” do something, rather than the correct try “to” do something. We have ongoing issues with this “stuff.”

Likewise, connectives such as “likewise,” “in addition,” “however,” “furthermore,” “consequently,” “moreover,” “nevertheless,” “otherwise,” “therefore,” “in contrast,” and a host of other words that show different. distinct relationships and emphasis between thoughts, aren’t even protected under The Endangered Species Act, as “but” or “and, ” or the current darling of financial broadcasters “that said,” or the continuing infatuation with the now ancient Valley Girl Talk’s “like” reduce the language . Like…. in other words, like the news, all ideas are like rendered equal, much like whether or not Kim Kardashian has like again changed her hair color is like given the same amount of time on the news as like a national disaster. That said, for some people, KK is a national disaster, but I did not like say that. Just sayin.’

As weather broadcasting competes with news and sports, hype rears its ugly WiFi head. After all, weather people have to compete as local celebrities with other broadcasters who attend parades, fund raisers, schools, and other public events. So, even when the weather turns benign or stays the same for periods of time, something must be hyped. The word “impact” handily serves this task. In doing so, it erases other colorful words. We love the word because it sounds so strong. “The fog will impact driving in the morning hours.” Sounds like a meteorite slamming into Earth. Before the “impact” rage came and someone decided it would be the cat’s pajamas to turn the noun into a verb, meteorologists said such things as, “Fog will affect morning driving.” “Morning fog may reduce visibility to a quarter of a mile.” “Fog may create dangerous driving conditions in the morning.” Now “impact” is used for just about anything. And let’s not even talk about most announcers not knowing when to use “me,” “him” or “her” in place of “I,” “he” or “she.” As Thoreau and Frost might say, “Impact, impact, impact.”