Guest Blogger: Smoke Gets in Your Brain

The Language Lady would like to present her first guest blogger, a transplanted New Yorker now living in the warm but smoggy Southern California coast, and writing under the name, “Gunish Helfen.” (Anyone know what her name means?)

Letter from Los Angeles:
Smoke Gets in Your Brain

One of the more startling aspects of living in Los Angeles for a New Yorker like me is the manner in which Los Angelenos choose their words. Being vague, it turns out, is not only essential for social interaction but something which, if you do not do, results in punishment in the form of social ostracization. That is, if you speak properly, people will, after looking at you weirdly, avoid you.

There is, of course, the over- and incorrect usage of “like,” used repeatedly in one sentence as in, “Like, we have, like a low-fat blueberry muffin or like an apple-cinnamon, like, fat one.” This has been written about many times before and has become quite ordinary usage for nearly everyone. But, out here, we like to add the word “umm” to “like,” as in “I’m going to, umm, like, get a green tea frappucino.” It is of particular note that “umm” is not a sign of hesitation on the speaker’s part or a bleep the speaker uses to create time in order to decide what he or she will be ordering. It’s more like an announcement to others to pay attention, similar to the Principal clearing his or her throat at a student assembly. When the speaker adds “you know,” well, then you have almost the full L.A. narcissistic experience in one sentence. As in, “Like, you know, you take the, umm, 10 East to LaBrea.” What the speaker means is, “Oh, it’s so boring that you have to take the freeway rather than using that time to listen to me. So I will take ten minutes to say what can be said in two.”

Almost. For we cannot forget “totally,” as in “I totally thought it was a banana muffin.” Unlike “like” or “umm,” totally is actually a meaningful word, which makes its usage more brain-addling than the others. How can one “totally” think something? Certainly, one can have an idea ingrained in one’s mind and then be mistaken. One can be consumed or obsessed, even when facts tell you differently. But to totally think something? It would be more proper, if, umm, awkward, to say, “I thought with all that thoughts’ totality that it was a banana muffin,” but then it would take even longer to get your muffin and get on the freeway.

Language is a tool of thought. When it is made imprecise, bland, repetitive, well, I find it disappointing at best and infuriating at worse. Then it takes even more effort to repress the thought of putting the offending speaker’s hand into the iced blended blender. That I could even think like that like, totally, umm, makes me want like a, umm, Cantaloupe Frozen. Totally.

Signed,
Gunish Helfen (That’s Yiddish for “Nothing Helps.”)