Mangling Our Sacred Language!

Goddess: perfect elocution

What’s this current linguistic vogue for stuffing extra syllables into perfectly good words? More and more, the trait’s being adopted by TV presenters and ‘personalities’. Perhaps they’ve picked it up from Engerland’s football supporters.

This isn’t evolution of language; these aren’t new words. Such affectation sits alongside the equally irksome upward-lilt, the ending of spoken sentences as if to say: “D'ya follow?"

So today, instead of struggling to make ends meet, we’re said to be ‘struggerling’. People who run quickly are atherletes, while gamberling is no longer what lambs do. Those who speak in this way aren't composing poetry, nor are they always from Essex. It sounds idiotic and often a touch self-conscious. Please stop it.

While we’re on the subject, TV’s weather forecasters (with one exception against whom I’ll hear nothing) now treat 'Ireland' as synonymous with 'island'. I’m sure that’ll please everyone in the nation of bogs, little people, and great filums like Von Ryan’s Daughter.