They are as much a nation as are the creeds. Speaking of creeds, the king of them all also happens to be the most prevalent exclamation. I have never been a fan of the exclamation mark, in fact I will not use it, not even to exclaim that god dammit god is a good word. How did the word god, being the omnipresent father, become the universal echo of exclamation?
How do words get their power, and how do they lose it? Like the word black, how come it gets to describe all things negative? What about those foreign words that actually mean nothing more than black, how did they come to define the derogatory?
Nigger is the most infamous of those words but African-American citizens, some who have never stepped foot in Africa, have at least claimed back the word nigger. They own it, they made it theirs and rightfully so. It need not be derogatory, nor need any word be, right? This one in particular is only derogatory depending on who uses it, or is this the case with them all?
While we are on black words, in SA there are a lot of words (With 11 official languages including English which has a synonym for synonym) but nigger is not really one of them, it is not an African word. Kaffir is our N-word, but no one owns it, it is frowned upon to use. So frowned upon in fact that if I just so much as say I heard someone say it and therefore indirectly say it, I would have lost my previous job as a newspaper journo. Well it’s too late, I don’t have an employer any longer so I can discuss all words… and like any creed they have a story on which they are based, they have an origin that was created by man.
The offensive K-word originally meant infidel. Nothing wrong with that, right? Because by definition I’m a kaffir. Or is it a simple case of it’s not what you said it’s the way you said it? So why do we give away the power of the word, letting misuse of it control us and cause us so much angst? How could we let the prejudice, the bigotry, the benighted abuse a word so much that its pure meaning should be lost and forgotten?
Or is that not the evolution of language? Unlike the evolution of a species, it is not the most adaptable to change that survives. So who decides which words remain alive, which words trasnform and which words die? Who gets to recreate the word?
For instance gay, who let that one slip? Will gay ever be gay again? Will gays ever reclaim gay and return it to its former glory?
For the myriad offensive, and vulgar slang words that exist in all languages around the world, only one is universally versatile. The F-word. I firmly believe that fuck will be bumped up the colloquial ladder and find its place next to ubiquitous, (yes it will jump the alphabetical ladder too) and then it will be cherished as expressive not slandered as lazy. So let us not dilly-dally with the euphemism, when fuck says it all. As words evolve who shapes them? OMF need I say more than OMG?
Words cannot harm you, but they can define you. Those words, wonderful words, paving the road to hell. Be kind to everyone, even those who hashtag speak and acronym all else.
otherwise 