Our Lively Culture

 I might refer to my English professor pipe smoking bud from time to time, but that is in part because he taught me to think in complete sentences and formulate paragraphs.  I once asked him if the English language has changed much over the years, but now I can say it has.  Someone asked the question as to why actors in movies in the 40's spoke the way they did.  Well, our style of speaking has changed to some degree in my lifetime, but in some ways the language from the 60's hasn't changed all that much, except now it seems everything in today's world has much less formality to it.

Gone are the leisure suits of the 70's but they've been replaced by Levi jeans and Polo shirts.  I guess we can thank Steve Jobs for the more casual dress of tofay, where only bankers and lawyers wear suits.  Gone are the wide collars and button-down images, where it seems T-shirts and shorts are more business attire than even Polo shirts.  But the casual attire in business dress has caused us to be more lax in our language where we just seem to shun formalities.  

It's reflected in our language as those from across the pond will attest.  One Brit wondered why Americans don't say, "You're welcome," when someone says, "Thank you."  Why do we insist on saying, "No problem?"  Or we respond by saying, "Thank you" back.  Sometimes we might say more formally, " It's my pleasure."  But very seldom do we just say, "You're welcome."  Or as I say to my wife once in a while, "No problemo."  Why the Spanish?  I don't know.  But it's there all the same.

If someone in Spanish says, "Gracias," I'll say, ""De nada," which actually means, "It's nothing," but means, "You're welcome."  But that is another response to "Thank you."  We might say,"It's nothing," or "It's no big deal."  But my point is that "You're welcome," just isn't being said any longer.  Our culture has lost the formalities that were so prevalent back in the day.  Culture changed when men quit wearing fedora hats.  The formal fedora hats have given way to flat caps and ball caps of today.  And if you're young enough,the ball caps are worn backwards, which is a trend I never understood.  Why backwards? 

Back in the 80's it was Member Only jackets for men.  Gone are the top coats often worn with suits.  And don't get me started on men's neck ties.  I have ties I bought in the 70's and would still wear them today if I wore suits.  But as fashion changes so does our language.  And with social media today there are emojis I don't understand and abbreviations for so many things that one needs a phone just to look everything up.  I can remember when LOL was a thing having been replaced with whatever it is now.  

It's the language of technology that has really changed and emojis.  I'm still backwards by about ten years on all that.  But at least my pipes haven't changed and the tobacco from a hundred years ago is still around.  Pipe smoking is an unchanged tradition that goes back some five millenia or more.  But I signed on to a pipe smoking forum that had a dictionary for all the three letter abbreviations pipe smokers use.  I know OTC is over-the-counter tobacco that one could purchase at most any drugstore, or used to. But the fact is that Briar as a pipe wood is relatively new dating back to the 1700's, if one wants to say it is fairly new. 

I don't have time or space to delve too deeply into the topic of today, aa I could write a book on how things have changed.  But at least some things never change.  Thank you for your time and Peace to each one of you.

Dave