More thoughts on strange words...

I don't know the extent to which this is acknowledged by academics, but in my opinion, the one factor that plays the greatest role in the evolution of language is... the desire to minimize effort (or, as my stepdad would have described it, simple laziness).

If you've ever studied a foreign language to the point where grammar starts getting shoved down your throat, you might recall how certain verbs—described as "irregular"—set themselves apart from a much greater population of verbs that follow a generally "regular" set of usage rules. If you really paid attention, you might recall that such "irregular" verbs are, for some perverse reason, the ones people use most frequently.

Which is why they're irregular.

People use them all the time, you see, and the way people naturally express themselves with these verbs is the way that's—for lack of a better term—most "natural." Or some other suitable word.

Any way you cut it, "I am" is the accepted mainstream way of expressing the verb "to be" in the first person singular, as opposed to the regular construction "I be."

(This is not going anywhere.)

* * *It may or may not be some kind of karmic joke, but almost as soon as I signed up for the current season of LJ Idol, the heavens opened up and I was showered with a volume of work that I am still having trouble dealing with. This has happened before, and I have been able to find the time to cope with the challenge, but for some reason—am I hanging back, trying to make a good impression?—I can't wrap my mind around the several tacks that have come out of this week's prompt.

One involves Andy Kaufman, whose early routines pretty much epitomized the concept of jayus (assuming I understand the word correctly to begin with), and were carefully crafted to suck, and to suck so bad that people would actually—eventually—laugh. It's like, if jayus ever makes it into the dictionary, there next to it, as an illustration, should be a mugshot of Latka Gravas.

Another involves wondering whether this kind of performance (i.e., deliberately trying to suck to get laughs) is something that would work in another culture... say, Russia (seeing as I've spent most of my adult life trying to understand that country—with mixed results). And I am concluding that—at least in the mainstream of show business—a deconstructionist act along the lines of an Andy Kaufman would probably never get off the ground.

(This is not going anywhere, either.)

Yet another involves trying to resolve a bunch of questions as to whether some jokes I've heard fall anywhere in the vicinity of the aforementioned category, to wit:

A walrus, penguin, and chimp walk into a bar.
"What's this," says the bartender, "some kind of joke?"

It's certainly not funny. Not a smidgen of funny, in fact. No bad pun... nothing.

And yet, I've gotten people to laugh at it when I tell it (and I'm no Latka Gravas!).

* * *I suppose the main problem here is that—besides the imminent time pressure—I'm having way too much fun overanalyzing this. It takes my mind off the pressing crush of work, I guess.

Which gives me an idea...