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The separable noun-verb
Though the number of people I actually talk to in a given day is relatively small, I feel like I still get sufficient stimulus and data for totally overanalyzing the way that people speak. For one, there are a bunch of people in my office for whom English is not the mother tongue, and, as a result, these people tend to use the phrase, “or so,” in peculiar ways:
“That’s probably Matt’s job, or so.”
“He’s from Latvia, or so.”
This, however, is an isolated and understandable phenomenon. Though their English is good, people are still trying to figure out how to express themselves properly, and when they here someone saying “or so” as much as German speakers tend to, “so” being a common word to both languages, they pick it up even if their first language is Japanese. “Or so” is not indicative of any sort of linguistic fad. It’s just something people in my office say.
There is another phrase, however, which I have begun to think of as a signifier of seismic shifts in the very fabric of the English language. It could be that I’ve been hearing it my whole life, and only now am I truly appreciative of its complex signification; in fact, this point seems almost like it must be true. Still, the possibilities for change inherent in this simple phrase continue to consume some of my more idle thoughts, as I imagine what kids might talk like when I’m gray and bitterer.
The phrase, of course is, “is is,” or more fully, “the thing is is.” For example:
“The thing is is, this program won’t run in IE7.”
It’s damn easy to hear this as a stutter, so you need to watch out for it. Cause it ain’t a stutter – it’s a manifestation of what I’ve been calling a separable noun-verb, though I actually prefer the German (trennbares Hauptwort-Verb). Without realizing it my coworkers and strangers on the street, though oddly, no one I’m particularly close to, is creating the word “thing is”.
It functions basically like a compound noun, with the verb adding nuance and description of the state or action that the noun in the pair is currently involved in. “Thing is” is a noun referring to a thing that’s being. (In case you’re wondering, in my mind it is totally correct to think of “thing is” as the dictionary form of this word. While some might lobby for the infinitive [“thing to be”] that sounds like the future tense to me. I much prefer using the conjugation for “I/we.”) And what is that “thing is” doing? In the most common example of this phenomenon, the “thing is” is just being.
Two more examples:
“I saw the owl hoot eat a mouse.”
“The owl flying in the sky hoot sleeps during the day.”
Much like Snoop Dogg’s “izzle” language, this shit quickly becomes incomprehensible, largely due to vaguenesses that creed in as a function of the separable nature of the words. Is “hoot” the verb or “sleeps?” You might say, “the thing is is” doesn’t show any signs of separability. You just have to trust me on that one.
In any case, I ponder the long term effects of the adoption of this part of speech with excitement. English has been painted as excelling at such tasks as concretely expressing complex ideas, avoiding confusion by eliminating ambiguity, and vividly describing phenomena. Which is all well and good. The rise of the separable verb-noun, however, bespeaks a tend towards the nebulous, non-concrete formulations of ideas, which can only support the sort of colorful turns of phrase which make the world go spin. To define this shift, some might place English in opposition to the Asiatic tongues – vagueness and incomprehensibility being entirely possessed by of those sandwiched between the Urals and the Pacific. Douche baggery, yes. But in a way it makes some sense. Why shouldn’t English shift a little to the East, embracing such ideas as the “man go” or the “river throw?”
Probably people in my office have just started saying, “the thing is is,” a lot, though.