Language Lessons, Part 2: Vowel Sounds

Yes, there are more pressing issues. But this is making me crazy.

I know that language, especially English, is a work in progress. English complicates things by being an assemblage of other languages, and breaking its own rules with regularity. So, things change; I understand.

I can get on board with new words - we had to figure out what to call the Internet after its invention - or new usages (text, anyone?) But we do not need to change or substitute sounds. We really don't.

Here's my problem: the word "yes." It's a perfectly good word. It's succinct and easily understandable. It's one of the first words we learn as infants. We do not need it to be "yass" or "yuss" or "yiss."

I mean, for crying out loud, what IS that? How did it start? For one thing, it sounds like baby talk. How are grown humans OK sounding like toddlers? And WHY in the world have we decided that it's cuter or more acceptable, or... what do people think that it is, anyway? And what mass hysteria is causing so many of us to use it?

My husband has a tendency to mush vowel sounds. You'd think that a man named "Dan" with a father named "Don" would be more attuned to vowel sounds, but somewhere in his elementary schooling (which, he says, did not include phonics or the ubiquitous instruction I often received to "sound it out") some teacher made a passing reference to the schwa, and he internalized the idea that vowels are interchangeable. It makes me crazy. For instance, the word "if" usually comes out of his mouth as "eff." Ugh.

Sometimes, when he mispronounces some vowel sound or other and then rolls his eyes when I correct him, I say, "OK, Dun."

I mean pin, pen, pan, and pun are entirely different words! Vowels - they're important!

The thing is, he's doing it unconsciously, or because he's actually unaware of the correct pronunciation. He hasn't made a conscious choice to mispronounce something because he thinks it's cute or fashionable or somehow, what, more effective than the correct pronunciation. It's an honest mistake, and it still makes me crazy. Imagine how aggravating I find it when someone does it on purpose, for reasons on which I am completely unclear - fashion? Habit? Conformity?

In the name of sanity, when you're enthused, stick with the word we already have - "YES!" Drag out the sound if you want. If you're approximating a Southern US accent, feel free to go with "yay-es!"

Just know that if you write "YUUUUSSSS!" or "YAAAASSSS!!!" or anything similar, on your social media or anywhere else, I think unkind things. I may shave my estimation of your IQ down by several points.

Yes, I know that this makes me a curmudgeon and the language police. I don't care.

We have a perfectly good word. Please use it.