Welcome to Dekkerspeak

I SEE THAT Laura Dekker, the world’s youngest solo circumnavigator, is still busy writing a book about her round-the-world adventure. She’s now crossing the Pacific en route to a new home in New Zealand with a crew, a young man called Bruno Ottens. She’s still appealing to the public for money to fund her trip, and also apparently busy inventing new English words.
 

“Mweh,” she says in her blog, “I felt so bad.” And again: “Blegh ... the wind has dropped ...”

She should take care. By the time she gets to New Zealand, the Kiwis won’t be able to understand her, thanks to the mwehs and bleghs and whatever else she might be cooking up linguistically.

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WE LIVE in rude times. Perhaps Congress sets the example for the ill-natured discourse that pervades our country today. There is a lack of good old fashioned courtesy, and a whole host of demands for individual rights that are not in the interest of the community as a whole. Too much liberty is being taken in the name of free speech to indulge in foul language, spoken and written — harsh language that is intended to shock, if not hurt.

Women are as guilty as men in this respect. Recent blogs by women sailors in Seattle are rife with four-letter words. Unnecessary four-letter words. They add nothing but foul language to the narrative, except perhaps an indication of the writer’s nature.

I understand that modern American women find themselves in direct competition with men in many ways. They certainly seem to sense a need to match men in profanity. But not all men use f-words in their regular speech, and even fewer use them in their written language. The presence of a four-letter word does not of itself add artistic merit to written language. It adds only shock, and then only to start with. Swearing is a poor and lazy substitute for lively, descriptive writing, which demands those other nasty four-letter words, hard work.

I, for one, could use a little gentleness, a little modesty, a little reserve, in the blogs I read. I don’t care to know that the lady sailor was upset because the f-ing anchor got f-ing stuck in the f-ing mud. I don’t care to know that the lady blogger moving aboard her new boat found a nice place to stow her thongs. Where she keeps her intimate underwear is not my business. Or anybody else’s.

Today’s Thought

Politeness is the flower of humanity. He who is not polite enough is not human enough.
— Joubert, Pensées

Tailpiece

“Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.”
(10)“You must be from animal welfare, sir — I’ll fetch him a spoon at once.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)