pressreturn

Sometimes, a word just gets into my head and I can’t stop saying it. Today was ‘blog’. Bloggabloggablog. Bloggerbloggittybloggocks.

I came to the conclusion that it’s a really crap word. I’m sure everyone who has lived on this side of a very large rock for any period of time recently knows that it’s a contraction of “web” and “log”. If you’re looking to make weblog any shorter than it is, then blog is pretty much the only option. Let’s face it: “wog” just wouldn’t have taken off, would it? Speak to any of the package designers at Robertson’s jam.

For me, it just conjures up really crap things: nothing that’s any good begins with “bl”: blah, blockage, bland, blart, blister, blithering idiot … nope – nothing good there.

And all the words it rhymes with aren’t exactly the most fun concepts: bog, log, clog, flog, hog, slog. Nothing good there either.

So we’re stuck with it along with all the peripheral words which necessarily got invented to support it: to blog (the verb), blogging, blogger, blogtastic.

What must the older generations think of all these new words? If I were to call my mother and tell her that I spent all day blogging or looking at people’s blogs or playing with my blog’s look and feel – I can hear the voice now: “That’s nice dear. I’ll get your father.” And in the background, I’d hear a muffled: “You’d better speak to him, John – he’s drunk again.”

What on earth does it sounds like in other languages if it sounds so bad to my English ear? In German, it’s der Blog. I was surprised that it’s masculine – words imported from other languages are usually assigned to neuter (“ve haf no idea if it has bollocks oder nicht”).

It must come as a bit of a relief to Joe Deutscher in the Straße to have a word that is so short and easy to learn, because everything else is at least double the number of syllables as the English equivalent – take Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung, for example. “Speed limit” to you or me. What goes on the road signs? How do they wrap that word around? Aha! You can hear the road planners now: “Ze vord vill not fit ze sign! Oh, buggeren Sie es – letten zem drive as fast as zey vish” (and hence the Autobahn was born)

French – well – it depends who you go to. “Le blogue” is out there for Canadians (but that sounds like blog anyway, but with a bit of a softer g). Google are using “Le blog”. But the real hardcores are using this succinct and beautifully French phrase: “Site internet personnel, tenu par un ou plusieurs écrivains internet (‘blogueurs’)“.

I love it! Music to my ears. And so very catchy.

‘Blog’ it is then.