A Much Too Serious Post

Disclaimer: I tend to ramble. A lot. If you just want to read about the topic at hand, feel free to skip down to the fourth paragraph, but after that’s over, I won’t make any promises…

Ladies and gentlemen, everyone has their pet peeves, it is true. Steven, for example, will murder you if you come within one foot of his laryngeal prominence, Zach hates sugar so much that his pancreas refuses to process it, and Jonesy doesn’t like it when people laugh. I consider myself a fairly relaxed person, one might even go so far as to say “chill”, but there is one thing that gets me so tense I can hardly think; I absolutely cannot stand the word “talk”. It is true, yes! I hate hearing the word, completely loathe it, and take all precautions to avoid using it in conversation.

If you have any trouble understanding my distaste, let me make it perfectly clear; “talk” is, quite simply, a hideously ugly word. It is a word that reminds me not of the arching balustrades of an ancient college, or the romantic vistas atop a mist-cloaked mountain, but of a harsh, barbaric swampland, of kill or be killed, and of a primal animal fury. It’s a problem. Now, all of this intense imagery based on a single word sound might flabbergast (a fun and bubbly word, by the way) some of you, so let me give you a short background of my linguistic leanings.

I grew up reading Tolkien. Tolkien Tolkien Tolkien Tolkien Tolkien. I am fairly sure that the majority of my posts will in some way relate to him and/or his body of works, so I think I should get it out of the way right now that I LOVE TOLKIEN. As many of you perhaps know, Tolkien was by trade a philologist, and the base of his writings, specifically the Lord of the Rings and beyond, were always langauges, which influenced the look, actions, and even architecture and climates of the peoples who spoke them; in fact, Tolkien invented Quenya before he even thought of elves or Middle Earth, in the trenches during WWI, to pass the time. The reason that this is at all relevent is that Tolkien’s languages, especially Quenya, sound beautiful. In fact, this recording may be my favorite recording of a person speaking. Ever. In short, I am used to reading and hearing phrases like “i arani nar assaile ar antuare nu Anar”, and am thus acclimated to language that looks and sounds elegant.

Elegant. This is a word that only applies to English when it is properly spoken or written, but in my opinion it is a word that never applies to “talk”. “Talk” is harsh, strident, and cutting word, a word that sounds like an onomatopoeia, but not a nice one like “purr” or “moo”. It reminds me most of the noise a seagull makes, an “awk” sound, and being preceded by a very articulate consonant, T, it really doesn’t have much going for it in the way of aural grace. And to be honest, the reason I hate the word “talk” isn’t actually because of how it sounds, but because of the relationship between its sound and its definition. “Talk” is a word that describes a very frequent and, frankly, mundane act, that of communicating in some way, which we do every day. Yet “talk” has none of the smooth, familiar sound that one would expect from a word of that usage. “Talk” would be fine if it represented something that was both infrequent and perhaps undesirable, like “kill”, but as is it has the same effect as a bluegrass band named “Bloody Deathcorpse 3000″.

You get the idea.

It often baffles me when people use the word “talk”, since there are so many better words at one’s disposal. “Speak”, for example, is not only an incredibly smooth word, but is easy and fun to say, most likely because of the “s” and the long “e” that takes less muscle to form than “talk”’s hard “a”. Another great substitute for “talk” is “colloquy”, which not only sounds badass but makes you seem really intelligent and Shakespearean. Other options are “converse”, “discourse”, “orate”, “convey”, etc.

I know that this issue will probably never end for me. People will continue to use “talk” in conversation, causing me to grit my teeth, as nothing short of an oppressive government would likely be able to erase a word from the English language (hmmm… good idea), but my hope is that after reading this some of you out there will throw of the bonds of the vernacular and turn to some better everyday alternatives for “talk”.

-Jeff