Blenglish

I was spending the last couple of nights reading blog postings and comments while traveling. (Actually I spend far too much time doing that most nights, and some of them are actually on this blog.) While comments on "Just Blowing Smoke" seem to run to smaller strings and therefore fairly normal grammar and sentence structure, the same cannot be said for many of the other sites that I normally visit. 

As I have commented before here, there seems to be a direct relationship between the length of the comment string and the likelihood that those commenting will stray beyond the confines of the King's English, that capitalization will crop up in the most unlikely of places, and that a string of mostly personal vitriol will begin to pour forth anonymously. 

Some of this is simple texting abbreviation like: IMHO (In My Humble Opinion), or my personal favorite ROTFLMAO (Rolling On The Floor, Laughing My Ass Off). Others are actually quite clever attempts to make a point through sarcastic misspelling (Mi Amigo at the "Hooda Thunkit Therapy Blog", as you could probably guess from the title, is a master of this.) Some are simply so interested in pouring forth an almost obscene level of acrimony that they forget to check spelling, grammar, or common sense and common decency. 

There are those however, that have taken this process to an almost incomprehensible level. In their honor, I too am going to take advantage of the my own limited creative abilities and use them to coin a new word: "Blenglish". Of course, this word is a combination of "Blog" (already slang for the original term web log) and the language that it occasionally makes fleeting contact with, English. It includes both the clever and not so clever screen names that anyone with access to a computer keyboard can and seems to revel in hiding behind, all of the texting abbreviations that I have to have my children explain to me, and the random form of capitalization and punctuation that becomes a greater part showing emotion and emphasis while blogging. 

It is neither a positive nor negative descriptive term, but instead is merely one that attempts to label (as we human beings do far too often) a form of behavior and a method of communication becoming more and more a part of our world. So I want you to remember this day well. Years from now when "Blenglish" is finally entered into the Merriam Webster dictionary to formally become a part of the vernacular, you can say that you were there when the word was first conceived of. 
 
... have a great weekend