Kick me up

Last Saturday, the DJ's on RX 93.1 were excitedly encouraging people to message them through Yahoo Messenger. "Add us up! Chat us up!" they said over the air.

It wasn't the first time I'd heard these phrases being used. I'd seen them in the networking cum dating sites I visit for fun. "Add me up! Text me up! Chat me up!" write site members in their profiles.

I couldn't help but roll my eyes at the DJ's, the same way I roll my eyes at these online friend-hunters. I wonder if they realize that to "add them up" would mean to "derive their sum"... that "text me up" works just fine without the word "up"... and "chat me up" is incorrect from whatever angle you look at it?

Sigh. I really don't know where these would-be idioms sprung from, but it's uncanny that they came right on the heels of those crazy text phrases "kain na me" and "ok lang me." By my count, "kain na me" consumes more energy than "il eat na" (16 keystrokes vs 15); and "ok lang me", at 18 keystrokes, is almost thrice as exhausting as "m ok", which has just 7. Someone introduce me to the linguist who thought up these phrases.

Now, it's not as though taking liberties with the English language is exclusive to the jologs class, as my officemates would say. Because even in our office -- one of the world's most respected companies, supposedly hiring only the top students from top universities -- you have people who, as an officemate similarly frustrated with the state of English in the office said, "invent words to make up for their limited vocabularies."

"Choiceful" is one of my office favorites. Going by the principle of root word and suffix, it should mean, "with plenty of choice." But in the office subculture, it means "selective." As in, "let's be choiceful about which project to invest in."

Roll my eyes. I've never been able to figure out why they can't just say "selective."

Strangely, I had also heard "choiceful" from my boss in my former company, who had come from another globally respected company. Hmm. Does global market share give companies the license to fool with the English language?

Well, at least I no longer hear "monies." As in, "We can't put out this advertisment because we don't have any more monies." Yes, hah, as in plural for "money"! It took a supreme effort to supress a laugh the first time I'd heard "monies" used in a meeting. To think, that's one of the things they tell you in every year of grade school: money is like sheep, you don't need to change the spelling to make it plural.

To many, English is a status symbol -- the better yours is, the higher your rung on the social ladder. Interestingly enough, the jologs guy desparately looking for a date, and the marketing director in his global company, aren't that far apart English-wise. I guess the jologs guy better just be choiceful about how to spend his monies... and the marketing director can just text up his general manager.