Introduction

Over the years, various friends of mine and I have come up with a number of new slang words or phrases that we have said would be our new words of choice for the particular concepts they refer to or summarize. We have then gone on to rarely, if ever, use these terms in the way we intended, partially because to break out a new phrase in front of people who don’t know about it requires a great deal of explaining, partially because the ideas seem less clever as time goes on, and partially because these words and phrases are often concocted by people who are very, very drunk.

This is a shame, because aside from comic books and a cold glass of Coke, there are few things I love more than the ever-evolving English language. For new phrases and words to be created and then almost immediately forgotten is like seeing a fish crawl out of the ocean on newly evolved legs, then saying to yourself, “Ew!” and kicking it back in before rushing back up the beach to wash your shoe off. It’s impeding progress and growth, and that’s not good. Whether we’re talking about an ecosystem or a government or a language, lack of progress leads to stagnation and eventually destruction. It’s already happening, on some level; the generation immediately behind mine has little regard for rules of grammar or spelling or punctuation, and it will only worsen with further generations. Unless steps are taken to prevent it, my generation’s grandchildren will be writing and speaking in a garbled mess of unrecognizably misspelled words, “LOL”-style abbreviations and (God help us) emoticons.

So, to prevent the language from being torn down from the bottom up, we need to keep adding levels at the top, and where better to do it than the place more responsible for the fading of proper English than any other, the Internet? I have set up a new blog that can be accessed and updated by anyone who’s interested, a place where the new slang terms and phrases of an entire generation can be recorded, defined and catalogued for all to see, study, and, if so inclined, adopt as their own.

I will be posting the first batch of new terms in a few days, but by no means do I want this to be something to which only I contribute. Blogger allows for numerous contributors (up to 100) to a given page, and I intend to open The Vernacular Project to anyone who expresses an interest in contributing. Anyone who’s interested needs simply to let me know- replying here, sending me an e-mail, whatever floats your goat- and I’ll add you as a contributor, likely within 24 hours of the request.

Thus, I present The Vernacular Project. Come one, come all, and together we can save the English language from itself.