“Open mic night Wednesday,” reads the ad. It stops me. Back when I was a kid, and the dinosaurs roamed, we pronounced the second word in that clause to rhyme with “bike.” We also spelled it like the diminutive for Michael. Now it looks like it should rhyme with trick.
“Open mick night?” That can’t be what they’re going for.
It’s those kids. They’re changing the language. Drop letters so it’s easier to text or keyboard and 2 bad 4 me if I can’t keep up. OMG, I feel so old.
I want to go into full curmudgeon-mode on this, but I really can’t. It’s lively. It’s innovative; just like back in the 1600s when people like Shakespeare were writing and they wouldn’t spell a word the same way twice.
Did I write Shakespeare? I’m sorry. I meant Shakspere. Or Shakespear. Or Shaxpere, which everyone knows means “father of Shax.” Okay, I made that part up, but not the Shaxpere spelling. People wonder why it’s hard to find documentation about Will—isn’t it obvious?
The printing press had made words accessible to more people and it was less important to replicate something perfectly than it was to make yourself understood. With texting, e-mail, blogging, is it any different? We think we own the language. We engage with it in a different way than we did when I was in school.
So I can deal with an open mic, I guess, as long as I don’t have to ride my bic to get there, and I’m not expected to meet anyone F2F.