Modern Incorrect Thank you? “Very” vs. “So” Much

My degree from the University is in English and Communication. I am a bit of a “wordsmith” in the tradition of the late William Safire, who penned the “On Language” column in the Sunday New York Times magazine.
Not a snob by any means, certain trends or linguistic fads get my Capricorn “goat”.

Recently, and I mean that I didn’t notice this until this year, 2015, I feel it disengenuous when I hear “Thank you SO much.” It is almost like the person saying that is almost hoping that the receiver will accept what they know is a knee-jerk bullshit common statement!

When I was raised, everybody said a version of “Thank you VERY much!”, if they had to go beyond just “Thank you.”

So when did this battle of the adverb/adjective, “very” versus the multifunctional “so” begin? My answer is when the laziness created by cell phones and other personal devices that have cause lowered educational standerds began: the advent of the “information superhighway” begat by techno inventions.

Sad to think that if most people are left to their own devices, they will take the easy way out, turn their brains mostly off and do the wrong thing like texting or paying too much attention to their telephone while driving.

This is all part of the reason that “Thank you VERY much!” is so much better than the lazy and lame, “SO much” we hear these days. I even heard an MSNBC TV news female anchor use it when receiving the toss back from a reporter the other day. I almost became nauseous.

For you, my reader, who was not an English major in college and do not understand what all the fuss is about, I will now define according to http://partofspeech.org/
“In verbal and written English, the word “so” has multiple functions. It can act as an adverb, a conjunction, a pronoun, an adjective, or an interjection depending on the context.”

While “like many words in the English language, the word ”very” also serves a double function. It can be used as an adverb or an adjective depending on the context.”

The solution could be to combine the two as in this version of the British “Keep Calm and Carry On” series:
Yet, I want to see “so” deleted from the modern appreciation lexicpon altogether! Its slang leanings are fake and lame, rolling off the tongues of (mostly) female hipsters with captious intentions.
Listen, now that I have brought this to your attention and according to your generation (or if you even care), please analyse the preference. Most of we Baby Boomers will agree with me and/or go “Oh Wow! I’d heard that trend but not really paid any attention to it – it did sound kind of weird…” lol Other younguns might find this column superflous or even dumb. And that last part is what I am getting at: the dumbing-down of our society and in this case, lingustic culture and traditions for the worse. Now, for a little musical punctuation for my points above:

“Thank you so much is becoming way over used and doesn’t come off as genuine anymore. It’s almost as if everyone were hypnotized into saying Thank you so much instead of the good old Thanks a lot.” – http://english.stackexchange.com/

Thank you very, very much for your comments!

End “Racism” In America? Easy. News Directors Do Not Cover Negativity; Promote Tough Father Parenting! Especially With The New Crop of Third World-Influxed “African”- Americans

Recently, Starbucks unsuccessfully launched this “unity” campaign.  They just slapped a slogan on their coffee cups without a lead-up promotion and there should have been a brown hand under this cup (at least, or several shades) – in my opinion – that is why it failed.  Today’s media must be captained by fools who did not do their homework visa v ethnic relations in the United States over the past century-plus.  It is why, even though I held-back, I am compelled to post this… Back in 2008, I met my first Slavic woman girlfriend, who convinced me that watching television was largely a waste of valuable time – especially the “news” and sports. I bought into her mentality and ended up spending much more quality time with her, much to my delight and relaxation – and she liked it also.  Unfortunately, she had two young sons via two different men; widely separated in age to raise and that, along with her, cranky insecurities, and  suffering from panic attacks (something I had never heard of at the time) which caused her to take many undesclosed -to-me pills, soon put the kibosh on our relationship (her decision) after nary a bit over one year. I digress only to say, she had a POINT about watching the ratings-game known as the “news”; truly I’d wasted too many hours watching millionaire athletes do their thing at the expense of me pursuing my goals and dreams. Her cautions have stayed with me! Unfortunately, the general populace of the USA did not receive the same memo, and it speaks directly to the overkill that today’s news directors now give to stories of a racially dividing bent, which capitalize (for ratings, IMO) on reigniting the recently-dowsed embers of racial hate in continental USA.  Having daily hosts on the airwaves such as Bill O’Reilly, Al Sharpton, and of course the legendary, Rush Limbaugh does not help matters of cultural ethnic manners and build unity either.  They only propagate hate instead of educate good news!  Why do there have to be “Red” and “Blue” states on the Election Day maps – or even the Weather Channel maps?  ‘Still fighting the Civil War, eh?  Very tragic. As for today’s children, not raised by two parents, who imitate the “news”: Do not cover and promote young chicks wanting to “join Isis”!  By doing so, you are helping Isis recruit! Don’t you News Directors understand and see this? Witness how terrestrial radio of today plays new, “cover” versions of past classic hits without the announcers back-selling the origins of the songs in-order to educate within the entertainment as people like the late Frankie Crocker, Vaughn Harper and those of us privileged to perform along side them did.  Who wrote and performed it first? Under what circumstances?  News and music media should return to making the “tease” incite these successive generations to want to learn their history of our collective past! Rap/Hip-Hop music also must clean its act up (if it can without losing the very identity it has embraced in recent decades since 1999) and de-emphasize weapon violence in their lyrics and performances. They reinforce negative male stereotypes that we once had quashed! The whole Third World is here in many cities of the USA now. They only look the same as we Black Americans of the civil rights days of the 1960s and 1970s skin-deep. These are different “Blacks” – they are “Afro-Caribbean-Americans” who look a wee bit like black Americans – but I can tell the difference without them saying a word.  Islanders have more Neanderthal, simian cheek-boneed features and lips. They also do not have the same playbook nor history as we Black Americans who are descendants of American slavery and they look down/talk disparagingly about us!  Imagine that!? I heard an African guy on his phone, sitting only a foot away from me at my bank do this very recently! They shunned our history and take advantage of the gains, pain and achievements we endured only to arrive in the wake of our victories to miscegenate among us and further confuse the European Caucasian base that the United States Of America was founded upon. The generation of “lookalike” black people who came to the USA beginning in the 1980s are so late to the party and were labeled as  “African Americans” via the Clinton Presidency and the silly advent of “political correctness”  that we Black American men, who did the heavy lifting of the movement which ultimately resulted in the success of “we Shall over come”, decades ago of, but nobody apparently passed the memo on to them, and these crop of coconuts, IMO. The feminists and queers also have ridden upon our coattails, as if the perceived discrimination is similar – not. It is also time to end this enabling of children who can run to a social services agency or the cops after they get a needed parental disciplined spanking!  This action was unheard of during my generation or the many prior generations. We could not go running to some outside of the family “agency” and say, “Oh my Daddy spanked me! Please put them in jail!”  Bullshit. Everything was kept in-house – and we should return the same power to the parents asap!  A spanking or two growing is not “abuse”!  We are all born as  little animals that need training – some tough physically judicial parental love, that is – in our formative years. I use former NBA Hall Of Famer, Charles Barkley’s video on part of this topic because it is in-line with the fact that most of my generation’s parents migrated from “the south” (southern USA states where slavery emanated from). Finally, these discipleship ideas also apply the offspring American Caucasian clans in the USA, who have embraced the “thug” lifestyle. “Ya heard??”

Back to Starbucks, as I commented on a piece about the attempted campaign on LinkedIn.com, “I would have built advance promotion and publicity about this idea long before slapping “Race Together” on the coffee cups and in a different manor using more medias, for one thing…In the USA we are still the victim of the negative messages about race that our own news Directors, channels and parts of the music entertainment industry reinforce and advertise (for ratings, IMO) ad-nausea. This must change for us to catch-up to the rest of the world.” As my acquaintance from Belarus would say, “C’MON, People!” ~~  your comments, solutions and suggestions are welcomed, as alwaze here.