Let’s set the rules down right now: if a person has no money, they are broke, but if a thing is somehow not functioning, it is broken. This must have been Bad Language Week, because I heard the word broke misused about a dozen times. One must be pretty lazy to conserve energy by leaving off one little syllable.
It was also Cultural Bad Habits Week, because the usage of the verb “to be” was left completely out of so many conversations, I had to step away and process what was just said because I didn’t understand it. In some places, if clothing was soiled, a person would say, “That needs washed.” The better sentence would be, “That needs to be washed,” or even, “That needs washing,” but for some reason one of Shakespeare’s most memorable soliloquies was lost in translation. Why people stumble over “to be” may be related to the variances in its conjugation, which don’t look at all like the original. However, just as in math, memorization goes a long way.
I heard the word broke used for so many malfunctioning things, my head was spinning. Things carrying no monetary support included our electoral system, a helicopter, racial relations and a few others in which the only part of the conversation I heard was that a thing had been broke. Ugh!
It’s easy to occasionally forgive some dimly conceived but permanently implanted verbal gaffes such as “daze,” for (substituting the slurred “they is” for “they are”), “Yiz,” or “Youse,” for several secondary persons (and their third party mate, “allayiz” or “allyouse”), but our language getting shorter is a sure indicator that our brain power is getting smaller. It is we who will wind up broken. And broke.
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