Evolution of language is undeniably an ongoing process, one that is very much needed at that. If language didn’t evolve, we would still (openly) talk about people as ugly, just as Hercule Poirot or any other Agatha Christie character did, as if it was the most normal thing to say about another human being. If language didn’t evolve, we would call people with developmental delays as “retards” and wonder why they don’t look happy about it. And if language didn’t evolve, I would be dealing with a sprain in my tongue, trying to say things like “Tis well thou art not fish; if thou hadst, thou hadst been poor John.” So of course, evolution of langue is a necessity and a phenomenon that will never end.

But just how much of the recent evolution of language is sensible is a question that has often baffled me. Should evolution necessarily mean that we literally try to take out existing words from the dictionary only because they have negative connotations or a dark history attached to them, or sometimes just because some people perceive them to? Should evolution mean that we murder grammar in the worst way possible and call it a reflection of progressive thought, when it is nothing but a show-off and not a truly progressive move?

The first time I thought about this was when I was talking to two high school girls from my building a few years back. One was lean and one was chubby (I literally Googled what a better way of writing this was), although she wasn’t obese. The chubby girl made some comments on how lean the other girl was. And then I heard the lean girl tell me how her friend was “healthy” and how because of being “healthy,” some clothes looked a little awkward on her. I was already wondering why these girls had to comment on each other’s physique and whether someone had told them that it wasn’t a good thing to do unless they were paying a compliment. But the repeated use of the word “healthy” had me at sea—I mean, what was wrong with being healthy??? And then I realized that she wanted to say fat, but was trying to be “politically correct” by using the word “healthy” in its place.

The other day, when I heard my friend, who is well-educated and more of a Shashi Tharoor in using words others don’t understand, talk about an actor as “too healthy” in a negative way, I realized just how much this wrong usage is prevalent now. So what? Tomorrow, just because more and more people use “healthy” instead of “fat,” it would become a bad thing for someone to actually be healthy???

And with people’s obsession with political correctness reaching crazy heights, I literally see sentences like “He unalived himself” and “She died of suicide” in social media posts and comments. What on earth are we even trying to achieve by these? Sure, don’t say someone “killed himself” if that sounds too crude and unempathetic. But saying “committing suicide” is not something that makes the person a criminal, it is simply something that makes a person a victim. The word “commit” just shows that they took the drastic step, for whatever reason it might be, and that should just make us feel all the more empathetic for a human being who was truly struggling. A condition like depression might have been the underlying reason behind such a step. But that doesn’t make “died of suicide” or “unalived” in any way sensible. It just makes more of a mockery of what happened to be honest.

As if that wasn’t enough, I see people write “d**d” for “dead” or “My father unalived” about someone who died a normal, natural death. So being “dead” is a crime now? And if death is such a huge trigger, how can anyone exist in this world where death is pretty much the only constant??? I feel the same frustration when I see game apps decide that they need to be more politically correct by deleting words like “fetus,” “slave,” “lynch” etc. from their database because apparently even seeing these words is a problem now? How the hell are our future generations supposed to learn about anything if we simply try to pretend that words we don’t like or are attached to things we don’t feel happy about just don’t exist? How is this in any way different from the age-old “sweeping things under the rug” syndrome?

I sincerely hope that the evolution of language continues for the better, but not in a way that makes it a mockery in itself, only to protect the “holier-than-thou” facades of some.

Also published on Medium.