Ya Don't Say!

Over coffee and the serenity of a Sunday morning, Tyler and I engaged in a little war of words yesterday - we played Scrabble.

We've had the game for a while but have only played it once. I recently re-discovered it's old-fashioned charm during a weekend at the lake with my mom and mom-in-law. Blanketed by near-perfect weather during Labor Day weekend, we sat outside, hunched over the board, laughing and enjoying the rare, quiet afternoons. (I had correctly thought that the absence of our husbands would provide us with the perfect setting for female bonding over a game that requires patience!)

Yesterday's event was not quite as zen-like: we weren't outside and were frequently stalled when our Internet connection failed to allow us dictionary access. (No hard copy of a dictionary in this Gen-X home!) Nonetheless, it kept us from thinking we needed to do anything else but sit and relax.

A highlight of the battle ensued when I argued that 'ya' is a bona fide English language word. No, I didn't know this for sure, but I needed to get rid of that Y! Tyler was not convinced, so we consulted the expert. Waiting for our Internet to work turned out to be successful for me and surprising for both of us: http://www.dictionary.com/ will tell you that 'ya' is indeed a word.

Intrigued, I looked up a few other questionables today: 'eh', 'yo', 'yah', 'duh' 'wanna' and just for fun, 'lol' (the texting abbreviation for 'laughing out loud').

Yes, they all turned up with definitions and uses in a sentence. Now, as I tried to explain to Tyler yesterday in defense of my points earned with 'ya', a lot of people do use such terms. But I'm not sure I wanted to be right on this argument- I mean, doesn't classification of such utterances justify dumbing down our conversations to something like:

"Yo, ya wanna go catch a movie?"

"Duh! Ya asked me yesterday, remember, eh? I'm so lol-ing at you right now!"


Oh well, at least it makes for easier Scrabble play.