Unemployed Ben

I was just minding my own bees wax today when all of a sudden I came across the following word, Patois. I wasn’t sure but it felt to me as if it was the first time I had ever seen the word in its written form. I was pretty confident the ’s’ was silent and then became a little angry that the French have infiltrated the American lexicon again, damn frog-eating bastards. Then I wondered why it was even used in the first place. It was from an Elmore Leonard article on his top ten writing tips and number seven was: Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

What was the purpose of the word? He had already used the phrase ‘regional dialect’ so what was the point in this redundancy? I was vexed. Why did this celebrated American writer feel the need to reiterate what he was saying with a word of French origin? This man who celebrates Detroit, a blue-collar town, associated himself with a country that hasn’t known military victory since invading Togo. The reason escapes me. Perhaps it made him feel cosmopolitan, or even dainty. I don’t give a rats ass, I want my nations writers to embrace their own language damn it.

Now add to this his use of another word he also used in the article, Hooptedoodle
Definition: A literary word. Hooptedoodle is stuff that gets in the way of a story’s making progress, it is wordy, unnecessary, space-taking, and, typically, should be edited out. Related to balderdash, folderol, flummery, foolishness, and fill; nonsense, prattle, blather, bombast, and baloney.

How interesting that he chose such a rare word in this same short article that shows how superfluous his own use of Patios was. Maybe he was just being ironic. Or maybe I am just an asshole, yep that sounds like the real root of the problem now doesn’t it?

The end result for French frogs