Battling Buzzwords

He must be brilliant. I didn't understand a word he said.

   Every group has its jargon. It's meant to facilitate communication among members of the profession, but jargon also serves to deny access to trade secrets for the uninitiated.   Newsrooms are famous (or notorious) for it, but other trades and professions use jargon as well. And instead of changing, shortening, corrupting or inventing words in English,, some groups use Latin or French terms to show their "expertise" and keep out non-members.
   Teenagers, for example, use words and phrases to distinguish themselves from their parents. Musicians invent jargon to prove they are hip. Corporate executives abbreviate terms regularly used in board rooms to show they are insiders. Doctors and nurses scatter Latin and French terms to illustrate their expertise.
   There is something to be said for standard definitions within a group so all can agree on word usage. And there is historical precedent for using certain sets of terms. Law and medicine, for instance, grew up in an age when Latin was the language of the educated elite. Those who could read and write did so in Latin. But that was 500 years ago, when English was not considered to be a worthwhile language. It was one of the non-Latin, or Vulgate (vulgar) languages used by the "common" people and Latin was the language of the educated elite.
   So jargon does more than facilitate communication and identify members of groups that consider themselves special, however. It can also establish or reinforce a hierarchy, or even obscure the fact that a speaker has no idea what he's talking about.
   Men may be more prone to such foggery than women. Often, if a man doesn't know the answer to a question, he'll make one up. (Heaven forfend that he admit he doesn't know; it's like stopping to ask directions.)
   And politicians are notorious for using circumlocution (Latin: "talk around"). It's also known as "Blowing Smoke."
   Another medieval leftover conceit was that since Latin was the language of the Church, it was therefore the "perfect" language, and all others were subservient to it. That's one reason grammar was taught based on Latin forms, notwithstanding that some forms common in Latin do not exist in English.
   An example here is the case system -- nominative, genitive, dative and accusative, etc. In a case system, nouns change their form according to their function in a sentence. That is, whether to indicate possession or to be the object or target of something else. The case system, with as many as seven different forms for nouns, is still used in German and Russian, but no longer exists in English, except for one small set of words: pronouns. Thus, I, me, mine; he, him, his, etc.

   But I digress. One of the latest Budget Buzzword Battles among politicians is over "sequestration," or the setting aside of money to be used later for some designated purpose. Just why this has become a battleground we're not sure, unless there's an attempt to disallow the spending of money that has already been authorized and the funds set aside, or sequestered.
   In other words, the money is there, it's been budgeted and authorized, but some are thundering, "Don't spend it," even though the expenditure has already been cleared.
   So what's the fight really about? In Washington, fights are often about who gets to take credit for spending on a worthwhile purpose. Ultimately, the losers in this fiscal finagling fight are the people the programs are intended to help.