I notice the venues for that course in practical philosophy - advertised on the front page of Saturday's paper - include a place called "L'Derry." This looks like an abbreviation to save space, except that the very next venue on the list is a town in Donegal that, by the same logic, should be written as L'Kenny (but is not). So one has to assume that the advertisement's coy designation of the maiden city is an example of practical philosophy in action, writes Frank McNally.
The "L" has clearly been retained to reassure Derry's minority population (who might otherwise be worried by the course's stated aim of proving that there is "an underlying unity to everything"). Similarly, the obliteration of most of the word "London" by an apostrophe is designed to avoid scandalising Derry's nationalists, before they too become more philosophical. By week 10 of the course - when participants will wrestle with the question "Is there an unchanging I?" - neither community will be worried about a mere L anymore.
Even so, the arrangement suggests a solution to the historic schism over the city's name. In the compromise, L'Derry would become the official title. But the renaming ceremony would also see the city twinned with the aforementioned town in Donegal town - which, in a show of cross-border solidarity, would also shorten its name permanently with an apostrophe. As an optional extra, Letterkenny's missing "etter" could be donated to the downtrodden people of Inishbofin which would become Inis Better-offin as a result. Branding is everything these days.
Abbreviation is the way of the future. I know this because I read an article in the New York Times a couple of months back about a new craze in the US for something called "the Ling". This is short for "the lingo", which is the whole point, and it's the way a new generation of American teenagers - raised on e-mail and text messaging - now talks.
The NYT seems to have been ahead of the curve, even compared with the online community, in identifying the dialect. At time of writing, Wikipedia still defines "the Ling" only as "a large member of the cod family". But there are bound to be some early adopters already speaking it in Ireland, and parents of ultra-cool teenagers will probably recognise the symptoms.
The keynote is an inability, or refusal, to use complete sentences. So while, for example, the word "whatever" remains popular with adolescents - usually as a complete sentence - soon no self-respecting 16-year-old will say it in full. Warn your daughter to be back from the Junior Cert results party by midnight, for example, and she will shrug: "Whatev".
Other abbreviations* include: "def" (definitely); "obvi" (obviously); "actu" (actually); "awk" (awkward); "ridic" (ridiculous); "hilar" (hilarious); and "ador" (adorable). Soon, the nearest you can expect to a commitment about anything from your teenage offspring will be "I prom". But it's best not to push them too far, lest they resort to acronyms. Then without even knowing it, you may get the "ST" (silent treatment).
And awk and all as the ST may be, an even worse fate is the "ST with RAC" (silent treatment with rude additional comments).
If something is funnier than hilarious, incidentally, Ling speakers describe it as "TOPOSH" (Top of the Pillar of St Hilar). Which shows that not even teenagers can survive on abbreviations alone. The Ling allows for certain verbal flourishes, so that something very rude is "rudebega", and something more than rudebega is "rudebega to the max". But mostly the Ling is about abbrev-speak. And while fluency may still be the preserve of a few cool-to-the-max New Yorkers, the phenomenon will soon be "OOC" (out of control) everywhere.
Of course, New Yorkers have long had a tendency to use abbreviations, calling parts of their city SoHo (south of Houston Street), TriBeCa (the triangle below Canal Street), Alphabet City (Avenues A to D on the lower east side), and DUMBO (down under Manhattan Bridge overpass).
The hip young things in Dublin City Council had a similar idea this year when they redesignated the neighbourhood around Thomas Street as Ireland's SoHo, on the grounds that it was south of Heuston Station. Fair enough. But the danger is that, with a similarly generous attitude to both spelling and geography, the same area could also be christened NoGo (North of Guinness's brewery).
On the whole, I prefer the School of Philosophy's approach to rebranding places with the discreet use of apostrophes. Once L'Derry and L'Kenny have been dealt with, the next obvious candidate would be a certain Co Louth village whose name is almost rudebega in its current form. Termonf'n would at least be an improvement. As for the Limerick village of Effin, further abbreviation is useless. But maybe readers have other suggestions.
*Proposed ice-breaking topic for philosophy class: why is "abbreviation" such a long word?