We’ve been through trauma in Calgary and southern Alberta, as flood waters poured across the land. It’s been an amazing story, of fear and heroics and compassion. Grief, and anger, too. And a weird thing has happened to our language.
We learned new vocabulary (cubic metres per second is how water flow is measured. Also sewage, I think). Words took on new meaning. Some we needed to avoid – the puns flowed deep and fast. There was a flood of puns. We were inundated with puns. It was raining puns, often unintentionally. Who knew we had so many water-based words? And new words emerged.
Our beloved Mayor Nenshi scolded people who were boating on a flooding river and endangering rescuers who might have to come after them. He said he was not allowed to use the nouns he wanted to use to describe them… and they came to be called nenshinouns. Don’t be a nenshinoun.
I’ve heard him referred to as His Awesomeness, as he became the face and voice of the emergency workers doing astounding things to protect the city. Into his second day without sleep, a twitter hashtag emerged – nap4nenshi – as people encouraged him to get some sleep. This spread to others who were working long hours – nap4yyc for emergency workers; nap4markusoff, one of the Calgary Herald reporters who was tweeting breaking news; even nap4maureen as I struggled to retweet breaking news on Facebook to keep friends up to date, either in Calgary and inundated with other stuff to deal with (yeah, another pun), or out of town and trying to follow the story.
There was a brief revival of nenvy – envy of our wonderful mayor by other places who have less wonderful mayors (you know who you are).
As a writer, I found this fascinating. And a little painful, to learn from the inside out. I still wince at certain words, shy away from certain language. We’ve grown new prickles, all flood-based, and they’re reflected in our language. It’ll be interesting to look back in a year and see what has eased, and what persists. I suspect we’ll always have nenshinouns.
Maureen
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