What is this ‘girlchild’ language?
Wikipedia defines a girl as a female human from birth, through childhood and adolescence to attainment of adulthood when she becomes a woman. MacMillan defines the girl as a female child. I interpret that to mean a child, without the need for extras to qualify this opposite of boy. I am sure that even the … The post What is this ‘girlchild’ language? appeared first on Nation Online.
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Wikipedia defines a girl as a female human from birth, through childhood and adolescence to attainment of adulthood when she becomes a woman. MacMillan defines the girl as a female child. I interpret that to mean a child, without the need for extras to qualify this opposite of boy. I am sure that even the average mind concurs with my presumption.
I have decided to tackle this topic as a matter of apprehension at the continued use of the term ‘girl child’ mainly by civil society organisations (CSOs) advocating for the rights of girls. I have heard it, listened to debaters use it and waited with baited breath that some reasonable sense would be permitted to prevail in stopping this murder to the Queen’s language. But lo and behold, the terms have slowly trickled from just being some ‘NGO’ or proposal talk. Why, even the media are normalising this abnormality and it is beginning to sound grammatically right.
But I do have my reservations and I plead for
the rectification of this ‘girl child’ phenomenon that I believe will slowly eat away at an already English eroded nation. There is no way a girl can be a woman or adult; hence, the redundancy in the ‘child’ prerequisite. I can almost liken it to references such as a house-dwelling, tree-plant, president leader so-so, teacher-tutor, glass-tumbler or
garden-field. It boggles the mind to listen to the radio or read newspapers about well-learned men and women succumbing to this ‘girl children’ syndrome, when in essence, it should simply be put as girls.
We hear advocates for the ‘girl child’, when correctly; it should be just a girl. Why have we let this massacre
infiltrate out midst in the name of advancing human rights? Lately, I have also heard other people make reference to the boy as ‘boy child’. Sooner or later, we are bound to hear of a female woman or male man.
Surely, something ought to be done before the very children the references are made begin to speak erroneously. I wonder what term might be in the offing to refer to mix-sex children. I am equally curious about the genesis of such wording and how it has been
tolerated to exceed the norm.
Such flowery language must be left for operatives in the business of convincing financiers to projects. Now, before we alter the unchangeable, let us leave English as it is, otherwise we stand guilty of murder. This language has been murdered enough. Of course, the
confusion of ‘Ls’ and ‘Rs’ is subject for another day
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