Gerontologese: the language of the older crowd
They say children under age six pick up new
languages most quickly, but I’m not so sure. I’ve been hanging around the older
crowd lately (OK, I am the older
crowd) whose foreign-language skills seem strongly correlated to their age. I’m
not sure what this new language is called, exactly, but I think it’s something
like “gerontologese.” Mostly Latin-based, it’s sprinkled with lots of acronyms
and, mercifully, a few English words.
