Girl friends and girlfriends

We should have a word for girls who are friends. I hate having to say, “Me and my friend who… We should have a word for girls who are friends. I hate having to say, “Me and my friend who is a girl were volunteering and…” It sounds like I’m trying to prove something, especially if the girl is pretty, and let’s face it, I have a ton of pretty friends who are girls, in addition to the tons of pretty girlfriends that I have. So it can be really confusing. If you say, “My friend who is a girl,” to an elderly woman, she will cock her eyebrow and give you a mischievous smile and say, “Just friends? You so sure about that?” Elderly people usually think everyone of the opposite sex within three years of your age would make a suitable match.

It used to be that a girl could say, “Yeah, so I was gossiping on the phone with my girlfriend and…” But in today’s world, there’s an ambiguity about whether or not the girls are a homosexual couple. It would be odd to hold a double standard where if a guy says he has a boyfriend, he’s gay, but a girl can have a girlfriend and only cast a coquettish suspicion on the matter.

In Spanish, this isn’t a problem, because the noun for friend is gendered: amiga. I can say to my Tia Meley, “Yo estaba besandole a mi amiga Soledad toda la noche en el aparcamiento de Autozone,” without raising any doubts as to the platonic nature of my relationship with Soledad.

People say language is a tool. This is true, but actually it’s more like a toolbox. When a word has outlived its usefulness, we can toss it aside. And we shouldn’t be afraid to add new tools, provided that we aren’t hasty and the new word is of absolute necessity.

Therefore, I propose we take on “amiga” as a new word for a friend who is a girl. It actually finds its root in the Spanish “amiga,” which means a friend who is a girl.

You might wonder why I’m writing this column. After all, I’m Lewis Lehe; if I really wanted to add amiga to the English language, I would just start using it. Josh Green, poser that he is, would follow suit, with The New York Times and Webster’s Dictionary close on his heels. Or, I might call up my friend TIP, of Bankhead, Ga., and ask him to use “amiga” on a hit single.

I write this column to answer a letter I received last week, from Harold Bloom, Professor of Humanities at a university in Connecticut. Bloom writes:

“Estimable Lewis,

I address you by your first name, though you have never answered my weighty volumes of fan correspondence, because I feel that our souls are intimate, our destinies perhaps woven by the same fate, I daresay with thread of the same spool. It was therefore with scarring ire that my eyes surveyed the following sentence of your last column, ‘One time I was talking to some of my amigas at a party, and a guy walked in wearing a Raekwon T-shirt.’

Perhaps you consider your own impressive command of English to attain even that lofty plane of mastery where the artful nymph of tongue and type, English herself, hand-maiden to the muses, is your own weak-willed stepchild. Suffer me an intercession between your ego and anima, then. You are a parody of Shakespearian energies, Lewis. You are as a feminist literary theorist in a Raekwon T-shirt is to Raekwon himself.

You cannot fabricate words such as amiga. Bloom is not on board. And without Harold Bloom, that veritable anchor of the academy, the ship does not depart. Now I have discharged my conscience on the matter. I pray that Adonis bears it well when you absent yourself from Olympus long enough to reply.

Harold Bloom, Professor of Humanities,

A university in Connecticut

P.S. I harvest my vineyard of memories vivid and press a wine of wisdom, vintage … eternity! Here I suffer you a draught – marry the first girl aged between 18 and 24 years who you meet on the way home today.”

Now that you’ve heard both sides, you can make up your own mind on the issue. In the mean time, I’m going to take things a step farther.

I hate having to write “him or her,” when in normal conversation I would say “them.” You can’t actually use “them,” though, because it is plural. It is also inadequate to continuously mix up the genders of people in your examples, because it seems like you have purposely chosen the gender for the given example, which makes your language less gender-neutral than if you simply used “he” and “him” all of the time.

Therefore, I propose we use the pronoun “ello,” pronounced “eyo.” I just made it up off the top of my head, and it’s dissimilar enough to both he and she that it doesn’t slant toward either side like my first idea, “che,” did. “Ello” doesn’t change form between object and subject, because it’s always obvious, anyway.

So, if your English teacher ever marks you off for using “amiga,” be bold and tell “ello,” “Whether or not a person uses “amiga” or “friend who is a girl” is “ello” choice.”

Like Lewis? E-mail ello at ljl10@pitt.edu. He might publish it in his next column.