The ‘Güdenhew’ illusion: when we miss the bad old times

APPARENTLY, adding a new word to a language isn't a simple task and usually follows a number of conditions.

Top of that list is that the word needs to be used frequently by a significant number of people. This is why I have been wondering why a certain word that practically everyone is using these days has not been added to the dictionary!

As if you haven’t guessed it already, the word is “güdenhew”. C’mon, don’t be coy. I am certain you used it at least 55 times this past week! It just slips into our conversation so naturally that you cannot help yourself … that’s why it HAS to be added to our dictionary!

Here’s how it happens; someone says: “Hello, how are you?”

And you reply: “Güdenhew.”

One linguist suggests that the word is a compact form of the phrase “I am good, and how are you?” But that has been disputed.

(Of course I am making all this nonsense up … it’s the weekend, after all, but bear with me.)

The dispute arises from the fact that after someone has responded with ‘güdenhew’ and you start an actual conversation with them, that person will invariably go on to complain. And these days there’s a generous amount of issues we complain about – the unbearable heat, soaring prices, dodgy water and electricity supply, crime, the demise of our city’s CBD – the list seems endless.

So, for now, ‘Güdenhew’ will not be in the next edition of the dictionary, simply because things are so bad at present.

How bad? Well, recently, I read a post on social media that went: “SAA from 1987 to 2002 had a fleet of 148 aircraft servicing 74 international and 24 local destinations. Today SAA has a fleet of nine aircraft servicing 17 destinations in total.”

Remember, this is social media, hardly known for its dissemination of facts, therefore the figures in this post could be a bit unreliable.

But what got me was not the post itself, but the comments responding to it. There were around 1,700, and I admit I never read all of them.

However, I was rather surprised to see the many comments where South Africans, across the cultural spectrum were saying how this country was in a better state pre-liberation, and I know that will make some folks hot under the collar.

Yet, for example, one of the comments was: “All state entities are in a mess....SAL, Post Office, Railway, PetroSA, Police, Defence, Escom, Denel etc due to incomptence people.” (sic) And this was one of the ‘kinder’ comments’.

The point I am making is that the perception is out there that transformation in South Africa failed, and failed horribly.

It’s as if … how do I put this? Imagine someone saying that they long for the days of the Covid-19 lockdowns. They could argue that in those days escalator rails, ATMs and elevator buttons were kept clean and sanitized. Now, around four years later, the sticky, greasy grubbiness is back, because we have returned to what has come to be accepted as “normal”.

All I am saying is that things must really be bad when people are fed up with what’s considered ‘normal’ today and long for the bad old days.

So, if you’re wondering whether I am depressed when you say to me “Hi, how are you?” and I reply: “OK, I guess.” It’s not depression, just an admission that I am not enjoying ‘normal’ that much.

But on a more positive note, A senior citizen recently told me how good life was growing up in Kimberley.

“I could go into the general store with a shilling, and come out with two loaves of bread, two dozen eggs, four pounds of potatoes, maybe a few cans of soda, a slab of cheese, plus, on top of that, a handful of sweets!”

I was stunned and told him that these days you couldn’t get a fraction of that with even R200.

He responded, “Nah, the money’s not the problem. It’s those damned CCTV cameras!”