Ghosts, of course, are nouns. They are spirits without bodies. Ghosting turns that noun into a verb.
You can ghost someone (cut off contact without explaining why), or suspect that you, yourself, are being ghosted (no replies when you try to regain contact). They’re there–but they’re not there. Or, are they? Is this silence as weird as it seems?
The behavior, unfortunately, is not new, but the term seems to have gotten new life in the world of online dating. It’s especially easy to ghost someone online, where it’s easy to disappear from someone’s app by blocking their contact or simply not replying. Most of the time, ghosting is used to describe a romantic partner that “vanishes” suddenly, with no warning or explanation, but it can also be used to describe anyone who simply stops communicating. Here’s a fun article about ways this phrase is used (and how to respond to intentional ghosting):
In our world, where we’re partnering with others to practice a language, ghosting is almost a given. Usually, it’s unintentional. People get busy. They get distracted. They fully intend to practice a language with you, but–life happens. Sometimes they tell you before they disappear. Other times, not. At one point, I had over 25 people telling me they really needed to talk one hour every day. Do the math! Even if I were a ghost, I couldn’t squeeze 25 one-hour conversations into a 24 hour day! So I had to turn new requests down. Of course, after awhile the ones that insisted we talk every day faded out!
This ebb and flow is normal and doesn’t mean you are not interesting or helpful. It just means you need to find someone who has the time right now to do a language exchange with you and is interested in the things you want to talk about. This is especially true when you are doing a free language exchange, such as on Conversation Exchange, instead of paid tutoring. It’s just too easy to drop things that you haven’t made a priority of by spending cash on them. But even paid tutors get ghosted!
Bottom line is, we’re doing something difficult, learning a language in short conversations and snatches of study times while the culture around us roars on at a breakneck pace in our native language. And some people don’t think to tell us when they’re about to fade away.
Of course, the good guys don’t ghost. They tell you,
“Hey, your Mondays from noon to one are about to be freed up, because my workload just got crazy. I don’t have time to chat anymore.”
Then there are the strange people who aren’t really looking to practice language. You know who I’m talking about. They want to take conversations into a whole new, awkward direction that has nothing to do with learning a language. You don’t need to go down that dark road with them. Ghost ’em! As my son says, “Just because they text/email/call you, it doesn’t mean you have to answer.”
* Read all about ghosts acting as nouns in my upcoming post on the Victorian ghost craze.
Notes: Ghost can also be used to describe something that has the quality of a disembodied spirit: ghost town (deserted; only ghosts live there); ghost pepper (so hot that eating it it could make you a ghost?); ghost crab/ghost locust (pale and unnatural looking); ghostbuster (someone who goes around looking for ghosts and the name of a fun 1980’s movie series); ghostwriting (paid to do the actual work but someone else gets the credit! Your name is never seen–invisible).