Random Thoughts On The Decline Of English

Fred On Everything ^ | 010504 | Fred Reed

[nopardons]

There are still people who speak and write well. There are very old movies shown on TCM and AMC, there are old, very well written books for people to read, and though no one gives their children elocution lessons anymore, as was popular when my grandmother was a child,those books still can be found in libraries...not to mention on a shelf in my home. :-)

I may have have missed your point, or you may have missed mine. Are we talkikng at crossed purposes and why don't you know what Barbra Striesand stands for here on FR ?

Just who, WHO is not in a poszition to not know that "anyways" is not a word ?

[FormerlyAnotherLurker]

"Anyways" is in my copy of Random House Webster's Unabridged.

[SouthernClaire]

I don’t know what BS stands for here or anywhere else on the Internet. Sorry.

(Well, slight confession: I do know what BS stands for. And I think her views fit perfectly my definition of .... BS. :-))

I do think you locked horns with me agreeing with your stance, however. My sentiment is, and was, that some are not afforded the time, money, associates or what have you, to have their English influenced to a point of perfection.
Not sure what you meant by “WHO is not in a poszition to not know that “anyways” is not a word?” You lost me. I don’t spend as much time here as I should.

SC

[Bernard Marx]

Why English is hard to learn

Ah, the dreaded homonym. Spell checkers are no defense, either; you have to actually LEARN the differences. So few do these days and that's why we have people pouring over books, breaking their cars to a stop, reigning their emotions in, etc. The worst for me are horrible bloopers involving the words affect and effect. Homonyms truly can change language meaning and can even be dangerous in situations where clarity is required, like wars, explosives factories, etc.

[Bernard Marx]

"Anyways" is in my copy of Random House Webster's Unabridged.

So are monstrosities like "irregardless." Dictionaries reflect actual language usage. An illiterate populace fills dictionaries with illiterate words.

[FormerlyAnotherLurker]

I've a friend who routinely accepts whatever 'possible' substitutions of grammar and spelling that Word offers. It makes for some very interesting and annoying messages from her. She has informed me that she got straight A's in English. At least she's cute (if I don't have to read her drivel!).

[dk/coro]

I realy unnerstan your coment. But, when there English gits really bad on Fox, etc. I just take s goodly long look at there lucious lips..an legs...and all is fergiven.

Okey doke ??

BTY, I'm almost 75 now...an my prioritys is jimmied up a bit. Wished I was younger ...an them gal talkers would probly have ter talk better'n. OK...?

[luckymom]

I hate it when they say "That's a whole NOTHER story." Nother?!?!?!

[FormerlyAnotherLurker]

"Usage. IRREGARDLESS is considered nonstandard because of the two negative elements ir- and -less. It was probably formed on the analogy of such words as irrespective, irrelevant, and irreparable. Those who use it, including on occasion educated speakers, may do so from a desire to add emphasis. IRREGARDLESS first appeared in the early 20th century and was perhaps popularized by its use in a comic radio program of the 1930s."
FROM:Random House Webster's

Language changes. After more than 70 years it's just pompous to pine for the earlier version. I'm sure in Elizabethan England some looked fondly upon Chaucerian usage.
As shown by my earlier Porter quote, complaints about the current state of the language have always existed.
THOUGH: modern music, e.g. rap, is abysmal!

[nopardons]

Well, dear, not being male and far short of your 75 years,those " girls " don't do anything for me and I'd rather they spoke well and that Laurie Due would stop loading her lips with Collogen and lipgloss gloss...szhe's freakish looking.

[nopardons]

You've got to be kidding !

[Inyo-Mono]

As the father of two teenagers I know all to well how true this article is.

[FormerlyAnotherLurker]

Unfortunately, no.
However, 2 dictionaries near my desk don't have it.

[nopardons]

Speaking and writing correctly still matters, in some places. If one can't/doesn't, then they are not accorded special privileges, because they somehow escaped being taught how to do so. And, they shouldn't be.

Unfortunately, those places are shrinking in number and the lowest levels are now being not only accepted, but encouraged in music, books,movies, T.V. programs, newspaper writing,and in some schools.

[Billthedrill]

If I might...I don't think it's so much an opportunity, because opportunity abounds. I think it's a hunger. I don't even know if you can force a child to it, and it isn't necessarily a kind thing to do, but if the field is fertile the seed will grow.

I can tell you how it happened to me. I was blessed with parents who read to me since infancy, and their monetary investment was nearly nil - a library card, and a decent library to back it. The investment was time, and I know now with one of them gone that it was the most precious thing they had to give.

There was a single, soul-stirring moment that I have remembered across five decades. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, public library - I was eight, taken by the hand from the delightful, intimate, low-ceilinged children's library and up the old, marble steps we walked to a place I'd never been. It was the most enormous room I'd ever been in, two stories high and what seems in memory miles long, one floor connected to the next with black wrought-iron spiral staircases and nothing but books as far as the eye could see. I think that Heaven must look something like that. I don't remember now if it was Mom, or Dad, or both, but what they said was "now go find something to read."

Do that, and college won't matter.

[nopardons]

YIKES !

I shan't buy a new dictionary, but stick with the ones I have. :-)

[Nebullis]

Have no fear. Microsoft spell check and grammar editors will keep the English language safe from degradation by the upper classes.

[sergeantdave]

And the misuse of effect vs affect. Add, too, the redundant "At this point in time."

[cyborg]

In an America that has embraced the tastes and standards of the black ghetto, I occasionally see it written that Ebonics is a language to be respected as much as English.

** Blame everything on the black ghetto. My gradeschool english teacher was a white woman from Long Island who insisted that 'the' was pronounced 'thuh' and not 'thee' the way my mother taught me. Before there was ebonics, people were butchering the english language.

[FormerlyAnotherLurker]

The Random House is on CDROM and incredibly handy.
I have a Wordsworth Concise English Dictionary (published in England) that I purchased for a quarter at a booksale that's my favorite traveling dictionary. Small format and print with 1000+ pages.
I used to make fun of Brooke Shields after I heard her say "phenomenons" until I actually looked it up and every dictionary I had listed the word, except Wordsworth.