Posted on 02/25/2005 11:29:26 AM PST by Willie Green
The 1957 Fowler is in my bag right now, for short breaks and lunch reading. It's the Bible of grammarians.
In college, I found that the lower the grade level that a scoring program I found on an HP3000 (this was 27 years ago) in the Mathematics department scored my papers, the higher the grade I recieved.
Our papers were graded by TAs who did not speak English well. The less I strained their brains, the more I was rewarded.
I am learning Latin as I teach my daughter. (homeschooling)
Latin makes things so much easier to point out, like plural you, parts of speech and how sentences work.
It is great. I did not have a chance to learn in school.
Mom is getting a better education now, though. LOL!!
The three language misuses that irk me the most are three VERY common mispronunciations:
1. Mischievous -- It is NOT mis-chee-vee-us!
2. Often -- It's OFF-uhn, not OFF-tuhn!
3. Sophomore -- The middle "o" is silent!
MM
I LOVE it.
Daughter has been another matter until recently.
She is admitting to liking it as well. Hrooah!
Remarkable!
But with all the degree-anal employers around, without the sheepskin one is scrooed.
I've seen him on televison a couple of times.
He is, indeed, as you say, remarkable.
I can't really help it though.
When I IM, I write at least semi-formal still. The one difference is I do this between sentences: "Yeah, it was fun last night...I can't believe Joey fell asleep watching that movie, however."
"Last night, a car speeding down the interstate kills a family of...." No, I'm sorry, The accident happened last night and the past tense is appropriate; IE "The family was killed last night..." In a feeble attempt to make everything into breaking news we have thrown out the past tense. This sloppy habit has spread into everyday conversational English. Occasionally I've even caught my wife, a "language arts major" doing it!
To really compound the verbal felony, substitute "goes" for "says" or "said" and you wind up with "He goes 'lets grab lunch', and I go 'sure'!" What on earth has happened to our beautiful, rich, colorful, subtle, dare I say 'nuanced' language.
I fear it's been assassinated by adolescents.
Regards,
GtG
Lots of Texans pronounce it that way.
My mother, who grew up in New Jersey and has no discernible accent, made sure that her three Texas-bred children ditto. You can't tell I'm from Texas until you get me drunk.
Miss, you seem to be a little clueless. The "he", as you call him, shows a "lack of knowledge" of proper manners. That is the reason people use "ignorant" in that context. Call it slang if you wish, but if you couldn't figure that out on your own, you're as stupid as your fellow students.
Or how about this:
"He's like 'lets grab lunch', and I'm like 'sure'!" I've heard that usage a few times too many.
Is that how you get conjuctivitis?
But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
If you always use perfect grammar when speaking, or even writing, you can come across as stilted. For example "Who are you gonna go to the dance with?" sounds much more normal than "With whom will you go to the dance?"
That said, there are way too many people whose use of grammar is so bad that it's difficult to tell exactly what they're trying to say.
It drives me mad. However, I'm certain that I have mangled badly and butchered the English language myself so I have little right to complain.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.