Posted on 03/06/2018 7:00:56 PM PST by huckfillary
The grammar, punctuation, syntax, and spelling in our country are nothing less than dreadful. And our youth don’t have a monopoly on this. It includes major media figures, political leaders, public spokespersons of major corporations, organizations, and the clergy. Examples:
* Its a beautiful thing. Sorry—IT’S A BEAUTIFUL THING.
* We visited many country’s. Sorry—WE VISITED MANY COUNTRIES. Simple plural, no need for a possessive or apostrophe.
* Attorney-Generals. Sorry—it’s ATTORNEYS-GENERAL, just like MOTHERS-IN-LAW.
* We’re going to visit the Stewart’s. Sorry—WE’RE GOING TO VISIT THE STEWARTS.
This is but a small smattering of the grammatical errors I see and hear everyday in both print and spoken media. The other night, a screen bullet on the Tucker Carlson Show, read “warrents” instead of “warrants.” Tucker, you need better editors.
I understand that our schools have for all intents and purposes dropped traditional English from their curricula. The explanations given include, “There’s no point in wasting precious classtime on memorizing a bunch of “subjective human constructs.” But of course, there’s plenty of time to waste on climate change, racism, misogyny, and transgender bathrooms.
Another common explanation is that English is “racist and serves to advance and undergird white privilege.” Try telling that to Bill Cosby who, despite his alleged crimes and character flaws, had much to say about “black English,” including, “I cannot understand what these kids are saying.” I’ll take it a step further, “I can’t understand what any of our kids are saying.”
And this isn’t a current development. Twenty-five years ago, my wife and I hosted a German exchange student for an academic year. He became a tutor in his English class ! Can you effing believe that?
The public school system is our national disgrace. The taxpayers are paying $15,000 a pop to educate each of our kids. The teachers’ unions should be horsewhipped.
And get this–so should the parents. The schools are supposed to augment what our kids are taught at home by their parents and elder siblings. My parents worked with me every evening, sometimes unpleasantly so, on my multiplication and division tables, flash cards (anyone remember them), reading, spelling, and so forth. Our kids would be better off watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune every night than going to school.
Everyone has dropped the ball on this. Take matters into your own hands. Don’t wait for the government to educate you children. They can’t find the doorknob or pour piss from a boot.
I understand we have far more pressing problems in this country than periods and commas. But the deterioration of English and grammar is just another example of the overall breakdown of discipline in our country. —Artful Dilettante
FAMOUS LAST WORDS: THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE CRISIS
All quotes from Famous Last Words: The American Language Crisis Reconsidered, Harvey A. Daniels.
1. The common language is disappearing. It is slowly being crushed to death under the weight of verbal conglomerate, a pseudospeech at once both pretentious and feeble, that is created daily by millions of blunders and inaccuracies in grammar, syntax, idiom, metaphor, logic, and common sense…. In the history of modern English there is no period in which such victory over thought-in-speech has been so widespread. Nor in the past has the general idiom, on which we depend for our very understanding of vital matters, been so seriously distorted.Recent graduates, including those with university degrees, seem to have no mastery of the language at all. They cannot construct a simple declarative sentence, either orally or in writing. They cannot spell common, everyday words. Punctuation is apparently no longer taught. Grammar is a complete mystery to almost all recent graduates.
2. From every college in the country goes up the cry, “Our freshmen can’t spell, can’t punctuate.” Every high school is in disrepair because its pupils are so ignorant of the merest rudiments.
3. The vocabularies of the majority of high-school pupils are amazingly small. I always try to use simple English, and yet I have talked to classes when quite a minority of the pupils did not comprehend more than half of what I said.
4. Unless the present progress of change [is] arrested…there can be no doubt that, in another century, the dialect of the Americans will become utterly unintelligible to an Englishman. Our language is degenerating very fast.
Bring and take. I cringe when I hear, I’m going to bring my lunch to school if you are at home. You bring something to and take away from.
It has become very clear that the value and implications of a college degree are directly related to the race and gender of the bearer. A “preferred minority” acquaintance with a masters degree in a business field has the equivalent of an elementary school education - and the school that conferred the degrees lost its accreditation for a time here in NJ because it had become a joke. He wasted his time and money, and wonders why he isn’t making big bucks...
;^)
True. I blame the educators, for treating street slang (”ebonics”) as a real language, and for encouraging immigrants to speak their first language.
Seriously? More than 120 comments, and no one has mentioned the misuse of “they” and “them” as singular pronouns?
It’s probably too late to save that one.
“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”
-James Nicoll
Standard reporting from the lamebrained "newsmedia": "A gentleman killed twenty people, raped ten women, and set fire to the building. The suspect was shot and killed."
“The teachers’ unions should be horsewhipped.”
I hear that absurdity quite often. The teachers’ unions have nothing do do with educational decline. It is happening here in the South where, except in certain urban areas, the teachers’ unions have no power. The decline is much more sinister.
The cause is the Frankfurt School of social theory; communists who gained power in American schools of education in the 30s whose goal is the destruction of America.
All teachers’ unions could be eliminated overnight and would not change a thing.
What planet are these people from? (Correction: From what planet do these people come?)
Hey yall! I gotta hardly used English textbook for sell.
One change that drives me nuts is the intentional change to certain style guides for the plural of nouns ending in -ex/-ix from -ices to -exes/-ixes (e.g. the plural index is now indexes, not indices, and the plural of appendix is appendixes, not appendices).
The better title would have been “Is English Grammar Deteriorating”.
English, the spoken language seems to be in better shape than proper English grammar.
In all the examples given, I cannot imagine the listener missing the proper context upon hearing the words, whether or not the written form of it has grammatical errors.
However, I would agree, that WRITTEN ENGLISH GRAMMAR should be taught with greater strength and obtain better common practice than what it has fallen to lately.
Some of the problem is I believe coming out of our “computer typing” experience. My own brain will, when I am typing frenetically, run on automatic and spell what sounds correctly, if spoken, but fail in written grammar and even type a word that is totally wrong but sounds exactly like the word I intended. It’s almost as if the brain has one set of places for the spoken word and setting context correctly with it, and another for written grammar, and the one that comes to mental recognition most quickly is the sound, not the spelling.
As a “development” process, that sounds likely, as we are “speakers” only for quite some time before we learn to write.
Mis-CHEE-VEE-us and REAL-a-tor (and others that don’t come to mind right now) are an assault to the ears. It’s especially maddening when someone who really should know better (an English teacher, an actual realtor) does it. I feel like it’s a evil plot to drive me nuts!
That's me! I'm the technical writer for my very large company and also the librarian. The thing is, I still can't spell for Shiite, and my grammer sux azz. It's just that every one else is worse.
Don’t forget “hole nother”!
“black English,” including, “I cannot understand what these kids are saying.”
Live PD and or COPS are great examples of this. Many of the people (not just the young) cannot be understood.
My hearing isn’t the best, so I use closed captioning, but they can’t interrupt what has just been said either!
Mumble, mumble dog. Mumble, mumble bro. Mumble, mumble, F this and F that mumble, mumble. Mumble, mumble disrespect me bro. Mumble, mumble am I on LIVE PD bro?
That’s great; it provides a measure of job security in terms of the foreign workers trafficked here to replace us.
whose axing the question?
lolololololol
Wat deap whole dose this looser live underneeth of?
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.