Is English Deteriorating ?

Artful Dilettante/Harvey A. Daniels ^ | March 6, 2018 | Artful Dilettante

[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.

[KJC1]

I think it is deteriorating.

Two television commercials I’ve seen in the last few months fit in this category.

One is for dental implants: “Dentures are different to real teeth.” (Can’t remember the company, but this line is spoken by an actor playing a dentist, I think.)

One for some type of loan/mortgage/something: “Our loans are different to other loans.” (I think this one is for New Day USA?)

I’m paraphrasing, but pretty close.

I love the English language and other languages. I am sure I make my fair share of typos and mistakes, but once it becomes a national advertisement you’d think mistakes should have been caught and corrected.

[foreverfree]

Bump

[SIDENET]

[tsomer]

It all fell apart the day he left us.

[Rocky]

In preparation for the primary election, I looked at the web sites of people running for judge and for district attorney. These are supposedly very well educated people. In their biographies, many of them had spelling or grammatical errors.

Maybe someone else made the errors. But I doubt that that is true in all cases. And, in any case, where you are putting up a web site to run for office, as the candidate, wouldn’t you personally proofread it all to be sure it’s OK?

[Aliska]

I can't remember ever seeing that, another screwup correcting someone else's - damn I'll leave it but now have a bad habit of what was given as an earlier example!!!) - but thanks. It's endemic, even reporters in web editions (and perhaps in hard copy) do it way too often. But I almost did it myself upstream ;-).

I developed a couple annoyances of my own. The first seems to have trailed off and it could be my poor vision or even keyboard (watch, I'll start doing it again), but if I read something I'd written after it's too late to change, I'd terminate with two periods as if one wouldn't suffice.

And the other annoys me at myself no end, but I seem to have the inability to close many uses of parentheses and only catch it if I take enough care to edit which, in haste, often I don't bother. Idiosyncrasy or idiocy? Probably both and more.

[Bikkuri]

I did that once. Luckily everyone else thought it was intentional :D

[libh8er]

Another is the past tense of ‘sneak’. It’s sneaked, but “snuck” has stuck and it grates on me everytime I hear it. Even Rush is guilty of it.

[Inyo-Mono]

Yes, English has degraded since personal computers become common. As a professional graphic artist and typesetter in the 1970s and early '80s, I see that everyone now uses the word "font," as seen on computers, when the correct word is "typeface." A font like italics is a derivative, or subset, of a typeface like Courier.

[Salvation]

Real evidence of the lack of education and the lack of good teachers in our schools.

[Nailbiter]

learned something new- and I am old enough to know better

[Bikkuri]

 I developed a couple annoyances of my own. The first seems to have trailed off and it could be my poor vision or even keyboard (watch, I'll start doing it again), but if I read something I'd written after it's too late to change, I'd terminate with two periods as if one wouldn't suffice.

And the other annoys me at myself no end, but I seem to have the inability to close many uses of parentheses and only catch it if I take enough care to edit which, in haste, often I don't bother. Idiosyncrasy or idiocy? Probably both and more. 

I also do the same thing, especially when I have parentheses within parentheses :~p
And, too many dots (periods); it has been a bad habit for a couple of decades.

[Salvation]

And the word “I” used in place of “me.:

Give the answer to James and I.

GIVE THE ANSWER TO JAMES AND ME.

[fire and forget]

The one time I endured a good flaming on FR was after introducing one of these. Circa 2000, before I took this screename. The ever-popular “word Nazi” threads.

That energetic blowback was a deterrent back in the day. “Learned me” never to try that again.

What a swing of the pendulum! Great thread.

[Salvation]

**I really loath **

I REALLY LOATHE

[Inyo-Mono]

I believe it happened because the word “Font” fit better on a small browser or Word tab than “Typeface.”

[Salvation]

One of my pet peeves is the misuse of apostrophes.

[MrEdd]

[Nea Wood]

What I’m seeing all over the place, even on FR, is people neglecting to add an “s” to words ending in “ist” when they’re plural. I see sentences like, “We have to stop all those terrorist from coming in to the country.” “Those feminist are very angry.” Etc. Why has everyone suddenly decided that those words don’t need an “s” to be plural?

[Inyo-Mono]

He gave it to she and I. AAAARRRRRGGGGGH

How about: "Myself and the other officer arrested the gentleman..."