English is being Calvinned.
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.
Couldn’t care less?
I’ve wondered how much of it is due to texting, too.
“Gender” used to in place of the word “sex”.
What a ridiculous headline. Everybody knows the correct grammar is “Are English Deteriorating?”
One for some type of loan/mortgage/something: “Our loans are different to other loans.”
This one is almost universal: "We are going to try AND win" when it should be "try TO win."
Why not say, "We are going to win"? Or are you used to winning without trying?
Another that I never heard until a few years ago. Maybe it is regional. "My house needs painted." It should be "My house needs to be painted" or "My house needs painting" or maybe even "My house needs paint."
It was myself and John.
"The media literally had a cow." (Rush Limbaugh)
Mischievous (almost always mispronounced "mis-CHEE-VEE-us")
Asterisk (frequently pronounced "asterix")
Blah blah blah blah like blah blah blah blah like blah blah like blah blah blah like blah blah blah blah like blah blah blah blah blah.
I would have went...
It was never changed. Recently I wanted to show someone, but the store was gone.
English is being Calvinned.
I would have went...
Proper English is clearly racist.
Eric Holder - “the rules of grammar are only a convention. Non-discrimination is the law. There should be no question in our minds over which takes precedence. Besides, grammar evolves through usage. Who’s to say what will be considered appropriate in the future?
Even worse: The word 'I' used in place of 'me!'
(E.g., "Between you and I," or "She gave to my mother and I.")
Regards,
I don’t miss the days of forty years ago when the words “you know” was placed between each word spoken by the Illiterati.
“I, you know, went to the ah, you know, show last night and saw, ah, you know, a movie about, ah you know, a space ship and, ah, you know he blasted everyone, ah you know, off the ah, you know, the screen.”
Prescriptive means rule-based. Grammar, syntax, etc. prescribe the rules of correct language.
Descriptive is a non-judgemental description of something.
English is moving from a prescriptive, rule-defined language to one in which nothing can be incorrect because no culture, subculture, or their languages, is superior to another, and rules are oppressive.
Linguistics has devolved to merely describing what’s out there, not judging it as correct or incorrect. It often comes down as “not a common usage.”
This is Post-Modern multi-culti, dating back to the sixties.
I am guilty of this, LOL.
One of the ones I hear quite often is "real-li-tor" instead of "realtor." Often by Realtors themselves!
A four year college degree now, MIGHT equal a HS diploma from 50 years ago.
Even worse though, is the decline in common sense reasoning, knowledge of history, etc.
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