Posted on 01/07/2010 11:37:13 AM PST by SoonerStorm09
When did the preferred language of the US change? Moreover, when did people decide that it was okay to butcher it like a side of beef? With all of the text speak and "press 1 for English" going on these days how is it that we, as even semi-educated beings, allow the utter raping of the language and never even really bat an eye?
Now, I will tell you that I believe that humans are a comical creation to say the least and I do not believe that any one race, gender or sexual preference, for that matter, is better than any other. I think that we have screw ups in every walk of life and also feel that you should be able to take a jab, laugh about yourself and roll with it. That being said, I have no problems with you using your native tongue or form of lingo in your own setting or communication exchange, the problem I have is when you try to impose on me how I can or should communicate based on what you feel is right or have chosen to.
Leads me to ask the question. Whatever Happened to.....The English Language?
(Excerpt) Read more at tulsatoday.com ...
A symptom of the breakdown of our society. Call it Balkanization if you will. Hard times ahead. Maybe even war.
Languages are always changing, ours and everybody elses!
Do you talk like someone from 200 years ago?
What’s the problem, dude? I was educationalized in English in publik skewl.
Your colloquial laden idiomatic manner of writing may have something to do with the decline of our mother tongue. Some linguists argue that English really is nothing more than a creole that will continue to evolve as its prestige proscribes.
I doubt the author has been outside of the USA. Yes Virginia, there are English options in phones systems all throughout Europe, Asia and South America.
It’s more than just changing. When the average teenager (and older) says the word “like” 5 times in every sentence, or “ya know?” after every sentence, the language is being debased and severely dumbed-down.
Ize’s dont like no wuns prevert’n da kings english.
idk omg lol!
> Slow down learn one, then move on. Better yet, learn English and use it properly.
Sage advice that the blog writer would be wise to take himself. I noted far too many misuses of the English Language in this article for him to be pontificating on correct English use.
Physician, heal thyself!
Jeepers. I remember hearing that comment when I was a kid...
Mrs, Bond must be very proud of Ernie. That was a fine article. Well said, indeed.
“Do you talk like someone from 200 years ago?”
Methinks not.
REASONS WHY THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IS HARD TO LEARN:
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
LET’S FACE IT—ENGLISH IS A CRAZY LANGUAGE!!!
1)There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
2) English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France.
3) Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat.
AND CONSIDER THIS......
We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham?
If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth beeth? Or, one goose, 2 geese? So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend.
If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?
Take for instance text speak. Nothing drives me nuts faster than when people use it in everyday conversation. The lol's, lmao, rofl, brb, and others that keep me guessing on what exactly is being said. When I was a youth leader I was talking to a group of young people and suddenly one of the girls actually said, "LOL!" I had to stop and think to myself, "Did I just hear that?" I said to the girl, "You know were are right here, if you want to "laugh out loud" you can, we are here and will hear it." Save that stuff for on-line IM's and phone texting.Many words we use today are abbreviations from years ago. When you hear the word "OK" or "ASAP" you know what it means.
English is an evolving language. It's OK to incorporate new words.
In a word? Ebonics.
Yes, once teachers recognized that students didn't want to study, were unable to spell, weren't prepared to improve themselves, and would rather smack the teacher's skull upon getting an 'F' than accept he/she was a simpleton, it was only a matter of time. So the teachers (esp in Oakland) decided that phonetic attempts to spell a word were acceptable. Then, when students decided some verbs were nouns, some ghetto phrases were 'a'ite' (all right) to use in exams, "Ebonics" was truly born. The Oakland School Board made sure it was a formal alternative to 'English'.
What does it say when our Secretary of State does it? Ya know?
Proper English is bigoted and must be destroyed (thankfully, you’ve contributed). On the other hand, ebonics should be celebrated and even taught in some schools. Is this a great country, or what?
Teenagers talked like that in the seventies.
At one point my father began interrupting my sister and myself (and all our friends) each time we said “ya’know” with “Why no! I don’t now. Why don’t you tell me about it?”.
It had the effect he desired.
Whaddaya mean, publick sKooL is kEwL, ya know whaddhi mean?
...my wife teaches composition to freshmen at a local public university...the kids have 2 vocabularies...the one they use with each other that’s ‘valley girl’ lingo....and the formal one they use to write their term papers...that one is pretty good actually.
....overall though, I agree with the premise of the article...there’s been a decline in English skills...so much so that most schools have to offer remedial English....only they call it “developmental English” so as not to hurt anybody’s self esteem.
*ping*
I see three grammatical errors in that excerpt. FWIW.
not much of a history buff are you?
Languages always change over time, just read Shakespeare sometime if you want to see how much the “English” language has changed.
From a scientific standpoint, there is no such thing as “correct” or “proper” language. If this were the case, Italian and Spanish would just be corrupted Latin.
There are only high-prestige and low-prestige variants of a language, which inevitably change over time. What is most interesting is that the rate of change has decreased dramatically. The English language changed much more from Chaucer to Shakespeare, 200 years, than from Shakespeare to today, 400 years.
Personally, I intend to continue trying to use high-prestige American English as effectively as I can.
He’s just having a bad day. Sometimes hearing the words turlit, sammich and diarree puts a smile on my face.
>>>That being said, I have no problems with you using your native tongue or form of lingo in your own setting or communication exchange, the problem I have is when you try to impose on me how I can or should communicate based on what you feel is right or have chosen to.
You’ll note that in his complaint, the author failed to employ proper Elizabethan era English. In fact, he can’t even get modern English correct in that sentence. It should really be two sentences and the second half makes no sense. Chosen to what?
You know, I remember hearing the same thing in the 1980’s from my father, about “like” and “you know.” But hey, he was wrong. It’s like, not like we’ve elected a Marxist Kenyan to be our President, you know, or like it’s not like we have put a corrupt Senator who ran a homosexual brothel out of his home’s basement in charge of financial regulation. We’re not slipping. Like, you know.
As a teenager in the 70’s, I had that experience. Everytime I or my siblings said “you know”, my stepDad would say, “No, I don’t know actually!”. We stopped pretty quick.
Sometimes you just need someone to point out what you are doing, because we don’t recognize it ourselves.
So other than correcting your kids what can you really do about it?
Language is always changing but the structural changes to English in my lifetime have been unfortunate.
The two biggest ongoing trends in English grammar:
1) The future tense. “Shall” has completely disapeared from colloquial American English, and Britain isn’t far behind. “Will” and its contracted forms are also slowly disappearing, replaced by some version of “Going to / gonna / gunna / gon’ “ etc. I blame everyone for this, because everyone does it.
2) The ongoing disappearance of the “ly” form of the adverb. Advertising leads the way on this one. Every day we are accustomed to hearing “drive slow,” “shop smart,” etc.
Every year the language of Shakespeare grows more incomprehensible to modern audiences, and that is sad.
It’s the invention of the dictionary that has slowed the rate of change, in my snap judgment. imsj.
Para FRee Republic, marque dos.
Languages are the currency of communication. They change, evolve, and become extinct. Sure, as I get older, I hate feeling more out of the loop, linguistically-speaking, but I also know that happens with every generation. One thing to remember is that there are always multiple levels of language depending upon the context. There is always a conversational level, for instance. Don’t get bent out of shape over the change in English; it is simply not worth spending emotional energy on something this trivial.
I love your list. I teach ESL and enjoy going over these types of challenges. It’s very confusing for immigrants, but they tend to find English fascinating, if not frustrating.
"Butcher it as if it were a side of beef."
I do wish Ernie wouldn't butcher the language so. Don't compare an action to an object.
I’d guess the nuances in the english language would be difficult for a non speaker.
Right and FUBAR is everywhere.
What does "chosen to" refer to?
Alas, Mr Osborne is apparently an alumnus of Government Schools.
Nice! Now I think I’ll go out and buy a Springfield 1911 just in case.
Don’t you mean FUBO?
Yeah.
Get a grip. They're children. They not adults, which is why we have a different word to describe them. Expect immature brains to act differently than adult brains. Besides, if they know this annoys you they will do more often just to drive the old fogey crazy.
Actually, it’s the spread of widespread literacy in a given language with a canon that gets a great deal of use.
Dictionaries are less than 200 years old. English stabilized about 400 years ago. The (most) relevant factors were the King James Bible, the Book of Common Prayer and Shakespeare.
When a language stabilizes varies. For Italian it was with Dante, 1300 roughly, 300 years before English. The language hasn’t changed a great deal sense, I’m told. An Italian can still understand Dante about as well as we can Shakespeare.
Sure the world has changed a bunch. English hasn’t changed all that much. New words, new concepts, not much change in the basic language.
As can be seen by the fact that millions of people still watch Shakespearean plays or movies without translation and enjoy the experience.
Nobody listens to the original Chaucer on CD, I can guarantee you. Much less Beowulf.
And when a president-elect says, “George Bush has invited Michelle and I...”
He wouldn’t say, “George Bush has invited I...”
Obama should ask Harvard to return his tuition money. I do wonder how he ever got into Harvard with such poor grammar.
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