I love words. From a very young age I’ve always had this love affair with the English language. My dad encouraged this a lot and I remember sitting alongside him with a dictionary in hand trying to catch him out on the meanings of words. This game also brought a lot of words I didn’t recognise (and at such a young age probably shouldn’t have been able to say) and it turned into something more than just trying to find something he didn’t know! I think it’s down to him that I love words so much.
This small anecdote brings me to the topic at hand. While growing up – at home and at school – we were taught how to say and spell words in every day use, along with the odd word that wasn’t so prolifically used. I know the schools my children go to still do spellings and reading, so I’m fairly confident that other schools both nationally and internationally do as well. So, can someone please tell me when people stopped being able to speak properly?
I was listening to an interview on TV this morning and, I swear, every second word out of this particular girl’s mouth was “literally”. She “literally learned to be a florist”, she “literally had to adapt to being in prison” and about fifteen other sentences starting with “literally” in between. And, while I’m sure she had an interesting story to tell, all I could think about was sending her a dictionary with the word “literally” highlighted and lists of the correct usage of it; and maybe a thesaurus too so she could learn other words with similar meanings! That may make me a word nazi and I’m not saying that my grammar and punctuation and even word usage is 100% perfect, but it was irritating. Still, her over-use of a word doesn’t bug me half as much as hearing textspeak used vocally!
I understand the point of textspeak – when you’re faced with a limited amount of characters and you need to get a message across, it makes sense to abbreviate some words but I don’t think that excuse is acceptable when you have a full keyboard in front of you or are actually using your mouth to speak with! I don’t know if anyone else out there has experienced this but when my 16-year-old stepson actually stood there and said “LOL”… (yes, out loud!) I really did do a double-take, followed by the disbelieving “please tell me you did not just say ‘LOL’!” He regularly says that, OMG, ROFL and others which I’m desperately trying to blank out of my head.
I need someone to tell me I’m not alone in my distaste for the way people are bastardising the English language. Oh, I know (before anyone comes in with it) that the way we speak now would be viewed as wrong by people from earlier times (even 50 or 60 years ago) but I’m sure we still use words that actually are words and not constant abbreviations. Is this what we have to look forward to? Words having five letters or less? I shudder to think how this blog post could have looked if written by someone who uses textspeak constantly. Are we witnessing the death of language or the evolution of a new version of the English language?
© 2011, Lisa Swift, Whimpuslive & The Discussion Junkies Network. All rights reserved.
All too true. Surprising how many people are completely illiterate… I think I work with most of them
I have a friend who is what you describe as a “grammar nazi” but the said Hitler of the English language makes more than her fair share of grammatical errors, typos and general faux pas with the written and spoken word.
I write for a living, albeit only content for gaming websites, and often don’t have time to read back over my work which is always a catastrophic error because on the days I haven’t checked my work I’ll find a “there” when it should be “their”, a “your” when it should be “you’re” and a million other common errors.
My pet hates in the world of language today are a)using a word totally out of context in an effort to sound more intellectual than you are – you just look a tit and b) f**king Amercianisms! It’s an ARSE not an ASS, a NAPPY not a DIAPER and the hundreds of other crap Yank words being force fed to our kids on the television.
For me I love looking up the meaning of sayings, finding the origin of a saying like “vinegar stroke” or “indian giver”. I love our language and completely agree with the points you raise Lisa – great post
*Reads back quickly over comment for typos etc before hitting “post”*
@ Matt – well you do work in M&S.. they’re known for quality food, not quality intelligence
@ Nickie – I can handle genuine typos, although depending on the person making the typo I may indulge in some teasing over the mistake. I agree with your pet hates. Mind you, I am guilty of using “ass” at times, but usually when I’m talking to an American. I also love looking up meanings and origins of words/phrases (Can see another blog post coming out of that hehehehe).
I’m guessing it’s evolution, but it is a shame to see the language bastardized as it is. (And yes, here in the “Colonies”, it is spelled with only one ‘s’.)
We write checks, rather than cheques. Objects have color, rather than colour. We honor the dead, not honour them. This blog post is grammar-oriented, not grammar-orientated. We don’t go to the toilet, we go to a restroom or a bathroom, in order to use the toilet. And we typically refer to the toilet as a toilet-stool or just a stool. Tell you’re going to the toilet and I’m seriously hoping you intend to retire to the restroom before you do it. Water drains from a sink via the drain, not a plughole. Cars are parked in a GAHR-aje, not a GAIR-ej. You ring people up on a telly, we call people on a telephone or a phone. Telly is slang for a television, which we generally refer to as a TV. We cook food on a stove, not a cooktop. Our kitchens have counters with cabinets, because a bunker is a safe place to shelter from bombs.
And could you please refer to ‘jelly’ by it’s proper name – gelatin? Because if we decide against making fruit preserves or fruit jams, we use fruit juice to make jelly. And we ‘Muricans all love a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich. And an open-faced sandwich is just that, not a piece. We vacuum our floors, because hoovering is slang for a sex act a woman performs on a man. And why you refer to a Milky Way as a Mars Bar and a Three Musketeers bar as a Milky Way is just wrong. But if you’re willing to share one of your Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers with me, I don’t care if you say CAIR-a-mel, or CAR-a-mel.
The people in Canada punctuate nearly every spoken sentence with ‘eh’, which they pronounce ‘ay’. I have to run to the store, eh? Do you want to ride along with me, eh? It’s really cold this morning, eh? Almost all statements end up being questions, eh? And that can be even more annoying than people who use ‘literally’ to death, eh?
I regret to admit I’ve grown lazy over the years. When I was a child, I was taught to pronounce ‘the’ as ‘thee’, not ‘thuh’. But the lessons didn’t stick. ‘A’ becomes ‘uh’, as well. And then you can add in the wide and varied accents in this country. I live in Lafayette, Indiana, which we pronounce as LA-FEY-et. Journey to Louisiana and it is pronounced la-FAY-et. And people on the Eastern Seaboard chide us for ‘warshing’ dishes, rather than washing them.
I reckon the only constant in this world is change. And we’re drug along with it, for better or for worse, even when it comes to changes in the English language.