To think that grammar/spelling standards are not what they were?

[Meandmarius]

I'm mid 30's and have noticed that most of my friends/peers are able to distinguish between 'your and you're', 'where, were, we're' and using the words 'have' and 'of' correctly.
I've noticed that in younger generations there just doesn't seem to be the same standard anymore and I wonder why that is.
Not saying for one minute that my own sp. and grammar is perfect - it isn't. I just wonder if there is as much emphasis on it nowadays as there was back in the day..

[limitedperiodonly]

Surely the number of people able to read classics or 'difficult' literature is higher than before because more people are able to read hamishbear.

Whether they do so is up to them in a world where we get our entertainment from so many sources, including wildly popular books which have no literary value but provide harmless fun.

Besides, when TV or film adaptations are made there will always be a few people inspired to read the book who might not have considered it before, so that's good.

The interesting thing about film is it busts the myth of dumbing down. We're able to handle much more complex storylines than people were when Buster Keaton was a big star.

People in the early 20th century wouldn't have been able to follow things as long and with as many characters as The Sopranos or The Wire, not because they were more stupid than we are, but because they didn't process information in the way we do now.

I don't think civilisation is about to end any time soon.

[Sleepthief]

Perhaps it would be better if we put kids with dyslexia and other learning difficulties back in the 'remedial' class and tell them they're thick and worthless like they did to my DH back in the '70s while they were hammering grammar into the ones whose brains were wired the 'correct' way

God forbid we might have realised there's more to life...

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

at barb. Nicely done.

[Hamishbear]

Feminist Dragon at our school Ipads are being phased in from the Infants up, I don't really see books having much of a role to play in the future I suppose (at least in the traditional form).

Interesting, Limited, especially about film.

[ComposHat]

At first, I wasn't 100% sure if Barb was taking the piss or not (which marks out the very best satire.) Well done on the incredible attention to detail, the lack of paragraphs was a masterstroke.

[grimbletart]

I was always told when I was little that the correct use of "which" and "that" is the sign of an educated person. I believe American grammar rules are different from ours and also the English rules are now more relaxed about it. However, things that are said to you in early life seem to stick whether or not they are really important, so I still notice when these two words are used incorrectly (or perhaps I should say incorrectly according to the grammar rules when I was little).

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

But Ipads and books can coexist easily. Just as print and manuscript did, just as English and Latin did, just as oral culture and written culture did. I just don't see why this particular minor shift is generating so much angst.

[simbo]

I think most of us concur that it does matter. I don't criticise my children for speaking sloppy english on the phone to their friends, but I certainly expect them to speak correctly in adult company. It is the same with writing. Text speak is fine for peer communication, but not for an essay. It's horses for courses. The more formal language needs to be taught, the rest they pick up by themselves. I find myself exasperated by teachers' poor spelling when marking work, too.

[Hamishbear]

Yes, FeministDragon but I find that children increasingly won't read a 'book' unless it's bite-sized, interactive to some degree and eye catching. They are so not generally developing the requisite concentration to read a longer book or do much that requires focus and concentration that this skill may have generally helped impart in the past. Maybe that doesn't matter and it's evolution but I find it sad when children sigh and don't want to engage with anything longer than about 100 pages in modern, accessible language which provides instant gratification in some form or another. I fear something will be lost forever but perhaps it's just evolution?

[ComposHat]

I was always told when I was little that the correct use of "which" and "that" is the sign of an educated person

When I was little, I was told that a big man with a beard would leave presents on my bedroom on the 25th December and that a fairy would leave 50p under my pillow when my teeth fell out. It doesn't make any of it true though. I'd argue it is no more a mark of educational ability than knowing how to use a fish-knife.

[grimbletart]

ComposHat -

[Hamishbear]

Also FeministDragon I personally think we lost out when Latin, in the way it used to be taught, was generally phased out but I appreciate most don't think that way.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I don't think that's true. Or rather, I think it's just as true today as it was 500 and more years ago when people were saying precisely the same things. Children just don't focus properly like they used to before the Great Plague, these days they're all insisting their Latin is translated into English not French, they have no powers of concentrating and the language is dumbing down.

Yet, when I look at books, they've not got substantially shorter over time, have they? And in fact, more and more people are learning to read. And people keep buying long books, whether on a kindle or in paper form. I just don't really see that there is a decline. I think it's an illusion that recurs to make us feel pessimistic about the next generation.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

hamish - no, sorry, I wasn't mourning the loss of Latin taught in school last century. I was talking about when people started writing books in English and not Latin. I'm trying to say that these anxieties about cultural change and literate practice happen time and time again across centuries. They are not new. They do not result in civilization going down the pan. It just seems to me ... surely, if these worries were accurate, we wouldn't see them put forward time and again, in such similar forms, never having much real effect?

Of course it could be this is the one time the worriers are right, but I'm dubious.

[Hamishbear]

If that's aimed at me CompostHat I had a poor education one of the reasons
I am keen my children do not.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I thought we'd established on the other thread that fish-knives were non-U anyway?

My brain can't cope with all these rules.

[ComposHat]

It wasn't Hamish, no.

[Talkinpeace]

Language evolves. That is fine. But as with the discussion about accents a week or so ago, if what you say is not clear to the intended audience, you may as well shut up.

In the spoken word that comes down to diction and softening accents.
In the written word (on screen or on paper) that comes down to grammar.

They will both evolve, but they will not vanish. Ever.

[Hamishbear]

You may well be right, Feminist but I do think that books are generally shorter and simpler and that children are increasingly less willing to engage with them. They're less familiar after all in today's world with all the other electronic distractions.

[ComposHat]

Fish-knives are non-U.

That's non-Upper Class isn't it? [Heaps confusion upon confusion]

We could always re-run the What/Pardon debate if anyone has a decade or two to spare.

[adeucalione]

Well there's now a Grammar Test at the end of KS2 (I think this is the first year), and I know that all of our local primary schools are hastily slotting grammar lessons into their timetables, so maybe we will see an improvement in coming years.

[habbibu]

yy, LRD. The early modern period had loads of people eanting in similar ways. The age of the Internet means we're now seeing so much more written English than 20 years ago - in the old days you simply didn't see so much of everyone's writing, and the only stuff widely published and read was by a fairly elite educated group. Now we see everything, and suddenly, shock horror, it seems worse. I dont know of objective evidence that grammar etc is worsening overall.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Well, quite, how could they vanish?

That's nonsensical.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Oh, big cross post, sorry.

I agree, habbibu.