Calling pedants, teachers, wordsmiths and class warriors.

[shylock]

I have a question.

I am absolutely appalled. My five year and two year old have better grammar. How on earth did they get into university - and to study English of all things.

i think it just sounds all wrong...and quite shocked these folk are about to graduate in any subject..

somefink makes you sound fick, and the second one gives me shudders...

mrs badger ..made me laugh...surely she was red faced too??

Well presumably if they're heading for 2:1s then their written English is fine.

And I totally disagree with f for 'th' being a dialect. It is a mispronunciation.

I agree with Twiglett. There's no excuse. It's bad grammar and nothing whatsoever to do with dialect.
Innit?

Molesworth - how can you get a good degree in English if your grammar is so poor? I find it shocking. Mind you, the sheer ignorance of the graduate work experience girls that we used to have in our office was constantly shocking and surprising. We'd have people with journalism degrees who couldn't write and were too afraid to use the phone

i'm always fascinated to know, nqc, if you ever correct your children's speech. you seem to consider the english language a very broad church (which it is) but do you apply any standards to your own children?

Perhaps the standards at shylock's institution are low?

Or perhaps these students are perfectly capable (as a 2:1 would suggest) and shylock is simply being a snob about the way they speak?

I agree that it isn't an appropriate way to speak in that particular context, but the written work is what counts for their degree.

'Scuse me, but what's a lower first? It's more than 20 years since I got my degree but we didn't have lower firsts in those days! Is it just another way to let more people get top marks, like A-starred A Levels?

I think anyone studying english at DEGREE LEVEL should not make such terrible grammatical errors at all. It's not remotely snobbish to expect reasonably correct grammar of University English students! My God, if you can't expect of them, who can you expect it of? You would expect someone studying French, say, at this level to have grasp of basic grammar.

And on paper these students are demonstrating a good standard of English to merit a 2:1 classification.

A couple of verbal remarks taken out of context don't mean much.

what about

I wanna go toilet!

That is so depressing!

Hope NQC doesn't mind me linking to this thread here ...

1. Pronounciation - doesn't matter. So long as it's not affecting written work/spelling, which it presumably isn't.

1. (admit to being on the dialect shmialect side here - don't question NQC's academic credentials, so if she says it's valid dialect then it is -) BUT being valid dialect does NOT mean it's a valid register in all contexts. What I mean is: it's LAZY. It's not bothering to adapt your speech to your circumstances. If you're having a formal academic discussion you should use formal grammar; and if you don't know to do that (as, presumably, students often don't nowadays) then - maybe - it should be something Shylock you should cover with new students when they first start?

(Like I remind my new trainees it is not a good idea to chew gum in client meetings: sometimes it has to be said.)

Keeping this quick because I am ill, my house is full of squalor and I have a dinner party this week, ugh. I'm sure there will be errors in this post.

I try to avoid correcting my children, although I do expect them to learn by my example, and speak a fairly standard English. Correcting people's english is a) pointless and b) rude. I do expect my children to grow up speaking something like RP, as that's what their dad speaks, and that's what the teachers at school speak.

I do think there is such a thing as incorrect grammer 'I wanna go toilet' is incorrect, afaik there is no dialect that includes that construction. Of course 'we done that' is correct dialect - it is just a dialect that conjugates 'to do' differently. If you're speaking that dialect, you can't just say 'we dided that', can you.

The irregular verbs change conjugation regularly, and have through the ages. They generally become more and more regular. In time we may lose all of them (hurrah!).

Yes, 'standard' english is a class issue. Obviously the dialect that is branded 'standard' is the posh one. And women are generally more aspirational than men, and eager to have their children speaking 'properly'. This is an understandable desire - but it is a matter of class aspiration, not grammatical correctness, let's be honest here.

And as for the whole idea of not having different dialects! Come on, nobody talks the same way to their friends in the pub, the GP, their boss, and their mother. Everyone uses different dialects and speaking styles for different situations! You just have to learn how to pick the right dialect for the situation.

Yeah, it's true, I can't cope with "ain't". It's the one bugbear that really gets to me. I'm trying to stop correcting it, though.

You know, people often say that dialects are 'lazy'. I don't really get that. Dialects are often more linguistically interesting than 'standard' English.

I do agree about context, though - if you use a non-posh dialect while applying for an office job, you're unlikely to get the job, anyway.

(DS1's new school has fixed the T-for-glottal-stop problem by the way. Odd the difference between a local ok independent school and a non-local better independent school.)

Oh - I didn't mean non-standard dialect is inherently lazy. The laziness was the not bothering to adapt.

The dialect I grew up with, which is lowland Scots/Edinburgh, I absolutely love and think has a linguistic richness and specificity that standard English can't get anywhere near.

Oh, yes, fine, then yeah, I understand.

I think it may be difficult for students? They're talking to the teacher, but they're surrounded by their classmates, so which dialect should they use?

Good point NQC - sort of returns me to my suggestion, which I know could be tricky to pull off*, that Shylock tell her students (from the off) what is expected of them - so that there isn't that tension as b/w tutor & peers.

*I'd do it by referring to how acknowledged it is that teachers are models for children's speech.

i don't think it would be difficult to do, in fact i think it would help to establish a teacher/student relationship. they are supposed to be learning after all.

My students would be furious if I used any analogy that equated them with children

Point is that these students want to be teachers - so that in due course they will be models for their pupils' speech. So they should get practised at using appropriate register.

Not that Shylock's students = children.

As long as they understand what standard English is and that they need to use it when they're writing - and for formal occasions like job interviews - then I think dialect-based varioations in grammar are OK for classroom-speak. I'm in Scotland and here they say "Does that need washed?" etc. which is totally not standard English grammar and sounded mad to me when I first heard it - but it is a valid dialect and likewise with "I done that" and soemthign a lot of Londoners do, using "I've" - "I've went to the doctor and I've said to her..." for normal past tense. Likewise Black English Vernacular (BEV) dialect has a lot of non-standard grammar rules - but they are rules, and always work the same way, so it's not lazy, it's a consistent system.

The "fing" thing is just accent - just like Irish "t'ing" or whatever. Though it does annnoy me when people adopt it deliberately to try to sound cool. I knew a very posh woman once whi did that and it used to drive me mad.

Thanks Bink, sorry, I missed that point!