To wonder how people make it to adulthood without knowing

[Staffy1]

That a Christmas tree decoration is called a "bauble", not "ball ball"? Or how they make it through junior school without knowing the difference between "his" and "he's"? What happens in schools these days and don't people ever read anything?

My DS is 16 and doesn’t read any more. His writing def suffers for it m, sadly. And he’s been brought up in a middle-class home snd gone to good state schools.

My personal hate is loose when people mean lose, drives me mad and i see it such a lot on here.

@lazylinguist

Tbh it absolutely makes me cringe to hear people's smug, superior attitudes towards people with worse grammar and spelling than them. Good spelling and grammar are not a sign of moral worthiness. They are almost always the sign of a fortunate upbringing (probably with some fortunate genes thrown in). I've been a language teacher for 25 years, so I've had ample opportunity to observe this.

This, 100%.

My 3rd year student nurse wrote that we gave a patient 'cowpol' the other day.

Regarding changing language, I'll 'beg the question'.

I went to school in the 90’s/00’s and from that list I only know for sure what what verb, and noun mean. adverb and adjective- I would guess at and have to look up to remind myself what they mean. I’ve never heard of “parse sent”. I’ve heard of definite article and indefinite article but I’ve no idea what they are.

It's just 'to parse sentences'- that was a typo. Parsing a sentence means taking it to bits and identifying what type of word each one is and what job it's doing grammatically in the sentence. Very very few English speakers would be able to do this with English sentences, even though they are obviously totally fluent in the language. I do parsing with my adult German class. They absolutely love it, not least because they learn so much they never knew about English as well as German in the process.

Verb, noun, adjective, adverb,arricle etc are the tip of the grammatical iceberg. About equivalent to knowing what the words 'add, subtract, multiply and divide' mean in maths. It's ridiculous that people don't get taught much more than that about their own language.

Toddler, is it made from cows and, if so, is there a vegan version? Is brew fen brewed?

I’ve never heard “ball ball” but it’s quite sweet!

“Poisoned carrot” is just genius

It's not the same thing at all as this is to do with a child that I once worked with, but she had drawn a picture of some long green things and labelled it "sticking sex". I was baffled by what she meant until I spoke to her and she told me her dad had bought her some stick insects the previous weekend. It really was the sweetest little picture and label.

They are almost always the sign of a fortunate upbringing (probably with some fortunate genes thrown in).

Not simply READING then, in 99% of cases?!

'Cowpol' from a student nurse who has presumably seen thousands of bottles of it all with the name WRITTEN ON THEM, and has made it to the 3rd year of student training so can presumably read and write?

Lazy, aren't datives related to dating? genitives when dating gets intimate?

Not everyone is dealt an even hand. I’d rather a poor speller than a smug horror.

@smallsteps88 - it was a typo, an extra 'sent' crept in. It should have said 'parse sentences'. Meaning to take them apart and analyse each component and correctly identify them.

@lazylinguist

I went to school in the 90’s/00’s and from that list I only know for sure what what verb, and noun mean. adverb and adjective- I would guess at and have to look up to remind myself what they mean. I’ve never heard of “parse sent”. I’ve heard of definite article and indefinite article but I’ve no idea what they are.

It's just 'to parse sentences'- that was a typo. Parsing a sentence means taking it to bits and identifying what type of word each one is and what job it's doing grammatically in the sentence. Very very few English speakers would be able to do this with English sentences, even though they are obviously totally fluent in the language. I do parsing with my adult German class. They absolutely love it, not least because they learn so much they never knew about English as well as German in the process.

Verb, noun, adjective, adverb,arricle etc are the tip of the grammatical iceberg. About equivalent to knowing what the words 'add, subtract, multiply and divide' mean in maths. It's ridiculous that people don't get taught much more than that about their own language.

Thank you @lazylinguist. Having seen your response it baffles me that I wasn’t taught to do those. It seems like such a basic and easy thing to teach? Or maybe I have that wrong?

Equal parts not knowing and not caring I think. And I know it's the cliched bad workman's excuse, but a smartphone is not a good tool for writing.

Following from what lazylinguist said, I think it's safe to say that nowadays more people are writing more than ever before and their writing is being much more widely read. In the 1990s if you read something outside a school or work context it was probably a book or newspaper or magazine, written and spell-checked by professionals. Nowadays it's a post on social media by random Joe/Jane.

The bad spellers have always been here, it's just that now we're reading what they write.

I think there is a point when the person actually chooses it. By not choosing to improve it. Yes, people may have had low quality education, but as an adult you can make the decision to work on it a bit.

I think you underestimate how ingrained people's language habits are as adults, in a way which cannot be compared with most other skills in life. How do you imagibe people going about 'working on it a bit'?

I used to be on a forum dedicated to the TV show Lost. During one episode a reference was made to Plato’s cave. Cue lots of forum discussion about what this meant. Because the phrase was outside a number of people’s experience it was suggested that ‘Play-Doh’ was the word used and a bizarre conversation continued where people took sides and some insisted that Play-doh made more sense as WTF was plato’s cave anyway!

Which was kind of ironic. 😂

@lazylinguist

It's a lost cause, lazylinguist! I'm a proofreader by trade, and this kind of thread just makes me roll my eyes. But people love them!

Phew - at least somebody gets it. Of course most people who clutch their pearls at things like 'could of' couldn't actually give a proper grammatical explanation of why it's wrong. They just know it's wrong because they were brought up to speak naicely, unlike those frightful ignorant people who just sit around and watch telly all day.

"Could of" does have me clutching my pearls, as you put it. I think most people know why it's wrong. It doesn't make sense. Just as you wouldn't say "I of done something", you shouldn't say "I could of done something".

In a Christmas market once I saw a handwritten sign on a stall advertising 'Christma's cards'. I did a good imitation of a stunned goldfish and then forced myself to walk on.

The bad spellers have always been here, it's just that now we're reading what they write. isn’t that fantastic

This thread has suddenly reminded of one, last year I think, where someone was wondering if they should point out to someone else that their Christmas jumper slogan was written incorrectly. It was “gingle bells” instead of “jingle bells” and didn’t realise it was a play-on-words! Happier pre-covid times...

Anyway, back to the point - “your” instead of “you’re” and vice versa.

My MIL calls anal anall to rhyme with panel.

Does that mean she doesn’t watch enough porn?

@lazylinguist

I think there is a point when the person actually chooses it. By not choosing to improve it. Yes, people may have had low quality education, but as an adult you can make the decision to work on it a bit.

I think you underestimate how ingrained people's language habits are as adults, in a way which cannot be compared with most other skills in life. How do you imagibe people going about 'working on it a bit'?

Word of the day app, any grammar app and games, read a bit, actually learn it ina textbook (which can also be found free online) or even just look at any of the educational websites once a week. There is a myriad of options to learn little bit by little bit. Even with very little time.

[quote icedgem85]@PickAChew castor sugar isn't a mistake, it's the traditional way to spell it in British English and is in the dictionary. Caster is also an acceptable spelling, neither are incorrect.[/quote]
That explains it. I can cringe a bit less knowing people aren't mixing it up with the oil.

YY, @safariboot. It's amazing how much more we've come to depend on writing things down in really quite a short space of time. When I was a child there were far more jobs that could be done by someone who wasn't functionally literate at all. My mum worked with adults who needed remedial literacy teaching at one point, and she'd get a steady stream of middle aged people who'd done just fine for most of their lives, but were suddenly being required to fill in more forms and weren't coping. And she'd get masses of older people who'd come in saying 'I forgot my glasses' when what they meant was, they couldn't read.

I know there are still people around who're functionally illiterate, but it's much harder to cope in the modern world if you are, and far more people who would have coasted along quite happily with rubbish literacy skills now have to develop them just to get along. So we see more mistakes, but we're probably also seeing evidence of more widespread literacy in the population.