Grammar, spelling and the decline of the English language

[SoupDragon]

Moving from the Weird Habits thread, I thought I'd share my favourite typo, spotted only last week in Tescos where they were advertising Winnie the Poo play mats. This was both on the big print sign and the smaller shelf label.

My, how I sniggered in a puerile fashion!

As I've just said on the other thread Lose and Loose is my pet peeve, dunno why just irritates the hell out of me!

Having said that my grammer is non-existent, despite doing English (Lang and lit) at A'level, AND having a really pedantic Dad! Apostrophe use is about the extent of it. I do go out of my way to say "bored of..." as opposed to "bored with..." whenever my parents are around just to irritate - my dad is always picking me up on my grammer

SueW, when I was studying architecture I got so fed up with the archibabble buzz words that I kept a list of words clearly posted at my desk that my tutors were not allowed to use with me. Most of them were not amused, but the ones who were are all out there making a living and dealing with real people and the others just speak this language among themselves that no one else understands or cares about. Examples: paradigm (sp?) shift (seriously different), curious (used for things they hated), talks about (it was usually inanimate objects like walls doing the "talking"

Sorry

What is it called when you miss out the subject of a sentence and say something like -

"Striving to be efficient" - ie in a slogan? You see a lot of that kind of thing around nowadays, particularly in management speak mission statement types of burble.

My husband once went out for a meal and on the menu was "vegetable legumes" so we always make lots of jokes about 'cheese au fromage', 'petit pois peas', 'chicken poulet' and so on.

One of my friends sends emails all in lower caps and she always puts an exclamation mark in the subject line and often 'etc' as well.

Drives me mad or should I say drives me mad! etc!

Great thread ? I've been longing to get this off my chest; now's my chance.

How about the insidious americanisation of the english language ? which smacks of people who have nothing better to do than watch endless episodes of "Friends" ? as in: "Can I get a coffee?" (to the man behind the counter at Starbucks.) If you're not planning on going behind the counter and tackling the espresso machine yourself, surely it should be "May I HAVE a coffee?"
In the same vein, the ubiquitous peppering of sentences with the word "like", as in, "I was, like, walking down the street..." Well, you either were or you weren't.
And was anyone else irritated during the reporting of the recent american space-shuttle disaster the pronounciation of the BBC news reporters of the word deBRIS?
(Apologies to the americans, your language is fine, but we have our own perfectly good one over here, thanks )
I'm also irritated by the constant use of first names on the TV (and radio) news, as in, "Over to you, John," followed by "Thank you, Bob".

And don't get me started on the subject of the new-style BBC 10 o'clock news with it's wierd flourescent table which looks like a cast off from a seventies daytime sci-fi series...

Eulalia, those slogans are awful: like 'Wandsworth the brighter borough' or 'Grampian's going places' (my personal favourite, not sure quite where it is off to).
And officious notices like 'passengers should refrain from addressing the driver whilst the bus is in motion'.

no offense taken frieda, but you do sound a bit like the french who object so strongly to the "americanisation" of things that they've officially banned all sorts of "non-french" words like computer and weekend. A bit silly if you ask me. I would have thought there are more important things to worry about than whether another country has a catchy phrase or way of putting things that your country may have adopted over time.

In fact if you are going to be nitpicky "May I HAVE a coffee?' isn't entirely correct either. Really you should be saying "May I BUY a coffee?" unless you are expecting to get one for free.

Much more word-efficient just to say 'Large skinny latte please'

I stand to be completely corrected as Lucy123 sounds like she knows far more about the English language than I do but I'm going to tentative disagree about something. When you said "the cat didn't like its food" would that not be "the cat didn't like its' food" or is this case the exception to the rule. BTW I was taught grammer by a school friend whose mother was a teacher. In Primary School they were being very experimental and didn't teach us grammer and in High School they expected us to know but didn't teach it.

I copied this of net and it may be use to someone (of course everything you read on the internet is correct :-

APOSTROPHE

Apostrophes have two purposes:

1. For use in contractions, to represent a missing letter or letters. For instance, the apostrophe in "I'm" represents the missing "a" ("I am"; the apostrophe in doesn't" represents the missing "o" in "does not."

2. To show possession. To make a noun (or nonpossessive pronoun) that does not end in "s" possessive, add apostrophe and "s" ['s]. If the word does end in "s," simply add an apostrophe after it.

Just thought a bit more about this, after I posted unfortunately. I assume its is a possessive noun (or is it a pronoun, now I feel really thick) and therefore doesn't need the apostrophe. I would be genuinely interested to know as I have probably been making this mistake myself.

Will just bow out of this thread now before I show myself up as a total dunce.

There's not meant to be a wee winky man in para 1 of that post! Right I'm going now!

i ThiNK sPeeling + gremar + tieping aRe DefinAterly verry imPotent aNd I am like Prod off how me and My kid's yus The English LAngWidge, innit?

Sorry SophiaAmes, but FOR free is incorrect. It's just plain free.
He he.
(Sorry)

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I grew up in the "Trendy 70's" so my use of English grammar is poor to say the least. Having lived away from the UK for 15 years now I'm amazed at how much the language has changed and how poor pronunciation has become. I have been used to working in English but working with people whose mother tongue is not English. I have often been called upon to join in conference calls to help "translate" both American-English and English-English into plain English. Much of the time my colleagues complained of poor pronunciation, use of slang in a work context and over-flowery language.

My personal gripe is "Cheers". When I left the UK this term was used generally in a pub when clinking 2 glasses together. Now it seems to mean everything from thank you to goodbye. I hate it. I really hate it. I really and truly hate it ........Sorry! ;-) Calm! Calm!

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I'm afraid that people who answer "good" to the question of how they are is one of my pet hates. As opposed to "well", it just doesn't answer the question!!.

One error which I'd never seen until about 18 months ago, but have seen in emails from several people since, is in sentences such as "I could of seen the problem but...".
I presume this comes from the spoken "I could've seen...".
Most of the culprits have been young graduates...

There's an interesting book by Bill Bryson "Mother Tongue:The English Language" which includes a theory about how English lost the genders and declensions which make other languages so difficult for us to learn.
Apparently, following the Norman invasion, French became the court language in England.
English was abandoned to the peasants who couldn't cope with the finery of the case endings, etc.
Since the educated class no longer spoke English, there was no longer a standard.
By the time the French eventually went home, English had changed substantially.
No genders, comparatively few declensions, and to avoid complications, such as the dative, the word "to" had made an appearance "I gave the books to the man" - try to get THAT correct in German! (Nominative first person, singular perfect tense, accusative neuter plural, dative masculine singular.)
Old English used to be like that.
Well done those peasants.

Credits at the end of t.v programmes where all the names are in lower case, when I am trying to teach 7 yr olds that names begin with a capital letter. Try telling them it's for stylistic purposes!

I get more annoyed by the random sprinkling of Capitals on Common Nouns in a Sentence. I often get sent Work E-mails like that.

Totally agree Bloss. I studied Philosophy - in the philsophy of language part of the course we covered precisely what you are saying. Imprecise and muddled language usually means imprecise and muddled thoughts. Body language aside, words are all we have and we shouldn't be lazy about usually them properly.

And this doesn't necessarily mean using 'big' words or flowery language. I have read some dreadful research papers which are overcomplicated, elitist and often just plain incoherent.

And don't get me started on value statements - people are forever saying things 'ought' to be like X without really backing up their arguments.

I have a dreadful E-mail habit. instead of using correct punctuation, ie; full stops and commas, I end to do.....this. I suppose it is a subconscious effort to write in a way that suggests some of the pauses and intonations that I might use in a conversation. I really try to stop myself doing it....but it has become a bad habit.

Whoops. I tend to do this....not 'end to do this'. My typing errets are a big downfall also.