Is spelling over?

[longdistanceclaraclara]

Caveat this by posting in pedants corner that I'm bound to make a mistake.

My kids are dyslexic. Their spelling is shit. However when I check their phones (with consent) the spelling is awful, never mind the grammar.

Our local radio is employing 'dialect'. It enrages me because it's just wrong. We wasn't going anywhere, for example.
We're going Tesco etc etc.

It's making me angry and want to send the kids through LAMDA.

I agree with you. Radio should use correct English. I was a presenter on a local community radio astation for many years and I would always try to use correct English.
"We were not going anywhere"
"We're going to Tesco"

Using the regional dialect on regional radio is using correct English.

I live in Ireland and can’t watch the Paralympics on RTE (an Irish public service broadcaster) because one of the commentators does not pronounce the TH sound ever. It sounds really awful and I believe this person should not be on television.

You are aware that many Irish accents use T and/or D for th? Why shouldn't a broadcaster use their own accent?

@ErrolTheDragon In my Scottish home city there’s a spread of local accents, from the almost unintelligible, with poor grammar (we was being an example) to fairly standard Scots English. Local accents don’t need to include poor grammar or lots of dialect. Surely the aim is to be understood?

"We're going Tesco" is not correct in any region. 😅

Maybe unpick your own social class prejudices.

Well of course it should be comprehensible to the audience across the relevant area. That doesn't mean that dialect and locally common 'wrong grammar' has to be avoided in the spoken word.

Spelling is not the same as grammar.

Grammar for dialect spoken English is not the same as for formal written English.

Spelling is not over.

There’s no such thing as “correct” when it comes to language - just standard and non-standard.

You vile elitist, OP . It’s good for standards to be eroded, and the rules and conventions which aimed to ensure that people could communicate ideas and intentions clearly are abolished.
Because we don’t want clear, concise communication, do we? That might be dangerous.

Areas are becoming increasingly diverse, many people speak English as a second language. Good grammar and clear pronunciation that is understood by all would be the most helpful.

Greater diversity does require more standardization and also simpler language. But does that mean eschewing all 'dialects' and local usages? That leaves a less rich linguistic environment.

I love it when local TV and radio use local dialects. I'm from Newcastle and love hearing words like "canny", "bonny bairns", "gannin" etc.
"We was" makes me cringe.

😂 I knew I'd make a mistake!

Spelling though, I think it is going downhill. Too much text speak creeping in. 90% of my comms at work is via Teams, it's mostly in text speak. It's starting to creep into email too.

I'm in Essex and wrong grammar is the norm here, 'we was...' for example. I don't think it is ok because it's a 'regional dialect'.

I always refer back to the brilliant book by Lynne Truss Eats, Shoots and Leaves to explain why correct spelling and grammar is so important. But most people don't care and wouldn't dream of reading it so 😱

I grew up in Essex with northern parents. While I wouldn't have said 'we was' , people (friends, the minister at church, etc etc) who did were perfectly comprehensible.

Spelling and grammar are definitely important in some contexts, and I very much enjoyed that book. I have to avoid local spelling variations and idioms when writing documentation for a global audience - some of which might be deemed to be 'correct' by a a British pedant.

Not worth its own thread but I saw this a couple of days ago. I'd have been annoyed if they'd gone for CENTER but this?

Caveat this by posting in pedants corner that I'm bound to make a mistake.

Like missing out the apostrophe from pedants'?

😉

Or the initial capital from Pedants’ corner? 😀 (Which I always feel should be ‘Pedants’ Corner’, with ‘corner’ also capitalised, though it isn’t how it appears as the sub-board heading…)

It's not. It's using a regional variant of English. Telling someone to shut their Cake Hole for example. It's not correct English!

I anticipate the time will come when British English is widely seen as a mere 'regional variant'. It's already starting - when I'm writing documentation for the software I work on, 'colour' would be 'incorrect English'. Here on MN it isn't.

One of the great things about English is its variety. Do people really want dull conformity rather than the richness of idiom and local usage?

I like to hear different accents, but I also want to understand what is being said. Ken whit eh mean hen?

Telling someone to ‘shut their cake hole’ is perfectly correct English! It’s just informal, and rude, unless actually said jokily to someone with whom you have a close, affectionate and informal relationship e.g. ‘Shut your cake hole - dinner is on me!’ I mean, you’re not going to tell your visiting CEO to get her cake hole around her elevenses…

But saying ‘You are a disgusting, valueless ingrate, with the manners of a pig and the morals of a sewer rat’ would be equally rude, bough more formal in diction.

In a foreign country, the young man in the big shop was serving me. English was not his first language. He asked me if I was English and he said he could understand me, but he couldn't always understand the English which customers spoke. That was probably because I was speaking standard English and also speaking slowly. I always find that if French, Italian and Spanish speakers would speak slowly to me I would cotton on to what they were saying more easily. I told him that I was deliberately speaking slowly. That way he learns English better than if he's overwhelmed by someone rattling off in a thick accent, and just switches off. 2019, Egypt.