[Humour] The continued drop in English language standards.

[RossyG]

You’ll see this sort of rubbish on YouTube feedback.

Nobody:
Birds of Prey: Hold my beer.

WTF does that mean? It’s gibberish.

 

[Gilliver's Travels]

Sentences that start with “So”. It seems just about everyone does it now when answering a question....and it’s fecking annoying. Don’t bother quoting me and starting your explanation with “So” either

Where the feck did this come from ?

Totally agree, it sounds ridiculous. In its proper usage, 'so' is used as a consequential conjunction: "He annoyed me, so I hit him".

So sorry to see that inconsequential little word now causing so much distress and offence.

However, until recently, the standard way of beginning the answer to a question has been "Well..... " A completely meaningless word, employed merely as a buffer: a short pause that says "I have heard your question, and here is my considered response".

"So", however, when used in its newly fashionable way sounds more like "I've not listened to a word you've said. As I was saying, before your rude interruption …"

 

[grubbyhands]

It's just as well I don't own/work in a shop/cafe/bar etc.

I would refuse to serve anyone who said "Can I get?"

Whatever happened to "Please may I have?"

Exactly! The answer to "can I get ?" is "No you can't as you're on the wrong side of the counter. If,however, you can be bothered to ask nicely if you could please HAVE xxxx then nothing will be too much trouble. I blame the bloody Americans.

 

[The Antikythera Mechanism]

I work with Company Directors and have employed people with BSc’s, MSc’s and various professional qualifications, who are unable to differentiate between “there”, “their” and “they’re” as well as “your” and “you’re” when sending emails. I find it unbelievable that such fundamentals were never corrected during their years in education.

My personal hate, apart from “of” instead of “have”, is “are” instead of “our”

 

[Bakero]

Totally agree, it sounds ridiculous. In its proper usage, 'so' is used as a consequential conjunction: "He annoyed me, so I hit him".

So sorry to see that inconsequential little word now causing so much distress and offence.

However, until recently, the standard way of beginning the answer to a question has been "Well..... " A completely meaningless word, employed merely as a buffer: a short pause that says "I have heard your question, and here is my considered response".

"So", however, when used in its newly fashionable way sounds more like "I've not listened to a word you've said. As I was saying, before your rude interruption …"

So you don't mind well being used as a discourse marker but take issue with so. Why so?

 

[Bakero]

I think that a few years ago they (The Correct Language Powers) expanded the definition of "literally" to include "figuratively". Obviously complete bananas and a sign of mad, devilish times, but a change forced by the people who refused to understand the original difference. Anyway, this means saying "literally" when you mean "figuratively" is now "technically" correct.

Welcome back, Swansman.

There are no powers that govern the English language, merely those that record its usage. Indeed the dictionary does include the use of literally for emphasis. Lexicographers aren't interested in what NSC's language mavens think- if people use a word in a particular way, it goes in the dictionary.

 

[Bakero]

i get particularly p****d of with journalists/reporters, especially on television talking about "diffusing a situation", rather than defusing it. Big difference in the end result if what they said is really what they meant.

The words are near homophones. It seems an odd thing to get pernickety about.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

It is all caused by the failure of schools to teach basic grammar and Latin.

If I had to suffer it, everybody should have to.

Can somebody remind me what the 4th conjugation pluperfect was?

 

[Wilko]

Use of the word So to start every sentence.

People saying “he’s” rather than “his”.

I keep seeing this the other way around.

"His really good in goal'

 

[Bakero]

“Our language (I mean English) is degenerating very fast.” James Beattie (no, not that one) 1785

That was 70-odd years after Jonathan Swift had alerted us to the issue, telling his friend “From the Civil War to this present Time, I am apt to doubt whether the Corruptions in our Language have not at least equalled the Refinements of it … most of the Books we see now a-days, are full of those Manglings and Abbreviations. Instances of this Abuse are innumerable: What does Your Lordship think of the Words, Drudg’d, Disturb’d, Rebuk’t, Fledg’d, and a thousand others, every where to be met in Prose as well as Verse?”

Swift harked back to a golden age (1500s) when our fair tongue peaked in his eyes. Yet during that period a fellow called George Puttenham fretted over “strange terms of other languages and many dark words and not usual nor well sounding, though they be daily spoken in Court.”

Going back even further (1300s) a wise man once said “By commyxstion and mellyng furst wiþ danes and afterward wiþ Normans in menye þe contray longage ys apeyred, and som vseþ strange wlaffyng, chyteryng, harrying and garryng, grisbittyng.”

 

[South Stand Bonfire]

Not satisfied with the prevalent use of "of" instead of "have", e.g. "You should of listened to that bloke on the radio", or the blackboard nail scraping annoyance of "was" instead of "were", e.g. "We was down the pub last night", I came across another nugget of incendiary grammatical ineptitude today. Instead of the use of "weren't", the knuckle dragging imbecile had the sheer audacity to use "want". I'm actually crying as I write this, e.g. "We want down the pub yesterday, we were at home".

Lord, give me strength.

This has been bugging me for the last hour, but should the thread title be " The continued dropping... " or " The continuing drop... " ? "Drop" being a single event, it can't be "continued" can it?

 

[Bakero]

‘disinterested’ when they mean ‘uninterested’ are particular bugbears of mine.


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[GT49er]

A salutary read for all those bright young thing's - if they can get that far in one go:

". . And a reminder of the magic we'll all miss

Of all the topics that most concerned Keith Waterhouse, the misuse of apostrophes was perhaps his greatest bugbear. His determined campaign to make sure they were used properly gained nationwide support and spawned countless imitators.
Here, as a tribute to his brilliance, we republish the classic column in which, more than 20 years ago, he launched the Association for the Abolition of the Aberrant Apostrophe... "

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the first working breakfast of the Association for the Abolition of the Aberrant Apostrophe - the AAAA as it is known to our myriad town and country members.
The AAAA has two simple goals. Its first is to round up and confiscate superfluous apostrophes from, for example, fruit and vegetable stalls where potato's, tomatoe's and apple's are openly on sale.
Its second is to redistribute as many as possible of these impounded apostrophes, restoring missing apostrophes where they have been lost, mislaid or deliberately hijacked - as for instance by British Rail, which as part of its refurbishment programme is dismantling the apostrophes from such stations as King's Cross and shunting them off at dead of night to a secret apostrophe siding at Crewe.
Ladies and gentlemen, examples of the misuse of apostrophes abound.

In the AAAA's Black Apostrophe Museum in the basement, which you are welcome to visit (no children or persons of nervous disposition please), you will find an advertisement from The Guardian for Technical Author's; a circular from the National Council for the Training of Journalists, if you please, containing the phrase 'as some editor's will know'; an announcement from Austin Rover about the new Maestro's; a leaflet from Hereford and Worcester County Council called 'How the Council Spends it's Money'; and many other apostrophic atrocities too gruesome to describe while you are eating your Danish pastries.
How has this pestilence come about? The AAAA's laboratories have identified it as a virus, probably introduced into the country in a bunch of bananas and spread initially by greengrocers, or greengrocer's as they usually style themselves.
Apostrophe Interpolation, Displacement and Suppression - AID'S, as the affliction is known - recognises no frontiers.
It afflicts the highest and the lowest of the land alike, the educated along with the sub-literate. The Times (shortly to be renamed The Times's) as well as The Sun.

Why, even the Daily M**l itself, it has to be confessed between these four walls, is not immune. I hold in my hand a misprinting of who's for whose which was detected in its pages only a short while ago.
Ladies and gentlemen, when we find ourselves in a world where a newsagent's placard can read 'Gleny's Kinnock Lead's Teachers Strike', the Apocalypse is near and something must be done.
Apostrophic anarchists, deliberately disrupting the apostrophe's function as part of their wider plan to destroy English grammar, must be weeded out root and branch.

Innocent misusers of the apostrophe - for instance the Darlington bus company promising 'Shopping Trips to Leed's' - must be hustled off to night school in plain vans for a crash course in punctuation.
If necessary, children must be stopped outside the classroom and frisked for aberrant apostrophes, and the pushers identified.

But what can we, as individuals, do to stop the rot, bearing in mind that your Association will have no truck with the proscribed militant Apostrophe Abolition Army, whose declared aim is to stamp out the now universal use of 'it's' for the possessive 'its' by blowing up offending printing plants?
What we can do, ladies and gentlemen, is to be vigilant and relentless in our pursuit of the aberrant apostrophe.
We must write to each and every publication that trangresses in this respect. When they write back pleading that it was a regrettable printers error, we must reply by return of post that no it wasn't, it was a regrettable printer's error, or even more accurately, the error of a regrettable printer.

We must boycott shops selling Co's lettuce, bean's and such like contaminated products.

Members of the AAAA are invited to forward examples of misplaced apostrophes to the Association for possible use in our touring exhibitions, provided that these do not infringe the Post Office regulations on the sending of obnoxious matter through the mails.
The AAAA regrets that its hardworking staff will be unable to acknowledge contributions individually but assures members that every apostrophe submitted will be scrutinised keenly and considered on its demerits.
The AAAA has no membership cards and no subscription. Members are, however, asked to donate at least one aberrant apostrophe when attending our meetings, rallies and conferences.
I have to point out that we are considerably overstocked on their's, it's and who's, and can consider no further examples until those we have accumulated have been ploughed into the Association's apostrophe dump at Devizes.
You are now asked to place the aberrant apostrophes you have brought with you in the offertory bags being passed among you by the ushers.
During the collection, we will all rise and sing the AAAA's battle anthem, 'Sister Susie's Sewing Shirts For Soldiers'. Anyone singing a misplaced apostrophe will be instantly ejected from the hall.

 

[GloryDays]

You must have loved the Chris Hughton interviews.

We want at our best.

 

[portlock seagull]

reminds me of my wife's nan, she called it 'quick sherane'

Imagine if they started selling quinoa!

 

[portlock seagull]

English is a living language, and it “misuse” and bendabilty is what makes it such a beautiful, joyful language. Just my foughts, innit.

I’ll accept your ‘innit’ and raise you a ‘like’

And stuff.

 

[GT49er]

It is all caused by the failure of schools to teach basic grammar and Latin.

If I had to suffer it, everybody should have to.

Can somebody remind me what the 4th conjugation pluperfect was?

Rest assured. It probably isn't any more.

 

[The Antikythera Mechanism]

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View attachment 120253

I was taught that disinterested meant impartial

 

[dazzer6666]

This has been bugging me for the last hour, but should the thread title be " The continued dropping... " or " The continuing drop... " ? "Drop" being a single event, it can't be "continued" can it?

‘Continuing decline’ innit ?

 

[brightn'ove]

Language changes over time. It’s ridiculous to get hung up about it.