Sunday 4 September 2011

Apparently my grammar sucketh

You know things are going to end badly for the English language when correct grammar is frowned upon.
   I know split infinitives are really a matter of choice. To boldly go/to go boldly is old hat and its contravention is hardly a capital offence. Even double superlatives, ie "I'd like to go for something much more betterer" is nerve-juddering bad but still not enough to make me reach for the carving knife, but do you know what really fries my kidneys; what really gets up my starboard nostril? The BBC

  I may have mentioned the BBC in passing and their reckless abandon where the Queen's English is concerned. But what really makes me fondle the sledge hammer is when two, no in fact all of them, when comparing two items, whether it be cars, computers, or indeed anything ask: "now which is best?" I can hardly bear even to type it - you see it's so bad that even I'm splitting infinitives.
   I'm attempting to a university degree in Sociolinguistics which is to say the evolution of English. I don't know why I even bother. I might just as well do a degree in Klingon or that which my daughter assures me is English when she types messages to her friends on the Blackberry.
  And don't even get me started on LOL.

  Am I being pedantic? A teacher at school once threatened to ram a bar of soap into my mouth for the heinous crime of preceding a colon with a semi-colon. And as for ending a sentence with a preposition, well the corridors were littered with corpses.

   For the twentieth year in succession British schools have recorded a new high in pass rates, yet when some months ago a playful reporter inserted some questions in maths and English from a forty year old exam hardly anyone in the country could answer them correctly.

  Maybe I should just go with the flo and rite what everyone rights theses days. I dout anyone wuld notice.

3 comments:

  1. I love Linguistics, but we have to face the fact that people are now making up their own language. I bet Sociolinguistics is a great study. Um, I noticed. Some of us are still out here.

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  2. Sociolinguistics is a foundation for Etymology and finally Philology. But judging by my progress I'll be ninety before I finish.

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  3. Carry it forward into your next lifetime. Seriously, I bet you'll be done before you know it.

    ReplyDelete

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