TehBorken wrote:
I regularly run into people who defend their misuse of words (and language in general) with the excuse that "English is a living language that evolves".
I say that the people who claim that are "living language" morons, who try and use the evolution of language as an excuse for illiteracy and general laziness.
Just because a handful of idiots don't know how to use a phrase or word properly doesn't mean it has "evolved" into a new meaning. It just means there are lots of pretentious idiots.
Thank you TB. I couldn't have said it any better.
I've got a friend here in Vancouver who is a high school English teacher, and if his emails are any indication of his command of written English, I sincerely feel for his students.
It also explains why so much of the written communication I get from work colleagues is so miserable too.
What's really scary is that you're seeing some of these sophomoric English errors showing up in mainstream newspapers—even the NY Times.
My real pet peeve is people who have totally corrupted phrases by using what they think is the proper wording, but who are actually making a homonymal (is that a word? yikes) error. Case in point: people talk about giving someone "free reign". Look, I'm sure I'm not the only one still alive who has ever been around horses and who knows that the real phrase is "free rein". Not only the spelling but the connotation is corrupted in this case. If I weren't so out of it from lack of sleep I could come up with a few more.
I suppose that sounds cranky and schoolmarmish, but it's one thing to come up with a new idea, and another to just get things wrong.
My final peevish mini-rant is about kids who ask me how to have better English. I'm talking native English speakers of high school and college age who realise that their language abilities could stand some improvement and want to help their chances in the job market. I tell them that I learned a lot about how the language worked by reading—especially classics, though I've seen some truly creative punctuation and word use even there (editor's mistakes, I hope)—and that they ought to pick up a Victorian novel or two: or anything written in English from the beginning of the 19-century to WWI (if they don't even know when that is I give up).
Then these kids tell me they don't have time to read. I tell them to get a "pocket book" (I believe they still actually make them) of one of these books, carry it around with them (that's what inside pockets are for, right?) and to just pull them out when they're on transit, waiting for an appointment somewhere, or whenever they have some "non-productive" alone time. I used to get my best reading done on the Stairmaster or waiting for movies to start. If they offer me some line of crap about how they're too busy to do even this (yeah, right), then I just shrug and forget it (though I'd like to tell them to enjoy working at Wal-Mart for the rest of their lives).
Man, I must be cranky. I can't believe how I've gone on about this.
