Ya gotta train 'em when they're still young.
A while back, my cousin's 7yo daughter became rather judgmental & intolerant when I used "groovy" to express approval. While she complained at length, I thought, "There is zero chance I'm letting a first grader control my vocabulary. This must be stopped right now."
So, once she finished, I replied, "You're criticizing 'groovy' much too harshly. It is a perfectly cromulent word."
100% success! Next time we get together, we'll see how she handles "neato."
As a retired English professor, I've been reading this thread with amusement. Haven't felt the impulse to join the fray until now.
Something I'd like to mention to the OP: there really isn't any such animal as "proper English." There are dialects of every language, and the dialect spoken by the most powerful social group is foisted upon all classes as the "proper" way to speak. But linguistically speaking, "standard American English" is no better or worse than any other dialect; it merely has more social caché. It might "sound better" to some ears, but that's because we've been taught to think more highly of it.
Most people speak and write a language differently. Even for folks with college/university degrees, everyday speech (as opposed to writing) is more casual. Writing usually hews closer to "standard American English," depending on context. People who have grown up reading lots of books tend to speak and write SAE fairly easily and they can slip in and out of informal and formal forms of English without even thinking about it (this is called code switching).
Here's where what you've noticed among young people comes in: people born since 2000 (or so) don't tend to read books. It's not that they don't read (since they're so often staring at and texting on their phones, they might be the generation that reads and writes more than any other in history), but what they read is overwhelmingly written by their peers. They know that SAE exists, but many of them are just not as "fluent" in it as previous generations are. As a generation, they're just as smart, witty, and inventive with language as any other generation, but the evidence of it flies over the heads of older folks (like me, for example, and I suspect you).
Not much we can do about it. Think of it this way: 100 years ago, anyone in the U.S. who considered themselves fully educated knew at least some Latin and ancient Greek; these days hardly anybody does. Yet the world goes on. When I started out as an English professor 30 years ago (at a smallish private university), my department had 10 full time faculty members. Today, three years after I retired, the department has three full time faculty members. Students are simply no longer interested in reading and studying literature, and so as we English professors retire, we're not being replaced. I suspect that eventually literature will become the next Latin.
One other thing, one post (not from the OP) mentioned speakers of Black English having difficulty understanding each other because of a lack of consonants in Black English dialects. That's news to me. Maybe what this poster has in mind is the absence of "consonant clusters" in Black English. The inventors of Black English were of course West Africans brought to North and South America to work as slaves. They weren't taught to speak English (and were forbidden by law to be taught how to read and write it) and invented Black English as a dialect that combined the English of their slave masters with the sounds they knew from the West African languages they brought with them. Generally, speaking, there are no clusters of consonants in West African languages, so SAE "truth" is pronounced "troof" in Black English. There is no "th" sound either; it's usually pronounced as "d" ("dat dere" instead of "that there"). There are many more interesting variations in pronounced Black English, but all of them make sense from a linguistic perspective.
In any case, speakers of Black English can understand one another as well as speakers of any other dialect can. There is nothing whatsoever "defective" about Black English. Indeed, it does some things that SAE can't do. But I've perhaps crossed the boundary into ponderous pedantry, so I'll stop here.
Something I'd like to mention to the OP: there really isn't any such animal as "proper English." There are dialects of every language, and the dialect spoken by the most powerful social group is foisted upon all classes as the "proper" way to speak. But linguistically speaking, "standard American English" is no better or worse than any other dialect; it merely has more social caché. It might "sound better" to some ears, but that's because we've been taught to think more highly of it.
Most people speak and write a language differently. Even for folks with college/university degrees, everyday speech (as opposed to writing) is more casual. Writing usually hews closer to "standard American English," depending on context. People who have grown up reading lots of books tend to speak and write SAE fairly easily and they can slip in and out of informal and formal forms of English without even thinking about it (this is called code switching).
Here's where what you've noticed among young people comes in: people born since 2000 (or so) don't tend to read books. It's not that they don't read (since they're so often staring at and texting on their phones, they might be the generation that reads and writes more than any other in history), but what they read is overwhelmingly written by their peers. They know that SAE exists, but many of them are just not as "fluent" in it as previous generations are. As a generation, they're just as smart, witty, and inventive with language as any other generation, but the evidence of it flies over the heads of older folks (like me, for example, and I suspect you).
Not much we can do about it. Think of it this way: 100 years ago, anyone in the U.S. who considered themselves fully educated knew at least some Latin and ancient Greek; these days hardly anybody does. Yet the world goes on. When I started out as an English professor 30 years ago (at a smallish private university), my department had 10 full time faculty members. Today, three years after I retired, the department has three full time faculty members. Students are simply no longer interested in reading and studying literature, and so as we English professors retire, we're not being replaced. I suspect that eventually literature will become the next Latin.
One other thing, one post (not from the OP) mentioned speakers of Black English having difficulty understanding each other because of a lack of consonants in Black English dialects. That's news to me. Maybe what this poster has in mind is the absence of "consonant clusters" in Black English. The inventors of Black English were of course West Africans brought to North and South America to work as slaves. They weren't taught to speak English (and were forbidden by law to be taught how to read and write it) and invented Black English as a dialect that combined the English of their slave masters with the sounds they knew from the West African languages they brought with them. Generally, speaking, there are no clusters of consonants in West African languages, so SAE "truth" is pronounced "troof" in Black English. There is no "th" sound either; it's usually pronounced as "d" ("dat dere" instead of "that there"). There are many more interesting variations in pronounced Black English, but all of them make sense from a linguistic perspective.
In any case, speakers of Black English can understand one another as well as speakers of any other dialect can. There is nothing whatsoever "defective" about Black English. Indeed, it does some things that SAE can't do. But I've perhaps crossed the boundary into ponderous pedantry, so I'll stop here.
There goes Rumpole again with his Oxford Dictionary of Quotations.
My grand-children are the only ones in their peer group who know of "The Little Rascals" and "The Three Stooges".
I still can't understand the "Kerry Man"
My grand-children are the only ones in their peer group who know of "The Little Rascals" and "The Three Stooges".
I still can't understand the "Kerry Man"
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Sorry, professor, but I strongly disagree with you. There is, in fact, a proper way to speak and "Me and my friend" instead of "My friend and I" is improper.
You can try to relegate this trend to being a dialect among young people, but that is not sufficient to make it proper English.
You don't need to study Latin to understand exceptio probat regulam, the exception that proves the rule (should apply in other cases), yet people often apply rules when they shouldn't.
Using "...and I" has been drummed into people so strongly, they forget all about subject versus object. "Don't eat there - that restaurant gave food poisoning to my friend and I!" is wrong.
Using "...and I" has been drummed into people so strongly, they forget all about subject versus object. "Don't eat there - that restaurant gave food poisoning to my friend and I!" is wrong.
I read somewhere, that a lot of "black English" is actually derived from a northern England accent, that has since died out in England, this is apparently because they learnt English from immigrants from the north of England.
The Fiction that I read is predominantly from the last 50 years, and it's interesting that on the rare occasion that I read something older, at first I struggle with the subtly different use of the language, but one wonders how well the younger generation would fare.
A few years ago, whilst shopping, I overheard (it was difficult not to) a chap having a 'phone call, I can't remember it precisely, but his side of the conversation seemed to go:
"BRUH!"
"Bruh?"
"Bruh!"
Yeah, Bruh"
"Bruh"
"Laters, Bruh"
The Fiction that I read is predominantly from the last 50 years, and it's interesting that on the rare occasion that I read something older, at first I struggle with the subtly different use of the language, but one wonders how well the younger generation would fare.
A few years ago, whilst shopping, I overheard (it was difficult not to) a chap having a 'phone call, I can't remember it precisely, but his side of the conversation seemed to go:
"BRUH!"
"Bruh?"
"Bruh!"
Yeah, Bruh"
"Bruh"
"Laters, Bruh"
Fair enough, though I'd quibble with your choice of the word "proper." "Grammatically correct" within the context of a given place and time seems more accurate to me. But you're right: were a student to write "Me and my friend went to his house," I would note the error in my comments. But that's the kind of construction I'd expect to hear someone say rather than one a student would write in an essay. And, of course, were a student to write "my sister showed her new car to me and my friend," that would be grammatically correct (though positioning the pronoun first might be considered stylistically awkward by some).
I didn't mean to suggest that the way young Americans speak constitutes a "dialect." That goes too far. But they don't speak and write English the way my friends and I did growing up in the 1970s and 1980s. And my grandparents made it clear to me then that we didn't talk the way they did growing up in the 1930s. And so it goes. As many posters have noted, language is always changing. For as long as I taught writing, most of my students habitually misused apostrophes, and pointing out their errors made little difference. Indeed, at this point, the correct use of the apostrophe is on the endangered list, and I predict that in 100 years the apostrophe in English will simply disappear altogether. If there's a grammatical rule most people don't follow, it's not a necessary rule. Sorta like knowing the difference between "thou" and "thee."
I think that as long as young and old can still understand one another, there's no need to get too worked up over it.
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Mea culpa. Though in my defense, spending 30 years reading student writing got me so used to seeing misspellings that I sometimes forgot how a word was really spelled. (Sentence fragment here is deliberate, for effect.)
I am not going to read through all the previous posts since the raised problem is largely a matter of personal preference and tolerance.
But what I do say from my personal point of view is that members bringing in chatroom speak in style "4u" etc will end up immediately on my ignore list.
I am too old to tolerate disrespect.
But what I do say from my personal point of view is that members bringing in chatroom speak in style "4u" etc will end up immediately on my ignore list.
I am too old to tolerate disrespect.
Hi Larpy,
I think that we are pretty much on the same page here. And I agree with you that "grammatically correct" is a better way to describe this issue than "proper English". I was about to suggest the same thing myself.
Where I don't agree with you though is that if there is a grammatical rule most people don't follow, it's not a necessary rule. Maybe things will be different in 100 years as you predict, but I'm not willing to let people off so easily today.
Yes, it seems like there is a very large amount of personal preference going on here. Not sure how you can have a discussion without it.
Modern linguistics is descriptive rather than prescriptive, meaning it seeks to describe how people use language rather than prescribe how they should use language. Yes, a strict grammarian can explain and defend the necessity of the apostrophe, but most linguists are not grammarians. From a descriptive perspective, when the use of a particular rule of grammar gets increasingly ignored, that means it's no longer needed (or necessary) for effective communication. Although it bugs me when people use apostrophes to indicate a plural noun, it doesn't actually keep me from understanding what they mean. In that sense, it's an "unneeded" rule and that's why I think it will eventually disappear. In the here and now, we can still quietly roll our eyes when people write "it's" as though it were a possessive pronoun, but it's unlikely to win us any friends.
My perspective is that there are rules of grammar helping to keep us together and resulting in a more civilized society.
I find the degradation of grammar to be very sad. When we lose that quality and accept poor grammar, we lose part of our character as a society.
I find the degradation of grammar to be very sad. When we lose that quality and accept poor grammar, we lose part of our character as a society.
The only Latin I know is 'nil bastardum carborundum downum' and the graffiti from "Life of Brian".
Some private schools in Oz still teach it but I don't think it has many takers; even in my Year 12, some years ago, there were only seven students.
Geoff
Some private schools in Oz still teach it but I don't think it has many takers; even in my Year 12, some years ago, there were only seven students.
Geoff
Is this the natural state? Is prim and proper the forced state? What happens to ';civilised' when not 'policed'?
My observation as a taxi driver and regional roamer is that most forms of civilised that I encounter is a forced fake
As I said in my opening statement, I don't know how it is in other countries.
So, I'm not going to dispute, or even comment, on what you report hearing as a taxi driver in Australia.
I can only speak for what I see is happening here in the US. I think we are witnessing a serious degradation of grammar, which in turn degrades our society itself.
So, I'm not going to dispute, or even comment, on what you report hearing as a taxi driver in Australia.
I can only speak for what I see is happening here in the US. I think we are witnessing a serious degradation of grammar, which in turn degrades our society itself.
Stating one's preferences in series does not make a discussion either 🙂
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