The Degradation of Proper English

Today I am appalled at just how inarticulate the majority of English, Welsh and Scots people are. I doubt if some have a vocabulary of 40 words and I'm not talking about the 'mobile phone generation'. A lot of homes in the UK only have car manuals and nothing else. There was a survey done by a Sunday paper/journal around 1990 that stated that the Dutch read on average 5 times as many books as in the UK. Having lived in the Netherlands I don't doubt this is true.

This is conflating literacy with articulacy. And implies that literacy depends on book-reading, when it actually depends on the written word.

It's possible to be articulate without being literate, and to be intelligent without being either. It's also not unusual to be bookish without being articulate, sociable, or communicative. Finally, there's no obligation to be intelligent, literate, or articulate. There are many upstanding and valuable members of society who lack one or other of these qualities.
 
The above is excellent English...especially when written by an Essex man.

:joker:
Thank you for the compliment. You may also like to know that Mrs Toby is a pure bred Essex girl as well.

As to my heritage, my female gene line has a direct connection that traces back to when the Romans occupied my region a while ago, more precisely their Kosovan friends. I'm happily surprised and proud to be an immigrant from Kosovo a long ago. So I'm not really an Essex man then at all? Assumptions, they really are the mother of all f%uck ups.

How many words do you have for ironic in Irish/Gaelic? Or just a rambling something or other?

Are there any words for "yes" or "no" in Irish, is that true? Yes or no?

In your Essex vain remark, what are you like at tarmacking? There's loads of driveways round our way that could do with a quick tosh over for a luvley job🤣
 
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Are there any words for "yes" or "no" in Irish, is that true? Yes or no?

In your Essex vain remark, what are you like at tarmacking? There's loads of driveways round our way that could do with a quick tosh over for a luvley job🤣


The Irish always answer a question with a question, e.g.
"where is the post office?"
"Sure is it a stamp you're after needen?"

Re Tarmac:
I've got a full year or more ahead mending potholes up here in the Scottish Borders and being 83 years old
can't see myself taking on any work in Essex.
 
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QED.

Why answer a question with another question? Talk about bleeding annoying...

Well, if you're so good at fixing holes then, keep on doing it up there. Is it your line of work still at 83?

You would be most welcome in Essex for any menial or other work, don't hesitate to join the local community of caravan dwellers that I pass on the way to work. They do so much for our society down here in Essex.
 
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Why learn to speak Dutch when they speak English so well? Not much use learning Dutch for use in the the rest of the world..

Bitter?

Whoever built it were just as intelligent as us, they became us in the mix....
That's a typical arrogant English reply. The Dutch used to take the **** out of the English and they hadn't a clue. FYI there are forums in the USA that use only Dutch since many towns in the USA attracted immigrants from only one European country.

Today I went in to my local (in English, newsagent) to do the Euromillions for Friday (someone has to win it) there was a very goosy young woman there promoting those awful 'vape' thingies. I still have problems understanding French. She offered to help speaking both Spanish and English. We had a delightful conversation in Spanish which no one else in the shop understood. She had very Spanish eyes, if you know Spanish women, they use their eyes to communicate - I used the word 'guapa' to describe her and kissed her hand - if you've ever visited southern Spain, then you know how gorgeous these women of southern Spain can be of Arabic/Berber/Sephardic Jewish origin can be. If I could construct a time machine I would transport myself back to the 10th century Granada caliphate - the food, the women - sorted.
 
QED.

Why answer a question with another question? Talk about bleeding annoying...

Well, if you're so good at fixing holes then, keep on doing it up there. Is it your line of work still at 83?

You would be most welcome in Essex for any menial or other work, don't hesitate to join the local community of caravan dwellers that I pass on the way to work. They do so much for our society down here in Essex.


At least you have a certain charm in your use of English...I must see some of your other posts before deciding whether you had had a good bit too much when posting the above...🥃
...or if it is simply an expression of your natural charm.
 
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When we (my then partner, now wife) lived in Galicia we got to be very good friends with a Galician family. I, in particular became like a soul brother with the eldest daughter. She began to teach us Spanish. Angela decided to go for an 'A' level in English when she was 30 at night school. I should say that the standard then was far superior to that of today. She got an 'A' top grade.

Morroska hadn't gone to university in Spain but it soon became apparent to Angela andI my partner that Spanish is taught to a far higher standard than English is taught in schools in the UK. So much so that Angela was appalled at the standard of English of ex/uni students studying to be nurses, My wife was a lecturer in paediatric nursing.

My father left school at 14 (1924) passing his exams with excellent results and was offered a job in a lawyers office. He couldn't take it as his father was dead and his mother was dying of cancer. He was brought up in the second toughest area of Glasgow and I mean tough, if you weren't strong you didn't get to live. As he said to me when I was 10 'you would turn your head to the wall and die'.

So he didn't come from a privileged background but as he said in school in Scotland you had no choice but to learn. At 16 he applied for a job as a commi waiter at a 5* hotel in the Italian Alps. In 6 months he was speaking fluent Italian. He then applied for a job in Lucerne in Switzerland, where again in 6 months he was speaking fluent French. I think that back in those days this would be considered quite ordinary.

Today I am appalled at just how inarticulate the majority of English, Welsh and Scots people are. I doubt if some have a vocabulary of 40 words and I'm not talking about the 'mobile phone generation'. A lot of homes in the UK only have car manuals and nothing else. There was a survey done by a Sunday paper/journal around 1990 that stated that the Dutch read on average 5 times as many books as in the UK. Having lived in the Netherlands I don't doubt this is true.

I know and accept that language changes. There are words that Americans use today that were dropped in England not long after the American revolution'/rebellion but when I hear 'my bad' used that is truly appalling and the use of 'route' - phonetic - root spoken as 'rout'. Some American expressions I love and use daily as I do from Dutch, German, Spanish and French. What really appalls me is that still so many Brits expect foreigners to understand and speak to them in English. Dumbing down is happening across so many countries in the west - keep the people stupid, it makes it so much easier to control them.
I read a fantastic book a few years ago called 'The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution' which was a collection of academic essays about why the Industrial Revolution and big business happened in what was effectively at the time a poor, underdeveloped corner of northwestern Europe: The UK, Netherlands, and Germany. There were four key factors that took place over a period of about 350 years (1) the invention of the printing press that facillitated the rapid spread of knowledge, although initially, it was mostly copies of the bible (2) delayed fertility rates arising from women getting married in their mid-twenties which paradoxically led to more children surviving into adulthood. This trend was already evident in the late 1500s and is best described by the 'Hajnal line' (3) the 'invention' of the company structure by the Dutch in the last decade of the 1500's that brought together shareholders, a board of directors, dividend payouts or profit sharing, and risk management and led to a boom in international trade with the Far East best exemplified by the Dutch East India Company or VOC (4) widespread literacy, but very specifically in the Netherlands. The Pope sent an emissary to the low countries in the early 1500s to try to understand why Protestantism was on the rise there. His man went out into the country to talk to the 'peasants' and was shocked to find that almost every man woman and child could read and write - and therein lay the problem for the Vatican.
 
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Youins better steer clear of southern Appalachia........the Scotch Irish have their own take on the English language. Quite interesting actually, it developed to be able to shine the light on outsiders, and if you think about it the same probably holds true today......as in if you don't talk like me your not one my people.
 
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My son followed us out to Japan after he graduated and amazingly, after just 3 months he was able to understand and make himself understood in Japanese. He quickly became fluent and can read, write and speak Japanese. He corrects his Japanese partner’s English and they in turn correct his Japanese so their mutual language skills are continually improving. It’s quite something IMV for him to be reading Japanese novels in Japanese but then I think about his partner devouring English literature which is just as commendable. Becoming fluent in another language opens one up to all sorts of interesting cultural perspectives that are unavailable to those that only speak one language and this especially so if the language is from a completely different culture.
 
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@Bonsai

A great friend's son has been awarded a Master degree through Japanese in business studies here in the UK. He too lived in Japan for some four or five years. But he has also taken on a dual culture lifestyle. I have seen videos of him in full Japanese attire splitting bamboo poles at great speed using the full ceremonial of that discipline.

On the other hand my Wife's brother was gifted at learning languages and can speak some nine tongues to an advanced commercial level.

Unfortunately I never had the gift of languages. My first school term's effort of learning French drew the term-end report comment "Below any known standard". :Ouch:
 
My son followed us out to Japan after he graduated and amazingly, after just 3 months he was able to understand and make himself understood in Japanese. He quickly became fluent and can read, write and speak Japanese. He corrects his Japanese partner’s English and they in turn correct his Japanese so their mutual language skills are continually improving. It’s quite something IMV for him to be reading Japanese novels in Japanese but then I think about his partner devouring English literature which is just as commendable. Becoming fluent in another language opens one up to all sorts of interesting cultural perspectives that are unavailable to those that only speak one language and this especially so if the language is from a completely different culture.
That's a great story....I struggle to read the George Simenon detective stories (at my advanced age) even though I had six years of French.

J
 
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Funny, I have to turn on the captions when I watch movies from the UK, always wonder where did they learn to speak English.
There is a HUGE spread of regional accents across what is a very small island. You can even tell from what part of London someone was raised down to borough area by their accent eg Hackney versus Sydenham. Same thing up in the Manchester area, and about 40 miles away, Liverpool - probably the toughest English accent to decipher from the lot, although thf folks from Falkirk up in Scotland might pip them to the post in that one. The funniest is the Birmingham or ‘brummie’ accent.
 
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Today I went in to my local (in English, newsagent) to do the Euromillions for Friday (someone has to win it) there was a very goosy young woman there promoting those awful 'vape' thingies. I still have problems understanding French. She offered to help speaking both Spanish and English. We had a delightful conversation in Spanish which no one else in the shop understood. She had very Spanish eyes, if you know Spanish women, they use their eyes to communicate - I used the word 'guapa' to describe her and kissed her hand - if you've ever visited southern Spain, then you know how gorgeous these women of southern Spain can be of Arabic/Berber/Sephardic Jewish origin can be. If I could construct a time machine I would transport myself back to the 10th century Granada caliphate - the food, the women - sorted.

Might I suggest the young Spanish lady would very likely by the end of your exchange see you as an old sleazebag? I know you'll suggest otherwise, but I'm fairly confident...

Yep, all those 10th century women would be gagging for a bit of Black. 🙄
 
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