The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > The fight for English > Comments

The fight for English : Comments

By Malcolm King, published 7/3/2008

The rules for the use of apostrophes and capitalisation, have been sucked from the classroom like a road map out of the window of a speeding car.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. Page 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. 7
  9. All
Witnessing abuse of the Queen's English has caused me some anguish over the years, I'll have to admit.

And I still wince when I hear an ABC news reader or weather announcer say things like: "Tomorrow we will have warmer temperatures" (temperatures can be high and low but not warmer) or ".... two days in a row" (you can't have a row of two) and universal replacement of the word 'if' with 'whether'. "I don't know whether I will go to town". (I was always taught in school that 'whether' had to infer a choice between two things - as in, 'whether or not'.)

And so forth.

Are ABC newsreaders told to read in the vernacular for greater appeal, or has the education system worked its way upwards to an older generation? Makes me think its not the education system so much as a gradual societal acceptance that politically correct language is no longer necessary.

The purpose of language is to communicate, apart from its latent poetry, so I suppose my generation frustration at language abuse may be misplaced. I could just be described a an old fart for making a fuss about nothing.

Still, I wince and wince again when all of my lifetime's language training is confronted by these contortions.

The one thing that has riled my sensibilities is the introduction of computers in schools. They automatically default with American spelling and that's how so many school computers are set up. Imagine what it's like to be a child and having conflicting spelling thrown up at you whenever you draft your school essays. Mr Bill Gates certainly has a lot to answer for.

It would have been so easy (and necessary) for school authorities to have all school computers installed with traditional English spelling. Education authorities should be castigated for allowing such oversights to take place.
Posted by gecko, Friday, 7 March 2008 11:30:02 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Splendid writing! Congratulations. As to the "Fight for English" I fear I am losing it in relation to two phrases. The first is " ....has/have/there are issues..." In regards to the first, the second is: "in regards to..."!!

iudex
Posted by iudex, Friday, 7 March 2008 11:45:39 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I regret being Ponderous, but Malcolm had another grammatical error: his statement: "There are school teachers far more capable people than me......"
"Me"? Surely you mean "I" to relate correctly to the elided verb "am".
It happens all the time in a society which speaks English, but does not understand its construction.
I agree also that the ABC uses sloppy grammar. Its journalists and writers do not seem to understand their craft fully. How often do you hear split infinitives used despite the fact that it would be just as easy to write a phrase correctly?
Correct use by the originators could promote correct use by the recipients, and we would stand less risk the use of our language being worsened through ignorance.

I hope that other people are like me when confronted by advertising signs poorly spelt or constructed.
I will not buy anything from that company; a very minor yet most satisfying act of retribution on my part.

See youse.
Posted by Ponder, Friday, 7 March 2008 12:30:07 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I continued to teach grammar and punctuation until I resigned from teaching in 2007. The teaching of the basics in schools never stopped. The learning of them has always been uneven.

Computers don’t spell. Software programs such as Word do. In any case, the American spellings such as in “color” are the originals. When English was replacing French as the official language of England, scribes in Chancery added the “u” to indicate that the word had passed into English from the French.

According to my 1965 edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage, there is nothing wrong with splitting an infinitive. The myth that one should not do so comes from Latin, in which the infinitive is a single word. In English it is two words and thus can be split. It is also a superstition that “different” cannot be followed by “to”.

Language changes. However, I agree with the author that their are many people whose standard of written expression – grammar, punctuation, clarity - is poor. I see this particularly in The Age, but hardly ever in the Herald Sun, which is an interesting distinction in itself given the target market for each newspaper.
Posted by Chris C, Friday, 7 March 2008 1:44:26 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I fully endorse the main gist of this article but agree with those posters who were somewhat confused as to which court the blame game was being played in. If indeed post-modernism was being presented as the culprit then I would vehemently disagree.

In general, for example, the most prolific posters on OLO are middle-aged and beyond, yet the standard of English expression is very low. I agree with the poster who said that it isn't the obscure points of grammatical etiquette that jar , but simple points such as "their" and "they're" and others that so completely obscure the points of some posts they are misunderstood, misrepresented or mystifying.

Thus it would appear that, if the function of a language is to allow us to communicate, the education system has been at fault since before even the 'Seventies.

Which leads me often to ponder a dichotomy of the chicken-and-egg variety: Does the lack of the apposite word, or the knowledge of syntax and structure indicate commensurate lack of complex thought? And vice versa. If two people look at a view and one remarks: "It's very nice" and the other "Oh, look how the sunlight dapples through the leaves and paints golden freckles on the ground" does the person who said it was "nice" not see how the sunlight has changed the image of the ground beneath from the mundane to the sublime? Or do they see it but feel a frustrating ache inside in not being able to express what they see?

In other words, without the knowledge of the correct tools with which to express ourselves does our appreciation for the fine, the beautiful, the complex eventually atrophy? Or does our general lack of skill with language indicate that we have, as a society, largely already lost this ability?

Or am I getting totally carried away?
Posted by Romany, Friday, 7 March 2008 5:58:37 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I honestly think we r going to end up with 2 versions of English.

SPEED version.. m8, gr8, over 2 u, 2nite. 2morrow etc.. SMS speak.

REAL version.. with fully spelled words and all correct punctuation.

But even if all the punctuation is correct.. how about the morphing of meanings "Sick" means 'wow..great'.. "Wicked" means. alllrightythen/cool/great. "Gay" (when used by heterosexuals)means wierd.)"Thats sooo gay"
Posted by BOAZ_David, Friday, 7 March 2008 6:51:10 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. Page 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. 7
  9. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy