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The fight for English : Comments
By Malcolm King, published 7/3/2008The 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.
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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.