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Lost grammar: where did it all go wrong?

I also understand that it is down to good parenting and not just what different schools dish out apropos English.

Travelling home yesterday from Swanage I was sat downstairs right at the back when a family boarded.

The mother and five children (all boys, three of her own and two she said she had 'borrowed') :D eleven years and below came and sat around me.

It was refreshing to see such happy, well-behaved, well-spoken and children; puts pundits like Paul Merson to shame!

Ethan, Oliver and Josh - there goes another evolution!

Such modernism in names has almost seen the death of Peter, David and John, has it not?
 
Tom said:
...like when someone describes a person on the spectrum as being an 'Asberger'.
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Like a cheeseburger but concerning assholes instead :)


The use of ‘them’ instead of those may have something to do with the local accent?

Those ones can turn into ‘them uns’
 
The proper German pronunciation is AhsPerGer with a hard G. I hate to hear it pronounced Assburger as many people like to say it.
 
FreeDiver said:
If you want good grammar. then why don't they drop this stupid hard and soft sound crap. If you want a soft "G"? The replace it with "J" like "jenerator" or "jiant"....
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Because half the world pronounces j as a y, so you’d end up with people saying yenerator and yiant instead :)
 
I think that online culture - chats, text messaging and memes - have had a huge impact on punctuation and grammar. The internet seems to be full of silly memes with deliberate misspellings, I have no idea why this is so popular, but it is, and some people seem to think that it's cool to imitate the style. Another trend that I have noticed is that text messages are full of acronyms and that can make them very difficult to understand, or abbreviations such as 'u' instead of 'you' which have crept into other areas of written communication such as forums and emails. Ignorance also plays a part, as people simply don't know that they are making a mistake. For example, when people hear 'should've', the -ve is shortened and they think it is 'should of' because that's what it sounds like.

I'm an English teacher and a proof reader, so I'm extremely aware of grammar rules and details of grammar such as the placing of commas. As for commas, I'm aware of the rules and there are some rules that must be adhered to, but there is some flexibility and it comes largely down to style and how you wish the reader to read the text, where you want the reader to pause.
 
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Hollow Horse said:
I don't mind being wrong but I have always thought it a soft G.

To me a hard G doesn't sound right.

But the true answer may lie in the pronounciation of Dr. Hans Asperger?
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In Germany I usually heard hard Gs. Or so I thought. But Asperger was Austrian. The answer may lie there.
 
But to answer your original question. I am not sure one can actually pick one point and say where gramma was abandoned. I mean grammar. No one abandons their Grand Mother. Language is of course always evolving, Old English becomes Middle English, which becomes Modern English, etc. Any book on grammar is just a snapshot of one moment in time. Although there are those that will try and say this is the correct version and no changes are allowed, at least not without committee approval.

But if it is true there was a point in time after which the English language slowly collapsed I suspect it was part of the general unraveling of civilization that began on March 26, 1996 when a misguided government officially disbanded the Tea Board.

"We don't have a Coffee Board or a Candy Board. We do not need this Tea Board," said Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada.

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/26/nyregion/congress-votes-to-end-tea-tasting-board.html

Even as we speak the dissolution continues to spread and has reached as India.

‘Tea Board may be dismantled to revive sector’ - Times of India
 
Hollow Horse said:
On my father's side there is Teutonic ancestry so might be the reason the German hard G sits well with me.
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The reason I know this is because my neighbor is from Germany and she corrected me when I pronounced it with a soft g.
 
I have too much to say on this topic, so I'll condense my message. If you never took English language spelling, pronunciation, or grammar seriously in school, it's your own fault. Lazy, unskilled writers and journalists are making the problem worse. English is a versatile language, but mastering it to an acceptable degree takes a lot of exposure and practice. You only get that practice through reading and writing. Texting doesn't count. What bothers people like me is blatant disregard for grammar. Composing a complex set of ideas into one sentence requires grammatical agility that is only learned through practice.

When the Internet was new, I saw a banner come across my screen stating "I could of won"! That's when I knew there were monkeys at the wheel. If people continue to compose text without concern for grammar, they will never develop the skills that are needed in responsible positions of authority or managerial oversight. If the "he and I" or "him and me" issues are a concern, look them up to understand how to choose the correct pronouns. It's a system, but you need to know your grammar.

Proper grammar is sometimes elitist and that is why we shun the word "whom". It sounds snooty, and I know that many Americans are unsure of how to use it correctly, so we avoid it. This is language in evolution. The point to using grammar is to communicate clearly. "There, their, and they're" have completely different meanings. Choose the one you mean. Homonyms can be tricky. English has so many foreign words, words that defy spelling rules, and words that are pronounced oddly, that we have no choice but to learn them as we go. I get tired of the word "environment" being pronounced as "envyerment". I'm being overly picky, but the person who says that can't spell it. That makes me question their knowledge on the subject.

Proper grammar, spelling, and pronunciation are valuable as personal and professional skills. Many native English speakers make mistakes, and some of them are debatable. A number of years back, I had to use a computer that had British spell check. Now, I have to stop and think about the spelling of some words because they don't look right to me. It makes me laugh - same language. The Asperger dilemma - only one is right, but neither follows the rules. Studying French also messed with my spelling. Spell-check overrides can cause problems too. Humans still have to be smarter than the machines designed to help them. It's good to know "correct" and all the other variations of correct.
 
Peter Morrison said:
"There, their, and they're" have completely different meanings. Choose the one you mean. Homonyms can be tricky.
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It's interesting that you brought this little part up. Although I never get the word "they're" confused with the other words because it's a contraction for "they are". I do however, get "there and their" confused and misuse them a lot.

Pronunciation is another thing that I struggle with. I have a very hard time knowing when to use periods and commas, as well as knowing which one's to use.
 
Ken S. said:
The proper German pronunciation is AhsPerGer with a hard G. I hate to hear it pronounced Assburger as many people like to say it.
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Either way it isn't that great. Ass Burger, or Ass Purger. I prefer to stay away from the word altogether and lean toward things like HFA, autism spectrum, or aspie.
 
Lazy, unskilled writers and journalists are making the problem worse.
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My main dish but where journalists and pundits have people above them that could address the issue but don't bother, makes it for me more annoying.
 
I'm going to be the odd one in here and say that I don't care about anyone else's grammar usage, whether or not it's correct. And I will never correct someone's grammar, whether on here or when talking to somebody face-to-face.

The only thing I correct are incorrect use of words. Like when someone uses a word they apparently don't know the meaning of, making whatever they're saying sound strange and nonsensical. I try to use tact too, like, "Oh, do you mean...." and insert an appropriate word.

I myself enjoy using precise grammar. I am not entirely sure why I enjoy it (could be because there's a great pleasure in doing things precisely, no matter what it is I'm doing), but I can say that I do not presume to think myself better or more educated than someone who isn't so good at it as I am, or doesn't care for it much.

I get that folks are obsessed with this kind of thing, especially in a community like ours. We do have "peculiar" interests and obsessions, after all. But correcting others in their grammar usage is, I feel, inappropriate in most cases, and could be construed as rude, insensitive, and ignorant. One of the main reasons for this was stated above:

Peter Morrison said:
Proper grammar is sometimes elitist
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Considering my personal experiences and things that I witnessed, and still witness on a regular basis, I would even cross the word "sometimes" out.

I was born and raised in the Bronx. Bronx has a population of 1.47 mil, with a poverty rate of 30%. Ethnic composition: approximately 88-90% combined Hispanic or Latino, Black or African American, Asian, and two or more races.

There are many reasons people here either don't care to use proper grammar, or simply cannot. They are immigrants. Or, they were born here, but their parents are immigrants and prioritize and speak their parents' languages. People here work hard. I mean, hard. It is common for a typical young adult to hold at least one job, sometimes two, have at least one child, and be a part-time student. Most can't even afford to go to school, even though they want to very badly. They keep having to put it off because they have too many other, much more pressing life issues.

They are the masters of juggling multiple things in the face of extremely difficult circumstances.

The system has wronged them, and is continuing to wrong them. Systemic racism, prejudice and discrimination are ruining lives and opportunities, and I am witness (and actual physical proof!) of it happening.

So proper grammar usage is going to be the very least of their problems. Oh, people look at them with disdain for the way they talk. How improper! How classless! How "ghetto!"

In addition to being a student at a college here in the Bronx, I am also a teacher's assistant in a number of programming and data analysis classes at the same college. The students there are pretty much perfect representations of the borough. They may speak in slang, imprecise grammar and all, use their own made-up words, with their Bronx accents (no, not the Bronx Italian accent that usually comes to mind), but they are not uneducated. They are not "classless" (whatever the hell that means anyway. That bothers the crap out of me when someone talks about how people have no "class"). It is how they speak because that is how everyone in their communities speak.

A lot of us rebel against proper English grammar. Just as those who are very different from they are look at them in disdain for not speaking "correctly", they look at them in anger for their wilful ignorance and enjoy defying their norms that they want to force on everyone. Hell, I join them in that sometimes.

I myself know how to do what is called "code switching". I am a child of immigrants. I grew up speaking "properly", and being hyperlexic meant I knew how to use words no one else understood or thought to use in every day conversation. A lot of us more educated Bronx residents code switch. We do what we call "talking white" when around those who judge the way we speak in the Bronx. When we're back home in our communities, we go back to speaking however we're most comfortable speaking. My most comfortable way of speaking is "proper" English, but when I see some of my cousins, who speak the community language, I comfortably code switch.

I am not judging anyone here for enjoying using correct, precise grammar. Whether it's an obsession of yours, or you simply enjoy doing it, like I do, I get it.

But if you are someone who is quick to judge someone else for improper, incorrect grammar usage, I implore you to reframe how you think of these people. Language shouldn't even be used to distinguish between those who belong in regular society and those who don't anyway. Language shouldn't be used to judge someone's education level. Language shouldn't be used to create class divisions. Language is used to communicate and connect with others.
 
Bothers me very much, too. I once wrote an article for a local magazine and was floored when I discovered that the editor edited mistakes into my article!
 
Tony Harrison wrote a good poem called 'Them and uz', and draws attention to the legitimacy of dialects and accents, and the way correcting others pronunciation and English usage has been used oppressively. He notes that Wordsworth used matter as a full rhyme for water. I think the use of local dialect accounts to some degree for usages like 'them games' instead of 'those games'. Language use is diverse and colourful, let's not police it too much...
 
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