The "No Later Then" Thread

McGyver

Yeah, bow (nautical term) and bow (archery) is confusing, but what about "poop deck"... not the same kind of confusion, but apparently the reason I'm not allowed on the Fire Island ferry anymore.

Sevrin

j cade said:

fred9803 said:

At school (a long time ago) I was told to avoid ending sentences with prepositions, like "for" or "on". I still try to unless it sounds confusing or unnatural. Grammar and language itself is not static and evolves over time unless it's a dead language like Latin, so I'm happy to accept whatever changes come along so long as meaning is clear. Though I do draw the line at using nouns as verbs.

Not a fan of Shakespeare then? There was a man who loved some verbing... though we cant blame "friended" on him, that one predates him by about 200 years

 

(More seriously, there's some grating verbified jargon, but a truly staggering number of verbs started their english journey as nouns. If you truly tried to avoid them all, you would probably end up entirely unable to functionally communicate)

 

If I have one grammar complaint, it is that everyone has not yet accepted the utility and perfection of "y'all". I am willing to accept that "y'alld've" is a bridge to far for the written word as yet, but "y'all" should be just as acceptable as "I'm"

 

edit: also you can say "you're not" and "you aren't"

"she's not" "she isn't"

"They're not" "they aren't"

but only "I'm not" and not "I amn't"

this is clearly illogical and I demand "I amn't" be allowed forthwith

 

I ain't certain that's necessary. 

marble

A few years ago part of my job was mentoring British univeristy students doing a year of work experience. Now I did not have the benefit of a university education having left school in the 1960's at age 16. That school was structured to produce factory fodder so academic subjects were a very low priority. So with very little formal education I am quite surprised, looking back, that I picked up so much mostly from reading - first comics, then novels, newspapers and magazines. 

Anyhow, back to the students. I was horrified to see that most of them could not spell worth a damn. I had to edit their customer reports and correct all the mistakes. How anyone can get to the age of 22 having attendend university and not know the difference between accept and except is beyond me. Worse: they did not even know when to use "there", "their" and "they're". Not to mention the complete ignorance of punctuation, often using an exclamation point instead of a full stop (period, in American).

I have just finished reading Dickens' Our Mutual Friend and it brought home to me how the English language has been degraded and trivialised since his day. What a pleasure it was to read my own language at its zenith and how sad that it has been in a steady decine ever since.

Sevrin

marble said:

A few years ago part of my job was mentoring British univeristy students doing a year of work experience. Now I did not have the benefit of a university education having left school in the 1960's at age 16. That school was structured to produce factory fodder so academic subjects were a very low priority. So with very little formal education I am quite surprised, looking back, that I picked up so much mostly from reading - first comics, then novels, newspapers and magazines. 

Anyhow, back to the students. I was horrified to see that most of them could not spell worth a damn. I had to edit their customer reports and correct all the mistakes. How anyone can get to the age of 22 having attendend university and not know the difference between accept and except is beyond me. Worse: they did not even know when to use "there", "their" and "they're". Not to mention the complete ignorance of punctuation, often using an exclamation point instead of a full stop (period, in American).

I have just finished reading Dickens' Our Mutual Friend and it brought home to me how the English language has been degraded and trivialised since his day. What a pleasure it was to read my own language at its zenith and how sad that it has been in a steady decine ever since.

There was a time before the internet when reading edited material, be they books, magazines or newpapers was a big part of just about everyone's lives.  I went without TV for a few years, and during that time I read a lot.  Fewer people read books regularly now, and magazines and newspapers have lost readers, as well.   Most of the internet stuff seems to go online with very little or no editing or proof-reading, and I'm not even talking about some of the self-published stuff you see on Amazon, etc.  What's more, being or appearing educated has become suspect among many groups, so there's not a lot of incentive to improve oneself.  "Grammar Nazi" has become a common term, for  instance.

LeatherGryphon

Having been victim of the "grammar Nazi" cat-call myself, it infuriates me that the tired excuses for linguistic laziness and unwillingness to care, have been gaining traction amongst the great unwashed, the average Joe, and the hoity-toity too.  Then I remember that I am old, I will be leaving this world sooner rather than later.  It's not mine anymore and the new owners can poop on the floor all they want once I'm gone.  But until then I find it cathartic once in a while to point at a pile of poop and yell "poop" in the vain hope that someone will mend their ways.  And don't give me the pontification "language changes" excuse.  It's a cop-out for laziness and ignorance.  Yes language changes, but it doesn't need to be attacked with an axe (not an ask) and left bloody in the gutter in the hopes that it arises like a Phoenix, fresh and new from ashes of a once beautiful creature.

Non-native speakers are given a pass.  But, people who are clever enough to learn more than one language are smart in the important ways and usually care and will catch on to errors if pointed out.  Salute to non-native speakers. 

McGyver

Sevrin said:

There was a time before the internet when reading edited material, be they books, magazines or newpapers was a big part of just about everyone's lives.  I went without TV for a few years, and during that time I read a lot.  Fewer people read books regularly now, and magazines and newspapers have lost readers, as well.   Most of the internet stuff seems to go online with very little or no editing or proof-reading, and I'm not even talking about some of the self-published stuff you see on Amazon, etc.  What's more, being or appearing educated has become suspect among many groups, so there's not a lot of incentive to improve oneself.  "Grammar Nazi" has become a common term, for instance.  

Not grammar related, but something similar that really bugs the living hell out of me with online articles is when some unedited nitwit slaps together a poorly researched article and others lazily end up using that article as a reference, often just copying and pasting the inaccuracies over and over until after a few years it becomes the default scenario/portrayal of events/idea etc... and I'm not talking about social media "articles" or stuff related to politics or sensitive matters, I'm talking about general knowledge and stuff that is easily verifiable with current books and real reference materials, but some jagkoff just winged their way through the thing to have met a quota or something. 

It really bugs the crap out of me because I often mix satire with real facts, but often I'll be looking at something someone wrote in all seriousness and it's actually less accurate than my tongue in cheek nonsense.

I don't know what the criteria is for writing articles anymore, but apparently a device to write it on and maybe fingers or at least a helper monkey to type it out with... 

namffuak

Sevrin said:

marble said:

A few years ago part of my job was mentoring British univeristy students doing a year of work experience. Now I did not have the benefit of a university education having left school in the 1960's at age 16. That school was structured to produce factory fodder so academic subjects were a very low priority. So with very little formal education I am quite surprised, looking back, that I picked up so much mostly from reading - first comics, then novels, newspapers and magazines. 

Anyhow, back to the students. I was horrified to see that most of them could not spell worth a damn. I had to edit their customer reports and correct all the mistakes. How anyone can get to the age of 22 having attendend university and not know the difference between accept and except is beyond me. Worse: they did not even know when to use "there", "their" and "they're". Not to mention the complete ignorance of punctuation, often using an exclamation point instead of a full stop (period, in American).

I have just finished reading Dickens' Our Mutual Friend and it brought home to me how the English language has been degraded and trivialised since his day. What a pleasure it was to read my own language at its zenith and how sad that it has been in a steady decine ever since.

There was a time before the internet when reading edited material, be they books, magazines or newpapers was a big part of just about everyone's lives.  I went without TV for a few years, and during that time I read a lot.  Fewer people read books regularly now, and magazines and newspapers have lost readers, as well.   Most of the internet stuff seems to go online with very little or no editing or proof-reading, and I'm not even talking about some of the self-published stuff you see on Amazon, etc.  What's more, being or appearing educated has become suspect among many groups, so there's not a lot of incentive to improve oneself.  "Grammar Nazi" has become a common term, for  instance.

One  of our local network affiliates was started and run for many years by a noted university. Their web page at times reads like an intern copied verbatim a reporter's notes replete with grammar and spelling errors. I reported some, for a while but gave up - they acknowledged the errors but never bothered to correct them.

Wonderland

My father was an editor at two major publications and my mother was a grammar Nazi and I cringe now when I hear things even in scripted TV shows and commercials like “Me and my friend went...,” “Anyways,” “A whole nother thing,” “ I says..” and “I was waiting ON you for an hour.” And now everyone  talks like this and it drives me nuts. I love Pink Floyd except when they sing “We don’t need no education,” because clearly they do. I often wonder if that was meant as satire or if they were really that stupid. 

Gordig

Wonderland said:

I love Pink Floyd except when they sing “We don’t need no education,” because clearly they do. I often wonder if that was meant as satire or if they were really that stupid. 

Have you ever actually listened to The Wall?

Wonderland

Gordig said:

Wonderland said:

I love Pink Floyd except when they sing “We don’t need no education,” because clearly they do. I often wonder if that was meant as satire or if they were really that stupid. 

Have you ever actually listened to The Wall?

Not sure if I ever listened to the whole album in order but I got the impression they were rebelling against something that made no sense to me because I always thought education was very important. I actually spent a year in England too as a child and went to a great private school that was wonderful and actually easier and less strict than the private school I went to in NYC. There was no thought control, just good education. I have to listen to the whole album I guess to see if it makes me see something different but I think that song is dangerous for kids to hear. 

maikdecker

Hemi426 said:

I think German language is worse. "Umfahren" (to swerve) is the opposite of "Umfahren" (to run over something). It's just pronounced different.

And even that pronounciation "rule" is more used as a "guideline" in different parts of germany...

English has - in my opinion - way more of these "different spelling, same pronounciation, different meaning" stumbling blocks than german. We rather have these "same spelling, different pronounciation, different meaning" or even "same spelling, same pronounciation, different meaning" words.

I have to admit though, that it amuses me utterly to deliberately use english in ways that might are confusing for native english speakers. A german comedian did it in the 1970's and it stuck... He called it "English for Runaways"

And to my absolute surprise one of the phrase my posslq and I used in the 1980's - saying "onagainsee" (which is the literal translation for "Auf wiedersehen") instead "Good bye! - seemed to caught on with them englishers we spoke to then?!? 'Cause I noticed some Englishers using it on the internet a couple years ago...

marble

Wonderland said:

Gordig said:

Wonderland said:

I love Pink Floyd except when they sing “We don’t need no education,” because clearly they do. I often wonder if that was meant as satire or if they were really that stupid. 

Have you ever actually listened to The Wall?

Not sure if I ever listened to the whole album in order but I got the impression they were rebelling against something that made no sense to me because I always thought education was very important. I actually spent a year in England too as a child and went to a great private school that was wonderful and actually easier and less strict than the private school I went to in NYC. There was no thought control, just good education. I have to listen to the whole album I guess to see if it makes me see something different but I think that song is dangerous for kids to hear. 

I am a big fan of Pink Floyd (although Roger Waters can be an arrogant so-and-so) and I think that particular line is so often taken out of context. The chant signifies a reaction to the authoritarian teaching practices in schools at the time. I am a little younger than Waters but I was a victim of those practices - beatings with a cane, kicked and punched by a sadistic sports master, being taught a a view of history and geography that glorified British colonialism. I mentioned Charles Dickens above and I really don't think that attitudes in education had changed much in the hundred years after he wrote Our Mutual Friend (in fact Dickens himself would have been considered a progressive in the 1950s never mind the 1850s). 

The big changes came after I (and Waters) left school, often for the better but some standards seem to have slipped dramatically. Today, the focus seems to be less on general education and more on passing exams. The level of general knowledge among some young people is truly depressing. Again, I put this down to the fact that I read a lot of books and magazines writen by professionals who knew their subjects, not by self-promoting internet hacks spouting ill-conceived opinions rather than taking the time to research abd verify.

Gordig

marble said:

Wonderland said:

Gordig said:

Wonderland said:

I love Pink Floyd except when they sing “We don’t need no education,” because clearly they do. I often wonder if that was meant as satire or if they were really that stupid. 

Have you ever actually listened to The Wall?

Not sure if I ever listened to the whole album in order but I got the impression they were rebelling against something that made no sense to me because I always thought education was very important. I actually spent a year in England too as a child and went to a great private school that was wonderful and actually easier and less strict than the private school I went to in NYC. There was no thought control, just good education. I have to listen to the whole album I guess to see if it makes me see something different but I think that song is dangerous for kids to hear. 

I am a big fan of Pink Floyd (although Roger Waters can be an arrogant so-and-so) and I think that particular line is so often taken out of context. The chant signifies a reaction to the authoritarian teaching practices in schools at the time. I am a little younger than Waters but I was a victim of those practices - beatings with a cane, kicked and punched by a sadistic sports master, being taught a a view of history and geography that glorified British colonialism. I mentioned Charles Dickens above and I really don't think that attitudes in education had changed much in the hundred years after he wrote Our Mutual Friend (in fact Dickens himself would have been considered a progressive in the 1950s never mind the 1850s). 

On top of that, there's the assumption too many people make that lyrics are meant to be taken fully at face value, as direct literal representations of the singer's actual feelings. The Wall in particular tells a story, and the lyrics of any individual song need to be understood within the context of that story.

kyoto kid

...yes.

marble

Gordig said:

marble said:

Wonderland said:

Gordig said:

Wonderland said:

I love Pink Floyd except when they sing “We don’t need no education,” because clearly they do. I often wonder if that was meant as satire or if they were really that stupid. 

Have you ever actually listened to The Wall?

Not sure if I ever listened to the whole album in order but I got the impression they were rebelling against something that made no sense to me because I always thought education was very important. I actually spent a year in England too as a child and went to a great private school that was wonderful and actually easier and less strict than the private school I went to in NYC. There was no thought control, just good education. I have to listen to the whole album I guess to see if it makes me see something different but I think that song is dangerous for kids to hear. 

I am a big fan of Pink Floyd (although Roger Waters can be an arrogant so-and-so) and I think that particular line is so often taken out of context. The chant signifies a reaction to the authoritarian teaching practices in schools at the time. I am a little younger than Waters but I was a victim of those practices - beatings with a cane, kicked and punched by a sadistic sports master, being taught a a view of history and geography that glorified British colonialism. I mentioned Charles Dickens above and I really don't think that attitudes in education had changed much in the hundred years after he wrote Our Mutual Friend (in fact Dickens himself would have been considered a progressive in the 1950s never mind the 1850s). 

On top of that, there's the assumption too many people make that lyrics are meant to be taken fully at face value, as direct literal representations of the singer's actual feelings. The Wall in particular tells a story, and the lyrics of any individual song need to be understood within the context of that story.

Indeed.  

j cade

LeatherGryphon said:

Having been victim of the "grammar Nazi" cat-call myself, it infuriates me that the tired excuses for linguistic laziness and unwillingness to care, have been gaining traction amongst the great unwashed, the average Joe, and the hoity-toity too.  Then I remember that I am old, I will be leaving this world sooner rather than later.  It's not mine anymore and the new owners can poop on the floor all they want once I'm gone.  But until then I find it cathartic once in a while to point at a pile of poop and yell "poop" in the vain hope that someone will mend their ways.  And don't give me the pontification "language changes" excuse.  It's a cop-out for laziness and ignorance.  Yes language changes, but it doesn't need to be attacked with an axe (not an ask) and left bloody in the gutter in the hopes that it arises like a Phoenix, fresh and new from ashes of a once beautiful creature.

Non-native speakers are given a pass.  But, people who are clever enough to learn more than one language are smart in the important ways and usually care and will catch on to errors if pointed out.  Salute to non-native speakers. 

It's funny you should mention "ask" and "axe" because they're actually a perfect example both how arbitrary language is, how it does indeed change. and also how, historically, grammatical "rules" have been used to enforce class and racial hierarchy. All sorts of fun.

You see, "axe" actually has just as long a history as "ask". They stem from and Old English word that was written both "ascian" and "acsian" and no particular preference to one or the other.

"Axe" was used commonly in early modern English. From Chaucer's Canterbury Tales we have: "axe him of mercy." (It was not referring to mercifully hitting someone with an ax.) And from no less than the earliest completed English translation of the bible we have: “he axed for wrytinge tables.”

"Ask" did not gain dominance until the 17th century. And by "gained dominance" I mean "gained dominance amongst those with greater control over disseminating written documents - those with money and power" English has always been a language with numerous dialects and "axe" continued along unchanged in many of them.

The dialect it became most associated with is, of course, Black people, which is, incidentally, where "axe" got it association with being an indication of lack of education. Again, this is despite "axe" having just as much of a linguistic historical basis. I know this is going to shock everyone, but historically society has had some issues with race and it kind of effects everything including our modern grammatical norms.

Personally I find this the whole fun of grammar. At this point we can probably train a robot til it knows every rule: not to end a sentence with a preposition, not to split an infinitive, that "ain't I" is an abomination but "aren't I" is allowed despite being objectively ungrammatical. That's all fine enough as far as it goes. But why those rules exist is far more interesting.

While I'm not for beating language and leaving bloody in a gutter, there are plenty of accepted grammatical norms, with no real basis, that should be reëxamined and, if necessary, taken out behind the gymnasium and roughed up a bit.

j cade

Incidentally, as someone who has attended grade school more recently than most of the other people in this thread, one reason for some of said decline is that grammar isn't really taught... at all. There are numerous reasons for this. Primarily slashing school budgets and teaching to tests to the point where high school students rarely write essays, because you can't really do essays in a standardized test. It's with noting that neither of these reasons were in the control of the students about whose grammar people now complain.

namffuak

Winston Churchill was chastised at one time for ending sentences with prepositions - his response was grammatically correct and a classic example of why the rule gets broken: "This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put" rather than the much more readable "This is the type of arrant pedantry I will not put up with."

DustRider

I have a quick question.  Does anyone know the origin of "take a listen"? It seems to be extremely popular with journalists and news broadcasters when trying to encourage viewers to watch the next vdeo clip. It confuses me (well, not really), am I supposed to close my eyes and listen the the clip? How am I supposed to "take a listen", is that similar to taking a break?

Yes, it's  a little thing, but for some reason it"s really annoying to me. My second question is has this been a common phrase elsewhere in the US for a long time (50+ years) and I just never got the memo?

LeatherGryphon

British TV show "Yes Prime Minister" illuminated an interesting take of the state of British Education in it's episode "The National Education Service".

Skip to 1:54 if you are too impatient to deal with the setup.  But if you do, you'll miss the joke about Latin.

zombietaggerung

j cade said:

Incidentally, as someone who has attended grade school more recently than most of the other people in this thread, one reason for some of said decline is that grammar isn't really taught... at all. There are numerous reasons for this. Primarily slashing school budgets and teaching to tests to the point where high school students rarely write essays, because you can't really do essays in a standardized test. It's with noting that neither of these reasons were in the control of the students about whose grammar people now complain.

THIS^

LeatherGryphon

"Yes, Prime Minister" has more to say on that.  It's only 30 seconds.

marble

j cade said:

Incidentally, as someone who has attended grade school more recently than most of the other people in this thread, one reason for some of said decline is that grammar isn't really taught... at all. There are numerous reasons for this. Primarily slashing school budgets and teaching to tests to the point where high school students rarely write essays, because you can't really do essays in a standardized test. It's with noting that neither of these reasons were in the control of the students about whose grammar people now complain.

 

Again I must interject that my education in the 1960s did not give me a decent grounding in grammar. I still couldn't tell you about all the arcane terms used to formulate the rules of grammar. I have to think hard to remember what a pronoun is. However, the rules tend to explain themselves the more we are exposed to the written language. The same goes for spelling. I don't encourage pedantry either but I do hold to some basic standards. Amusingly, a while ago I had a rant about the way Americans mis-spell English words only to find, when I looked up the etymology, that in many cases the American spelling is more faithful to the historical English spelling than modern British English. 

j cade

marble said:

j cade said:

Incidentally, as someone who has attended grade school more recently than most of the other people in this thread, one reason for some of said decline is that grammar isn't really taught... at all. There are numerous reasons for this. Primarily slashing school budgets and teaching to tests to the point where high school students rarely write essays, because you can't really do essays in a standardized test. It's with noting that neither of these reasons were in the control of the students about whose grammar people now complain.

 

Again I must interject that my education in the 1960s did not give me a decent grounding in grammar. I still couldn't tell you about all the arcane terms used to formulate the rules of grammar. I have to think hard to remember what a pronoun is. However, the rules tend to explain themselves the more we are exposed to the written language. The same goes for spelling. I don't encourage pedantry either but I do hold to some basic standards. Amusingly, a while ago I had a rant about the way Americans mis-spell English words only to find, when I looked up the etymology, that in many cases the American spelling is more faithful to the historical English spelling than modern British English. 

How much were you writing? I got lucky with teachers, but there were genuinely people with whom I went to college who had literally not been required to write a single essay before their college admission essay, which is not exactly the most formal of essays. And that is "literally" in the literal sense not merely used as an intensifier.

Students can read on their own (though the way it tends to be taught entirely joylessly does not engender a love of reading). It is much harder to write an essay on one's own and find someone to give it to who will mark it up and send it back for correction.

That said, all these students were able to read what have you and understand its contents just fine. Plenty of them were perfectly well read, they simply had no practice with writing formally.

Compare it to playing the piano. I can listen to someone playing, I can listen to them with the score in front of me, I could analyze the score and write what some chords in it are and what their function is. But I am never going to be able to learn how to play the piano just by doing all that. I'm going to actually need to practice playing a piano for that.

Schools currently teach English rather like someone trying to teach piano without ever having their students play.

marble

j cade said:

marble said:

j cade said:

Incidentally, as someone who has attended grade school more recently than most of the other people in this thread, one reason for some of said decline is that grammar isn't really taught... at all. There are numerous reasons for this. Primarily slashing school budgets and teaching to tests to the point where high school students rarely write essays, because you can't really do essays in a standardized test. It's with noting that neither of these reasons were in the control of the students about whose grammar people now complain.

 

Again I must interject that my education in the 1960s did not give me a decent grounding in grammar. I still couldn't tell you about all the arcane terms used to formulate the rules of grammar. I have to think hard to remember what a pronoun is. However, the rules tend to explain themselves the more we are exposed to the written language. The same goes for spelling. I don't encourage pedantry either but I do hold to some basic standards. Amusingly, a while ago I had a rant about the way Americans mis-spell English words only to find, when I looked up the etymology, that in many cases the American spelling is more faithful to the historical English spelling than modern British English. 

How much were you writing? I got lucky with teachers, but there were genuinely people with whom I went to college who had literally not been required to write a single essay before their college admission essay, which is not exactly the most formal of essays. And that is "literally" in the literal sense not merely used as an intensifier.

 

Students can read on their own (though the way it tends to be taught entirely joylessly does not engender a love of reading). It is much harder to write an essay on one's own and find someone to give it to who will mark it up and send it back for correction.

 

That said, all these students were able to read what have you and understand its contents just fine. Plenty of them were perfectly well read, they simply had no practice with writing formally.

 

Compare it to playing the piano. I can listen to someone playing, I can listen to them with the score in front of me, I could analyze the score and write what some chords in it are and what their function is. But I am never going to be able to learn how to play the piano just by doing all that. I'm going to actually need to practice playing a piano for that.

 

Schools currently teach English rather like someone trying to teach piano without ever having their students play.

I have to go back to the picture I was trying to paint earlier about the nature of the school I attended. I was from a very small, very working class (industrial) community. Our school did not even allow pupils to take the available school certificate exams (in those days in the UK that would be GCE and CSE exams) until the year before I left (so, effectively, I had a year to prepare for my GCEs). Our school was geared to producing barely educated factory workers. So, in answer to your question, I was probably never asked to write an essay longer than a single page. The fact that I did like writing essays was even discouraged - my English teacher wrote a comment on my report: "too much imagination". 

I liked reading and I liked to write but I did not have the necessary basic tools of the trade. I didn't know the terminology or the rules of grammar, for example.

3WC

Ironically, in this thread bemoaning a lack of grammar and spelling, there are many, many typos and misspellings! :)

Richard Haseltine

3WC said:

Ironically, in this thread bemoaning a lack of grammar and spelling, there are many, many typos and misspellings! :)

Are you sure? I hadn't posted.

LeatherGryphon

I guess I was lucky.  I grew up in upstate NY State where I was told by my adviser at college that there are some very fine high schools.  I didn't grok grammar in high school and found it tedius and rife with subjectivity and  illogicalities.   But I passed the courses. we did have to write essays, and I did OK in college too.  I wasn't great at it but I did it.  Then after 10 years in other jobs I finally landed my most sophisticated job at the Mitre Corp (a think tank in Washington, DC and Boston) I found myself having to prolifically write research and operational documents to a very high standard. 

Ten more years of writing at Mitre (admittedly it was technical writing though) did teach me to tighten up my spelling, grammar, clarity of thought, accuracy and ease of reading skills.  However, I do get obsessive about proofreading over and over, and am never satisfied, but have learned to cut my losses when my beard gets too long or my belly grumbles.  But I rarely just toss off something without proofreading, because it always embarrasses me later.  After proofreading though, at least I can say that I tried.  

BlueFingers

This thread made me think of that research done by the university of Michigan: If You’re House Is Still Available, Send Me an Email: Personality Influences Reactions to Written Errors in Email Messages. It basically boils down to, When you point out an error in someone else's work, you might be a jerk.

Don't blame me, it's science.

j cade

marble said:

j cade said:

marble said:

j cade said:

Incidentally, as someone who has attended grade school more recently than most of the other people in this thread, one reason for some of said decline is that grammar isn't really taught... at all. There are numerous reasons for this. Primarily slashing school budgets and teaching to tests to the point where high school students rarely write essays, because you can't really do essays in a standardized test. It's with noting that neither of these reasons were in the control of the students about whose grammar people now complain.

 

Again I must interject that my education in the 1960s did not give me a decent grounding in grammar. I still couldn't tell you about all the arcane terms used to formulate the rules of grammar. I have to think hard to remember what a pronoun is. However, the rules tend to explain themselves the more we are exposed to the written language. The same goes for spelling. I don't encourage pedantry either but I do hold to some basic standards. Amusingly, a while ago I had a rant about the way Americans mis-spell English words only to find, when I looked up the etymology, that in many cases the American spelling is more faithful to the historical English spelling than modern British English. 

How much were you writing? I got lucky with teachers, but there were genuinely people with whom I went to college who had literally not been required to write a single essay before their college admission essay, which is not exactly the most formal of essays. And that is "literally" in the literal sense not merely used as an intensifier.

 

Students can read on their own (though the way it tends to be taught entirely joylessly does not engender a love of reading). It is much harder to write an essay on one's own and find someone to give it to who will mark it up and send it back for correction.

 

That said, all these students were able to read what have you and understand its contents just fine. Plenty of them were perfectly well read, they simply had no practice with writing formally.

 

Compare it to playing the piano. I can listen to someone playing, I can listen to them with the score in front of me, I could analyze the score and write what some chords in it are and what their function is. But I am never going to be able to learn how to play the piano just by doing all that. I'm going to actually need to practice playing a piano for that.

 

Schools currently teach English rather like someone trying to teach piano without ever having their students play.

I have to go back to the picture I was trying to paint earlier about the nature of the school I attended. I was from a very small, very working class (industrial) community. Our school did not even allow pupils to take the available school certificate exams (in those days in the UK that would be GCE and CSE exams) until the year before I left (so, effectively, I had a year to prepare for my GCEs). Our school was geared to producing barely educated factory workers. So, in answer to your question, I was probably never asked to write an essay longer than a single page. The fact that I did like writing essays was even discouraged - my English teacher wrote a comment on my report: "too much imagination". 

I liked reading and I liked to write but I did not have the necessary basic tools of the trade. I didn't know the terminology or the rules of grammar, for example.

And would you say most of you fellow students exited that school with an excellent grasp of grammar and spelling? It sounds like you learned most of what you now know about them over many years outside of formal education.

 

It sounds rather like we're in agreement. Schools that don't teach grammar and how to write produce graduates without a firm grasp of how to write with "proper" grammar. 

 

It just seems weird then, to me, that the general response to this is "kids these days! English is dying!" and not "Wow I thought schools were better about teaching stuff now, guess they're still crap"