Being raised by an English teacher has its ups and downs. I seem to have a talent for proofreading, but everytime I hear professional broadcasters speaking improperly, I find myself rolling my eyes and pounding my head on the closest hard surface, which is no easy feat to do simultaneously, especially while driving. My latest issue is with traffic reporters who are adverse to adverbs. If I hear "traffic is moving slow" one more time, I am going to scream. In fact, I already have. Each time I hear this butchery of the English language, I find myself shouting "-LY! -LY! Traffic moving slow-LY!" Mom is proud, I'm sure. Everyone else; not so much.
How refreshing to find someone on these blogs who shares my distaste for the college-educated (particularly broadcasters & writers) in our midst who butcher their native language! It truly drives me crazy; crazy to the point that I’ll often send emails to local television stations and the newspaper griping about their reporters and/or writers.
ReplyDeleteMy mother was an English teacher like your mom. She worked as a professor of English as a Second Language and Business Communications at the graduate level for twenty-seven years. I learned so much from her and her coworkers, and it has served me very well over the years.
English grammar isn’t taught like it used to be/should be. My son, who is a junior in high school, hasn’t received any English grammar education since 8th grade. He was complaining about his English class one day, and how he hates reading old literature. After a little Q&A with him, I learned that his last three years of “English” have consisted solely of literature a tiny bit of writing (mostly on the reading assignments). They teach absolutely no grammar....and this is a private, college preparatory high school!!! I was really shocked.
Anyway...sorry for the rambling, but I just had to comment.
If you check my blog profile you’ll see that, in addition to the main blog, I have one entitled “It’s your Damned Language.” I don’t have a lot of entries yet but I’m working on it.
Cheers!
Cj