Okay, I have a dilemma I need help with. Everyone knows I’m a stickler for proper grammar, pronunciation and spelling. I understand it’s not the hot-button issue for many people that it is for me.
However. I am continually mystified at the fact that people don’t seem to CARE if they come off as ignorant loose-tooths when they write and spell and speak. This I don’t get. If I mispronounce a word, I want you to correct me. I don’t want to continue mispronouncing it. I’ll thank you. Really. If I use a word incorrectly, I want to be shown the correct use of the word. Really.
So what happens when you work with people who talk, write and spell like moronic third-graders? What am I supposed to do when I hear people say “pacific” when they mean “specific, ” or “ikscape” when they mean “escape” or “expresso” when they mean “espresso” or “sedementary” when they mean “sedentary” or “liberry” when they mean “library” or “I seen” instead of “I saw” or, for the love of sweet, tapdancing Jesus, “aks” instead of “ask”? Really, what am I supposed to do? Do these people REALLY want to go around coming off as ignoramuses? Do they want to make those mistakes in their next job interview? Or use those words incorrectly on their next query letter or job application? I just can’t imagine that they would.
Once I was transcribing a tape in which the speaker kept saying “arthur” instead of “author.” After an hour of this I pulled off my headphones and commented about it to the colleague next to me. “Oh, she’s not saying it wrong, ” my bright companion said. “That’s just how she says it.” That’s just how she says it? Well, isn’t the point of language, as Richard Feynmann famously said, communication? What if I just decided that the way I said “LOOK OUT!!!” was “Broderbund!!” That won’t do much to warn someone when a car is about to run them down, is it?
I once heard a story from a teacher friend of mine who was calling roll the first day of class in a public school in Lake Dallas, Texas. She came to the name “Shotsie.” “Shotsie?” No answer.
“Is Shotsie here?” After a moment came a sullen declaration from the background, “It’s pronounced Shah-teese.”
But it’s not spelled Shah-teese. If you wanted to name your baby Shahteese, give her that name. What if I went around correcting people when they called me “Ray, ” with the indignant correction, “It’s pronounced ‘Beeblebrox’.” That would be pretty stupid. The creepiest thing to me about this amazing American ignorance is the cheerful glee so many of these people seem to have about the fact that are making mistakes. “Who cares?” seems to be the prevalent attitude.
Well, I care. The English language is one of our most precious bits of heritage. I’m not saying language is immutable, but I do think that using the language correctly is worth working at. Americans are the most gleefully uneducated people in all of the industrialized nations. Because of our religion, many of us deeply distrust science. Because of our ubiquitous disposable pop culture, many young people have absolutely no interest in anything that happened five minutes before they showed up. And because of the internet, bad language skills are proliferating faster than failing banks.
Can anyone advise me on what can be done about this dire situation?
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