Today I'm being peevish because I seem to hearing the extinction of the English language. Just like Darwin's theory, it seems to have evolved to a bastardized version of English. It's a cross between Spanglish (or Llanito as they call it in Gibraltar) and Ebonics. People actually born in the United States have accents that are not indigenous to the city or state they're born in. Don't know how it happened. I'm not a scholar. I just know what I hear. I'm just saying that if you're third or fourth generation United States citizen, you should not call an ambulance an AM BALANCE. And please ASK me a question don't AXE me. It'll be a bloody mess. Chocolate does not have three syllables. Neither does the word English.
It's Chok'lit and Ing'lish! Jesus. How did this happen? I'm not asking Americans to speak in the queen's English. Just a little bit better English. If you're an American and are bothering to speak it, do it well and do it right or don't do it at all.
Then there's my all time favorite. The word is supposedly not supposably.
Suddenly new accounts of how something happened go like this in conversation, "It was fire and smoke everywhere. I couldn't see anything". Years ago it would have been, "There was so much smoke and fire everywhere that I couldn't see anything". Or, "It was lots of loud music coming out of their house. Only 20 years ago it would have been said like this, "There was really loud music blaring out of their house." And, "It was mistakes made" instead of, "There were mistakes made". What happened to the world there??? Did it fall out of the dictionary? Was there a grand theft? Someone let me know what happened to it.
I also hate double negatives too. It's trash to my ears when I hear it. Aint never and didn't never. Don't say, "I don't want nothing", or "He don't like that" I'm the first one to say, "SUP" in an email or text, but to say it out loud would pain my ears.
There are a million and one slang words and words said differently in the south or east coast. "I aint bovvered". It's not a complaint. It's when one is trying to sound intelligent and improper English comes out, well it definitely makes or breaks a person. Better English will get you a better pay check for sure. Some of you will "get it" and some of you wont get what this is about. I shall not expound much further. Now without further adieu, I leave you with a couple hilarious British skits
Here's a list of my all time favourites:
Teef = Teeth
Toof = Tooth
Meer'ah or Meer = Mirror (pronounced) Meer'rohr
Jag you are = Jaguar (pronounced) Jag'wahr
May naize = Mayonaise (pronounced) May'o'naize
Flutist is pronounced Floo'tist. Not like flauta with beef or chicken!
Yah'ma'kuh is actually Yar'mul'ke with an R and an L
Do not say REE-luh-tur it's REE-ul-tur
And Nuclear (nuk lee ER) not Nook you lir (G.W.!)
These are words that can be properly pronounced even if you have an accent. My friends haven accents and pronounce these words all right. So don't be sending me hate mail for being prejudice. Don't put words in my mouth that I'm not saying. There are so many dumb asses out there who do critique me for griping about stuff like this, like I'm their enemy. Like I have no right to make a comment about a person NOT PRESENT who mispronounced something wrong.
There should be no excuse for mispronunciation. I know people who dropped out of high school after sophomore year who speak proper English. So I'm not bashing foreigners or high school drop outs. You should speak proper English if you only graduated from 8th grade. I spoke proper English by the time I was in 7th grade and I went to public schools.
I'm also not criticising the different dialects and regional accents. I come from the deez and doze capital. This is not about "to'may'toe - to'mah'toe either.
I think one partial reason for mispronunciation and bad English, were teens and twenty somethings making a youthful statement to separate themselves. I'm not going to talk like those squares in upper management kinda philosophy. Or those dorky white people or posh black people from(where ever). But then the problem with a teenage whim, is these babies are having babies and these babies are learning bastardized English. And now we have two new generations of Americans or in England's case "English" speaking some GHETTO FABULOUS version of what we now used to know as English......
4 comments:
yeah, your prolly right innit?
catherine tate is genius!
Now, what gets REALLY confusing is that language creates perceptions which create reality - so how pliable do we have to be as we move into such an interconnected age?
P.S. - love the tune, as usual!
I think it's an unfortunate sign of the times. Reading is being neglected, along with mathematics and the sciences. We pay great lip service to the value of education, but beyond job training we really don't value it at all. Combine this with a pop culture that idolizes stupidity and ignorance...and what can you expect? It's tragic, really.
You must be hanging out in the wrong neighborhood, because everyone I come in contact with speaks correctly.
Not.
Kids that read become exposed to the proper use of the language, even if they are brought up in the ghetto, readers will always get it, and use it. But as long as Pop Culture makes glamorous everything base and raw, well then, the language will suffer.
I despise double negatives too; I hear them from "educated" people regularly.
Post a Comment