On Tuesday 29 August 2006 09:33, Jonathan Allen wrote: >Timothy Murphy wrote: >> I was taught 60 years ago never to write "lot", "got" or "nice", >> but that is a hard diet to follow. > >But it is very good advice, nevertheless. If more people took greater >care with their composition, language would not have deteriorated to >the degree to which it has. Another good rule is never to end a sentence >with a preposition. > >Two things really irritate me about current speech habits: > > 1. the inability to finish a sentence (or even a thought); people > will start a sentence four, five or more times, breaking off > half-way through and starting again in different words or on a > slightly different tack although, strangely enough, sometimes > using exactly the same words all over again - and finally reaching > some kind of conclusion, often qualified with "you know" > > 2. the pernicious abuse of the word 'like', especially prevalent when > coupled with some form of the verb to be; "it was like, you know" > followed by some facial expression, "she was like, awesome" and > its ilk; "I'm er like partied out" > >Jonathan Chuckle, but while its somewhat funny, its also an indication that our educational system is today, a dismal failure when high school graduates have trouble properly using even a 1200 word vocabulary. By the time I was through the 8th grade, I had been tested at about the 3000 mark, and I sincerely hope I have added another 5000 or more, although little used, to my working vocabulary. Its indeed frustrating when I'm trying to explain something to a Joe/Jill Sixpack and get interrupted well before I've laid the foundation of the explanation just because I've used the technically proper word for something, but its not in their mental dictionary. The biggest mistake (IMNSHO) was dropping phonetics as a study in itself, without that base, a new words meaning is often nearly complete gibberish to later students of the language who do not have that base of how to take word apart to derive its meaning, or to build a new word that better defines a meaning, in their educational background. IMO, the wholesale failures of the educational system of today can largely be laid to the result of dropping phonetics from the curriculum. I was fortunate in that my grammer school education took place in the State of Iowa, where, back in the 40's, we were extremely proud of being the most literate state in the union with a 99.9% literacy rate. No educational system is doing its students any life favors when the high school graduating class is composed of 20+% functionally illiterate students, but they graduate anyway because of the un-funded no child left behind act. The financing of those truely exellent Iowa schools then was exclusively from the profits of the state run liquor stores, with the only beer being 3.2% over the counter or in pool halls. Then some damned goody two-shoes got the bright idea that the state really shouldn't be in the business of selling alcoholic beverages and sold all the liquor stores to private enterprise, leaving only a limited state alcohol tax & the rest of the tax base to make up for the losses. This resulted in a rather severe tightening of educational budgets because the legislature was reluctant to maintain the funding level by loading up more taxes elsewhere, and the result today is as disastrous as it was predictable (by intelligent people) then. -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
