Sad shift for our youth - grammar and spelling

[Ika]

I don't know how kids have dropped down to this level. I mean, sure, I don't add a lot of punctuation, and when typing informally, I don't capitalize very often. But... this is sad.

 

[OutHouse]

I wonder what a person from the 1700's would say about our language now?

 

[Extelleron]

Originally posted by: Aflac
I don't know how kids have dropped down to this level. I mean, sure, I don't add a lot of punctuation, and when typing informally, I don't capitalize very often. But... this is sad.

Is it the kid's fault, or is it ours? Have the kids changed something, or have we?

 

[aloser]

Originally posted by: eits
that's why i get sick and tired of losers always spelling "you're" y-o-u-r. then, when i comment about how they're dumbasses, they spew garbage like, "lol were not n school right now who cares?"

idiots.

Oh yeah...

there=not here (Bring that over there)
their=someone else's (their grammar and spelnig is weak)
they're=contraction (they're not going to succeed in life with poor grammar and spelnig)

 

[allisolm]

Originally posted by: aloser

Originally posted by: eits
that's why i get sick and tired of losers always spelling "you're" y-o-u-r. then, when i comment about how they're dumbasses, they spew garbage like, "lol were not n school right now who cares?"
idiots.

Oh yeah...
there=not here (Bring that over there)
their=someone else's (their grammar and spelnig is weak)
they're=contraction (they're not going to succeed in life with poor grammar and spelnig)

LOL
That poor spelnig will hold you back all right.

 

[KarmaPolice]

I am not gonna lie but I have done it. When I would write a rough draft in highschool they would slip in there...heck it still happens once and a while. Its never anything but "u" tho. That said...I never let get past the rough draft........ever. If a kid lets it go in the final draft, he obviously didnt check his work.

 

[ColdFusion718]

Originally posted by: spidey07
I am not joking. I'm friends with many school teachers/administrators and the subject again came up at a party.

Here's the thing. They are constantly facing papers turned in with the following, I am not making this up,:

+ for the word and.
U for the word you.
Y for the word why.
A whole slew of text messaging acronyms and gross punctuation errors.

They are actually turning in papers with this, at a high school level. This makes Baby Jesus cry.

Please feel free to correct my grammar/punctuation.

 

[PHiuR]

College is the new highschool...Grad School is the new college...what's next?

 

[Dumac]

I have had horrible English teachers for the past few years. In 7th grade, my english teacher quit after the first ninje weeks; afterward, we had a substitute for 2 or 3 weeks who didn't make us do anything at all. Then, a new teacher is hired who doesn't know anything about correct grammar. In 8th grade, my English teacher turns out to be someone who has been teaching science for 8 or so years and felt like taking a stab at English. In 9th and 10th grade, I had an English teacher who didn't even check grammar; she just graded papers based on content.

Finally, now that I'm a junior and taking an AP class, my English teacher actually seems to know what she is talking about. We get two grades out of 100 points for all papers we turn in. One grade is based on content, the other is based on correct grammar.

However, languages in use constantly evolve. I wonder how much of the slang used today will be proper fifty years from now.

 

[pcnerd37]

This is the evolution of the English language. Take your outdated and closeminded concepts of grammar and spelling and stop trying to change the future, stay in the past where you belong!

 

[fire400]

Originally posted by: PHiuR
College is the new highschool...Grad School is the new college...what's next?

I had hours of homework almost everyday when I was in highschool. All of my teachers checked for grammar. Yes, it was a public school in the inner cities of Minnesota state. So what?

Your assumption proves interesting, but I can't say that it would apply for everybody. In Asia, the schools in larger majority are a lot more sophisticated than some of the mainstream schools in the United States, if that's what you're talking about?

 

[revnja]

Originally posted by: pcnerd37
This is the evolution of the English language. Take your outdated and closeminded concepts of grammar and spelling and stop trying to change the future, stay in the past where you belong!

die plz

 

[s0ssos]

Originally posted by: GagHalfrunt

Originally posted by: spidey07

How about this? Given the colloquialism of the common phrase, in this contect, "makes baby Jesus cry" the subject is implied? gimme a bone here.

But to your point, these teachers/administrators to whom I had spoken with at length share your opinion and did send the papers back to be reworked.

diagram that one beeeatch!

-edit- Crap. It's late and I already see my spelling/grammatical errors. oh well.

Did you imply the "It" or did we infer the "It"? That is sort of a chicken or the egg argument as we got your meaning. However, good grammar does not rely upon the reader understanding the intent. The whole concept is to make the proper point in the proper way so that there are no mistakes in the translation.

but good grammar? what does good grammar actually do? i mean, do classic literary figures use "good" grammar? not necessarily. communication is not always enhanced by using proper grammar, but sometimes moreso by not using proper grammar.

 

[s0ssos]

Originally posted by: DaiShan

Really, the examples in the OP are part of another dialect of the English language. For example, in British English, it is not required that subjects match their verbs in number. E.G. The armies was marching is acceptable in Britain. We've been taught that subjects must match verbs in number in American English, but that doesn't make it any more or less right.

actually, i was wondering about that. cause i had "corrected" the misuse on a forum of the verb "to have", when they were saying "Company A have". cause in america we would say "has".
the explanation i got was they considered the company to be a unit, and thus speak likewise. and not the reason you gave above.
so i'm wondering if there's any reference for your above comment (which may very well be the true one)? because it doesn't seem your reasoning is logical, as if subjects and verbs never have to match, why do they match them so often?

 

[s0ssos]

Originally posted by: Leros

Originally posted by: spidey07
I am not joking. I'm friends with many school teachers/administrators and the subject again came up at a party.

Here's the thing. They are constantly facing papers turned in with the following, I am not making this up,:

+ for the word and.
U for the word you.
Y for the word why.
A whole slew of text messaging acronyms and gross punctuation errors.

They are actually turning in papers with this, at a high school level. Makes baby jesus cry.

Please feel free to correct my grammar/punctuation.

These kind of people are going to be working at a convenience store, not writing textbooks. What do you care how bad their writing is?

actually, i care more about their math skills. too bad they don't know that either

 

[linkgoron]

I used U in some of my papers(when in class, not in papers made before the lessons). It's an accident, and if I proof-read my work I'd catch them and put you instead. Most of the time I write U in OFPS because it's faster and every second counts, and it's just stuck with me. If you really think that people are dumb beacuse they use R instead of are, or U instead of you, then you're the one with the problem. I KNOW it's wrong, it happens, and again, if I see I accidently wrote U or R or whatever, I change it.

I've never used + though, that IS kind of dumb.

Either way, what do you expect? It's what people use most of the time.

 

[DivideBYZero]

Jus coz u r not in teh trend, init. nub.

 

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: adambooth

Originally posted by: pcnerd37
This is the evolution of the English language. Take your outdated and closeminded concepts of grammar and spelling and stop trying to change the future, stay in the past where you belong!

die plz

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

 

[rh71]

I blame the parents for not raising a kid who cares.

 

[aloser]

Originally posted by: rh71
I blame the parents for not raising a kid who cares.

The parents can't be blamed completely; I'm sure many of them tried their best. The problem is, they can't discipline their children anymore - smanking is physical abuse, yelling is verbal abuse, grounding is probably torture of some sort, and the list goes on. Therefore, the problem is those left-winged PSYCHOlogist morons who tell you not to spank your kids because "it will squelch their personality" - I gotta say, if that's really true, then my personality was squelched all over the house and I turned out very well - much better than kids who you can tell were never spanked. My favorite part is when they tell you what *not* to do (spank your kids), but offer no alternative method of discipline

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: DaiShan
Let me preface this by saying that my family taught me from a very early age to speak proper English, and I'm also an English Lit major, but I'm beginning to see less and less wrong with so called violations of "prescriptive" grammar.

Really, the examples in the OP are part of another dialect of the English language. For example, in British English, it is not required that subjects match their verbs in number. E.G. The armies was marching is acceptable in Britain. We've been taught that subjects must match verbs in number in American English, but that doesn't make it any more or less right.

Additionally, words such as "wikiality" and "truthiness" have been accepted by many lexicographers as newly formed words. We all know that they began as deliberate farcicle misrepresentations of other words, yet now they are accepted as perfectly correct English. I think that in the years to come prescriptive grammar will gradually fall by the wayside and give rise to so called "ease of communication" dialects. I think it's important to point out the arbitrariness of grammar in general. At the most fundemental level, all that is required for successful communication is an understanding between the participants involved, and countless studies have shown how versatile the human mind is at deciphering meaning from near gibberish.

The ability to parse crap is not sufficient rationale for making crap acceptable.

Your reference to British subject-verb agreement is also wrong. "The armies was marching" is still wrong in British English. However, "The army were marching" is correct in British English. "Army" (and other singular collective nouns such as "team") may use the plural verb form since these collective nouns denote mutiple people. Note that this is technically correct in American English as well, it is simply considered an arcane or obsolete usage. You inverted your example and by so doing became wrong.

In any sort of educated discussion, there will be very subtle nuances that cannot be captured through verbal communication (note that "verbal" includes both oral and written communication) without a standardized method of organization ("organization" including, but not limited to, punctuation, capitalization, grammar, spelling, and word order). While the human mind can grasp the general meaning of elementary concepts that are expressed in "gibberish" (e.g. a phrase such as "pizza want some i do" can be deciphered easily by a person of average intelligence), I rather doubt that Kierkegaard's concept of the Knight of Faith or Kant's full concept of the Categorical Imperative could have been expressed in a satisfactory manner without the formal rules of grammar.

In short, one has only to read scholarly works to understand the absolute necessity of prescriptive grammar.

ZV

 

[allisolm]

Originally posted by: aloser
The parents can't be blamed completely; I'm sure many of them tried their best. The problem is, they can't discipline their children anymore - smanking is physical abuse, yelling is verbal abuse, grounding is probably torture of some sort, and the list goes on.

Smanking! I like it. "If you don't cut that out, I'm going to smank you into next week." :laugh: Cross between smacking and spanking?

 

[Zenmervolt]

Originally posted by: Tom
most people don't use thee and thine anymore either.

language evolves, the problem is some of you are like 24 years old and don't realize your time at being hip is already past.

We're "like 24"? One either is 24 or is not. One might be "almost 24", or "close to 24", or "around 24", or even "exactly 24", but one cannot be "like 24" (unless for some reason one is being compared to a quantity or to the television show).

Not all change is evolution, though it is a common enough attribute of youth to assume that this is so. Sometimes change is destructive.

As far as "thee" is concerned, "thee" and its variants (of which "thine" is one) are no longer used in English because the distinction they make is no longer part of our cultural awareness. Contrary to popular belief "thee" is not synonymous with "you". German still carries this distinction, however, with "Sie" and "du". "Sie", like the antiquated English "thee", is essentially "you (respectful)" and is intended as a form of address to those whom one does not know well. It is considered highly impolite to address one's superior as "du" (equivalent to the modern English "you") in German. It is also considered impolite to address peers as "du" unless they are friends. The distinction between the formal "thee" and the informal "you" no longer exists in the English-speaking mindset and therefore the word "thee" and its variants have fallen out of common use.

ZV

 

[reverend boltron]

Originally posted by: Tom
most people don't use thee and thine anymore either.

language evolves, the problem is some of you are like 24 years old and don't realize your time at being hip is already past.

I find it funny that you used "like".

Edit: Also, as a Christian, I refuse to believe in evolution.

Edit 2: I also find it hilarious that your user name is Tom. And that reminds me of MySpace, which makes me happy that I no longer am hip.

 

[Ausm]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: GagHalfrunt
Well, since you asked:

"I am not making this up,:" - Should be a colon only, no comma.
I stuggled with that one since I was using using an asptophative clause, a means of clarification, or whatever tha word is. See sentance for demonstration.
"Here's the thing. They ..." - Should be a colon, not a period.
could go either way. A semi colon would probably be better.
"Makes baby jesus cry." is not a sentence and the J should be capitalized.
Implied subject 'It'.
Other than that you were fine.

Eitherway; it can be interesting, nonetheless. And I ain't perfect. Darn's punctuation rules be difficult; especially the dang's colons and semicolons.


-edit- I agree though, until it has consequences nothing will change. Then the cries of "It's not fair!!!" will come follwed by the truth of "Life isn't fair."

Screw Grammer! huked on fonix wuz gude 4 mee!



Ausm