Pet Peeves:
Some times conjecture can illumine and even educate us in different ways. I
have no direct proof, but I often say that our parents and grand parents enjoyed
a basic high school education far superior to our own. For our youth today,
seem not only feckless and relentless in the pursuit of ignorance, but also
intent on rushing headlong towards the gutter, and wallowing in an ever
coarsening culture, and an un-refined, ill-informed, class-less, crass society.
There can be little doubt that we confront today a pandemic of ignorance, a
modern day Black Plague, some may even say ("White Plague"), to be fair and
respectful. There is no disease worse than ignorance, and today's ignorance is
an equal opportunity hazard.
I do not intend to review here the complete lexicon of solecisms we suffer
today. Let me also say at the outset that I do not pretend to be some
Afro-Saxon defender of the English language, far less some purist or a
grammarian of any kind. But, imagine your grandfather, without I-phone, I-pad,
Facebook, Google, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, Whatsapp, the latest gadgets, and
the like, asking you: "Where it is at"?
Or, your elderly aunt saying "I left New York at about 7.00 a.m.". How
redundant! What surplusage! We glide along, splendidly unconscious amid such
ludicrous chatter, despite the fact that "at", and "about", may carry
inherently different meanings.
Or, a Charlize Theron referring to someone as the "most funniest",
Or, a still traumatized, formerly kidnapped Michelle Knight, describing her
tragic ordeal at the hands of a demented Ariel Castro as "the most worsest (or
is it "worstest"?) experience".
Or, a Cindy Adams, wife or widow of the late New York comic, Joey Adams,
speaking of "more betterer".
Or, a Fred Graham, Esq, of Court TV fame, reporting on the "non-event that did
not occur".
Or, many a witness saying "I didn't see nothing"!
Yet, another who says "I didn't hear nothing"!
Or, even a Wolf Blitzer of CNN blitzing us with "They won't have to fight no
battle".
What about the colloquial "separate out"? Can we possibly separate "in"?
Or, an "upstanding" guy. Doesn't "standing", by definition, not imply "up" or
"upward" direction, except for the limited military usage - to "stand down"?Can
there be such a thing as "downstanding?" Why not simply say "outstanding"?
We need not comment on "used to went"!
What is also clear is the fact that we no longer have any understanding of such
concepts as positive, comparative, superlative; or the significance of the
double negative; or use of the past participle. Thus, we routinely say such and
such a person or team "got beat", instead of "was beaten", e.g. "Ghana was
beaten by the US soccer team for the first time in the last three World Cup
Series".
Similarly, we say "bit", as opposed to "bitten". "We have got"; we never say
"gotten".
Years ago we read a standard text, Fowler on "The King's English". But, who
today cares about the King? The Queen? Their English? Or, their Grammar? Chris
Mathews, MSNBC journalist, and a prominent Holy Cross Graduate, often proudly
speaks of American exceptionalism. Perhaps, one feature of such exceptionalism
is exceptionally bad grammar. For, it is patently obvious that today's Rebels
practise their own particular species of hoodlum, outlaw, yahoo (common "y")
English, the problem not being retail, or restricted to the illiterate,
pre-literate, literate and post literate levels of society, but rather a matter
of wholesale catastrophic proportions. We have murdered, and gleefully continue
to slaughter the English language.
Self-righteous, we then wax eloquent and indignant and demand that Hispanics and
others seeking to enter this country, legally, must be competent to read and
write some sort of fictional, English, we abandoned so very long ago, when we
don't give a damn about English, oral or written. How unforgiving? What brutal
hypocrisy?
Caleb M. Pilgrim
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