Rant: ON
Chapter II of an ongoing gripe…
Yeh, I know, I know. Communication sometimes happens even with usage errors in common speech. But mass media (including print media) is so darned full of the subliterate that I sometimes get a tad steamed.
No, subliterate writing and speech isn’t all the fault of Mass Media Podpeople (and their brethren in advertising and entertainment and “the (mostly phony) arts”. No, a lot of the fault can be traced to bad, really bad public schooling. Oh, and lazy people who just don’t give a flip about learning their own language well or who just don’t care to read much. (And even there, I find myself correcting grammar, usage and spelling in books I own—print and ebook—in narrative or descriptive passages. I pretty much leave dialog alone. What the heck do editors and proofreaders get paid for?)
And yeh, I know I use colloquialisms loosely on this blog, and I even have numerous typos and the occassional misspelling (like “occassional” which should be “occasional” See? Sometimes I catch myself and make corrections. :-).
But really, ought we not to be a tad more literate as a society than we are? Or mabe just a wee tad less subliterate? Especially those who make a living with the printed and parrotted-from-a-teleprompter word?
Just read the list of errors at Common Errors in English. I’ve seen or heard darned near all of them—some of them frequently—from mass media (print, audio and video/tv/etc.) since I last ranted about this topic.
And people listen to these subliterate morons!
Oh, and one other thing: If I hear one more person say, “To err is human; to forgive, divine” and mispronounce “err” as “air” I swear I’ll scream bloody murder! It’s “ûr” or “er” (as in dumbER than rocks). Learn the language!
*grumble, grumble, gripe, complain*
OK, OK, I know most darned near all of the folks who read this blog do NOT fall into the subliterate category, in general. And here, note: I once again do NOT classify myself as being “literate” in to the same order of literacy as my grandparents, for example. I’d need a much better grasp of history, for one thing, to meet that standard.
Still, wouldn’t it be lovely *heh* if more folks actually knew how to speak and write English—especially in Mass Media?
Rant: OFF.
There. I feel muuuuuch better, now…