I defy you to find me a single instance of a native english speaker writing “I got [noun phrase].” where the meaning is that they no longer have them. Remember the example sentence in the OP is "We got two rental cars so you could each figure out the best root. " If Cat Whisperer read that as meaning they no longer have the two cars, then there is a problem with someone’s education but it’s not the email writer’s.
RickJay, i’m sure you’re right, to a certain extent.
As a historian myself, i’m well aware of people’s tendency to lament the failings of the current generation, and to make frequent references back to some golden era that never really existed. Some combination of nostalgia and personal pride leads us all to think that things have only gotten worse since we were younger.
For example, we’ve had threads here recently about how little history American school students know, with a whole bunch of posters lamenting the decline in America’s historical knowledge. But, as i pointed out in one of those threads, the New York Times published a bunch of stories during World War II arguing precisely the same thing. The Times discussed tests showing that American students were woefully inadequate in their knowledge of the country’s history, and called for better instruction in the nation’s schools and colleges.
But while the laments might be perennial, that fact by itself does not mean that the decline isn’t real. That is, while every generation might complain about the writing abilities (or lack thereof) of the following one, there might in fact be times when those abilities do show a measurable decline. And it’s also logical that such declines might occur during a time period when per-pupil funding for education is declining, class sizes are increasing, and standardized testing is affecting not only what is taught, but how it is taught.
I know teachers at the college/university level who have been teaching for a long time, and who say that they have noticed some important changes in the incoming classes of the past few years. The “No Child Left Behind” generation does seem to suffer from some of the problems we’re discussing to a greater extent than the groups that went before it.
I do take your point, though, and i think there’s also a certain personal insularity that leads us (or me, anyway) to pessimistic assessments. The fact is that basically everyone who ends up teaching at the university level was a very good student. To get into a PhD program at a top-tier research university requires that you got excellent college grades, did well on the GRE, and had great letters of recommendation from well-respected scholars. And, because most of us go through our undergrad degrees seeing only our own work, and go through our grad degrees seeing only the work of other good students, it sometimes comes as a shock to learn that the average quality of college work is below what we are used to.
I TAed my first class the year after i finished my undergrad degree (late 1990s). I remember reading my first batch of student essays and being surprised at how poorly written many of them were, and how little work had apparently gone into a lot of them. As an undergrad, i read a LOT of sources for every paper i wrote, and agonized over every sentence, but it soon became clear to me that a fair proportion of students just did the absolute minimum, and threw everything together at the last minute without even proofreading. For me, the surprise was not just that some students weren’t very good writers; i also had to come to terms with the fact that some students (for any number of reasons) just didn’t care as much about doing well as i thought they should.
To the extent that i’m still willing to argue for a decline, it has to do not just with the students i teach; it also relates more generally to popular culture, journalism, and general literacy. It seems to me–and i know this is subjective and anecdotal–that i see far more examples of poor grammar and spelling and sentences construction in places like news reports, magazines, newspapers, and on radio and television, than used to be the case. And i don’t mean the doofuses on Jersey Shore and shows like that, talking off the cuff; i mean prepared news broadcasts, advertisements, etc., that have presumably been put together by people specifically hired for their communication abilities.
I’m not much over 40, and writing all this makes me feel like a curmudgeon. Get off my lawn, all of you. And buy a dictionary!
Too late to edit:
As a teacher, one of the things that frustrates me the most is not simply the ignorance, but the attitude to it. I don’t claim to know everything about writing, but i’m always happy to learn more and to improve.
For me, it’s not merely that some students aren’t good writers, but that they are not interested in improving, and are actively hostile to me when i take the quality of their writing into account while grading their papers. My student evaluations often have comments like, “He is way too hard on writing; this is supposed to be a history class, not a literature/critical thinking class.” As if one’s ability to make a historical argument were completely unrelated to one’s ability to actually think and communicate.
Effect may be a verb, used to mean “to cause to come into being.” Facebook helped effect social change in the Tunisian uprising.
Affect may be a noun, used to mean “observable manifestations of a subjectively experienced emotion,” as in It’s to be sure what Skald is feeling at any moment; he has very little affect." (In that sense, the vowel is in the first syllable is pronounced like the a in bat, not as a schwa.)
Affect v. Effect?
No worries any more- impact has been substituted for both terms.
If one would like a good mnemonic that works most of the time, it’s the e-e rule. If the sentence is or can be constructed with “the effect”, use effect. Otherwise, use affect. (yeah, there are the exceptions)
I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to, because that isn’t quite what I was trying to clarify. I was distinguishing the meanings of the words “got” and “have” by an example; I guess my example wasn’t very good. Just because you got (obtained) something doesn’t mean you still have (possess) it, so there is a difference in meaning between “I got two rental cars” and “I have two rental cars”, unless you are using a slang meaning of the word “got” (short for “have got”).
I would vote that if this email was sent in advance of the trip neither got nor have was correct.
We booked (or reserved) two cars so you could each figure out the best route.
However that in itself is silly - they’re booking two cars because people can’t agree on a route? I can see if they’re coming from different places and it’s more convenient, but maybe it’s just an excuse because one of the drivers has bad B.O. Too little information provided!
You are of course absolutely correct. It is entirely possible that you ARE seeing an educational dip. I should also point out that I’m Canadian, and so the children and young adults I know aren’t affected by NCLB or any (at least in Ontario) education cuts worth mentioning, and so perhaps there is a dip that is clear to someone in your position that would not be apparent to a Canadian.
But being the guy I am, I am skeptical of anything that isn’t supported by objective evidence, so while it’s possible there’s a dip in English composition skill in the USA, I’m not yet convinced there is.
I’d further argue that it’s not even something that we could easily measure, or even arrive at an agreement as to what the measurement would be.
And my point is that Cat Whisperer’s contention that she could have misinterpreted the sentence is inane. If someone wanted to specify that they no longer had something they would have added a clause to that effect.
The whole “me/I” thing has always been a touchy issue with me, because people often go out of their way to use the correct word and end up using the wrong one, making it seem like an especially egregious mistake. I worked with a teacher once who would always tell her kids to “ask [loser] or I” or “give your papers to [loser] or I.” It’s like, you know they think they’re being so proper, but they’re not! Major pet peeve.
The frustrating part about that is hypercorrection is so very enticing. It feels wrong now when I’m writing dialog for a speaker who’s specifically extremely precise in language use and I wind up with something like “There is no place here for John and me now.” “Me” is starting to sound wrong (or at least sloppy) in that construction, even though I know it’s right.
Between you and me, we should launch a crusade to reinstate “me” to its rightful position as the object of a preposition and the direct object of a verb. I am tired of hearing all this blather about “for John and I” or “take Mary and I.” It definitely does not sound correct. It makes me wince.
Crusades are tiring and it’s nearly impossible to convince anyone that their understanding of language and spelling isn’t right.
I prefer to focus on my own usage and lead by example. If someone chooses to approach me and ask why I worded something a certain way, I’ll explain then and maybe hope they learn from it, but it’s a frustrating, losing battle to approach others to tell them to change their ways.
I try to say “as though” instead of “like” as per Strunk and White, but I can’t tell for sure if that one is really worth fighting for.