The word “alls” pisses me off. I don’t know if it is a word or not, but it sure as heck bugs me.
Any estimates on how long it’ll take “hella” to make its way into the dictionary? ('Cause that’d be hella cool. :))
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by pldennison *
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Oh yea, Phil. Great example… I forgot we always look to rock & roll songs as our source for correct grammar and diction. :rolleyes:
Is this the new education standard?
You can throw around all the examples of bad grammar you want. You’re right: We do understand it and usually overlook it. But when we say the opposite of what we mean by using a double negative, we appear less prepared, less educated, and perhaps less intelligent.
I met a guy at a party once and I said, “Hey, where are you from?”
He said, “I’m from a place where one does not end ones sentences with a preposition.”
I said, “Oh… Ok… Hi, where are you from, bitch?”
Oh so you’re the blonde girl they were talking about in that email I got describing this very same incident?
Hey, I think I got that too!
okatym:
Well, I stole the argument from Dr. Steven Pinker. He’s a noted linguist and theorist, and the author of several books on language and use including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works and Words and Rules. Perhaps you can take your criticism up with him.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. I reiterate: Language is not mathematical in nature. And a double negative is not, in all instances, “saying the opposite of what we mean.” Quick–what do you mean when you say, “I didn’t see hardly anybody there”? Or do you actually say, “I saw hardly anybody there”?
When someone asks you, “Don’t you hate beets?” and you answer “Not at all,” what are you telling them?
Your first example is not a double negative. Hardly implies a minimal amount, not an absolute negative. A better example of a double negative is “I didn’t see nobody.” Now do you speak like that, or do you say, “I didn’t see anybody.”
And if someone says “Don’t you hate beets” and I answer “Not at all.” I’m saying I don’t hate beets, but this is not the best example as my answer isn’t a complete sentence. Even still, the negative in my answer is cancelling the negative in the question and giving the meaning that I like beets.
Nevertheless, if someone asks you, “Don’t you just love Pauly Shore movies?” and you answer “Not hardly,” what are you telling them? It is a double negative, of a sort (H.L. Mencken went into apopleptic fi . . . er, great detail over them). If we’re going to sit around parsing language as math, then “I didn’t see hardly anybody there” means “I saw a lot of people there” (I didn’t see {hardly anybody} there.)
I don’t let people insult me and just let it slide. Ebonics, jive, etc. is simply a symptom of a problem. The problem is undereducation, one of the most pervasive problems in the world. Giving official status to undereducated street slang is akin to teaching obscene words in an English class: We do not need any more people speaking like children than already exist. We need to crush the problem of slang becoming a person’s only language the most effective way possible. That means is funding English departments at all levels, especially the k-6 level. Glorifying slang spits on centuries of beautiful history, from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to Shakespear’s collected works to more modern fare such as Hemingway and Clarke. Studying slang is a perfectly acceptable field. It opens insight into how people communicate in the streets, the classic lingua vulga, as it were. One should not confuse studying a slang with studying a seperate language.
yeah derleth!! hells yeah!! one problem, though. you cant fight ignorance. just cant do it. (cecil excepted, of course.) me, ive learned that the hard way. fight all you want, theyll just make more. only defense is to surround yerself with non-ignorant folk. and just smile and nod yer head when an ignorant person has the floor. good luck. yer gonna need it.
My first post, and on a beloved topic, too.
TV personalities really irk me when they say " … is an historic event." They’re usually standing on Capitol Hill, too, which denies the plausibility of their statement from the beginning, in addition to it being grammatically incorrect. Why can’t they learn to speak properly?? Aaackk!
My favorite (which is to say, most hated) misuse of a word is “literally.” Heard on the news (well, might’ve been MTV News) that somebody or other’s new CD “literally climbed up the charts.” I would’ve loved to see that…
From a SDMB search on the word “irregardless”:
Does the word “obsessed” ring a bell? You guys make Edwin Newman sound like Jethro Bodine!
Welcome, Becky. I can see that you are a right-thinking individual. We must forgive our brothers and sisters in the American television news industry who use “an” before an aspirated “h”. After all, they work in the television news industry, which is punishment enough. No sense reminding them of the desolation in their souls.
[sub]Disclaimer:[/sub]
You will please note that I have placed the period outside of the quotation marks above. I tried to put it inside the quotation marks, but that looked dumb. I have the Brits on my side with this one, and it is, after all, the Queen’s English.