I agree with you as far as this goes, but it’s important not to confuse standard written English with standard spoken English. Speech and writing are different forms of communication and they are not as closely related as some people think. There are forms of casual writing (such as friendly e-mails) that do mimic ordinary speech, but in general people do not speak the same way that they write.
This is a relatively casual forum, but if I read this post aloud it seems rather stiff and formal compared to the way I would normally speak in conversation. I would never talk this way unless I was giving a prepared speech.
Now that you mention it, that was very similiar to another one that the teachers would yell at us about - a common thing up here would be to say “I go store.” From the Finnish - which is where a lot of what you call the “Yuper” (heheheh it’s YOOPER, silly) grammatical constructs originate.
And yes, we were yelled at for saying that, as well.
Yes, and half are grammatical. So your point was…?
A slight hijack, but this reminds me - even the “correct” English speakers rarely speak in a way that would be considered proper written English. I’m finding that out as I transcribe interviews. Even educated people - my aunt the 30-year English teacher, for example - speak very differently than they write. I don’t think it’s correct to hold spoken language to the same rules we use for written language.
You’ve missed a third, and, in my opinion, probably most common, option - simple habit. If you speak a certain way all of the time, you will easily fall into that habit of speech even if you intend to speak a different way.
I’m not in the habit of carrying around a digital recorder to trap all the speech of all the people I know in order to upload an MP3 of speech I’ve heard.
I have found this more restricted example from a site based out of Carnegie-Mellon on Pirttsburgh speech patterns:
I couldn’t really tell you whether my acquaintances in Shalersvlle and Tallmadge and Barberton have expanded the usage beyond that of Pittsburgh, including more verbs than need or whether the usage has expanded in Pittsburgh and not yet been noticed by the linguists or whether my Pittsburgh-influenced Ohio acquaintances just don’t talk good.
I am perfectly willing to use a prescriptivist approach on occasions that I deem are better handled in that manner. There is no call to be labeling me a descriptivist as if that were the entirety of my approach to grammar.
(As for Standard English, I will acknowledge that when one speaks of the general world-wide usage of the language, one generally refers to it as standard English (note the lower case modifier). I have only seen the capitalized phrase Standard English used in the context of written text.)
And, even admitting my initial hyperbole and your ruler-wielding nuns from a generation ago, I stil maintain that:
teaching written grammar does not translate to facility in speech;
and
far more schools (even in the good old days) concentrated drilling grammar in text than ever made it an issue in conversational English.
Tom, you couldn’t cut off my winkie. The nuns did it nearly a half a century ago! I don’t know why was called a called grammar drill when the nuns used rulers. I hate to be a nudge but you haven’t produced proof that teachers historically have let students speak in the vernacular without correcting them. And the Standard versus standard was just a wee bit pedantic, even for this board, don’tcha think?
While my normal speech is no longer as stiff and formal as it once was (try talking like THAT when suddenly thrust into a public high school; sure, you can but then try convincing people you aren’t gay) it is still much stiffer than that of my co-workers.
[QUOTE=Joe Random]
Unless they somehow missed out on attending primary school, then yes. And I find it hard to imagine that there are too many children in the US that have not had the opportunity of a public education. Now, there may be people who have been properly educated, but have been raised to ignore that education (possibly having been ridiculed for speaking “correctly”). In that case, I can only weep for a society that passes its ignorance from one generation to the next.
Hear, hear! I am sorely disappointed when I hear someone suggesting that a member of his or her ethnic group is “trying to sound educated” by speaking correct (or non-street patois) English. The idea is that since some are indifferent to or incapable of improving their lot all others should be dragged down to the same level. Sad, really.
What is “standard” English in America is not “standard” in Great Britain. And what is “standard” in broadcast schools is not “standard” in Boston. The written words may be the same, but the pronunciations may vary and still be correct. For example, both Walter Cronkite 's “Cu-bah” and John Kennedy’s “Cu-bur” were standard English.
That is an acceptable pronunciation in Webster’s. I have read that it is from what is known as “Cavalier England.”
Language patterns and habits are very hard to change because they are learned long before primary school. When we become excited or frightened or nervous, we very often revert to the dialects and usage of our early childhoods. (This happens to me when I have nightmares.) That’s not willful ignorance.
My husband can tell when I’m talking to my oldest friend on the phone because I switch to a West Tennessee dialect instead of a Middle Tennessee dialect. Never mind that she also lives just a few blocks away and neither one of us has lived in the western part of the state for forty years!
That’s been okay for a long time. I can’t put an exact date on it, but the last edition of Harbrace that I bought was in 1990 and it recommended beginning sentences with conjunctions for variation.
Tomndebb has asserted (repeatedly) that teachers don’t correct children for speaking in the locally accepted dialect. My experience does not support this assertion. My primary schooling took place in rural southern Oklahoma and rural north Texas. The local dialect included such elegant constructions as “I didn’t done it!”, “… it weren’t neither …”, “… we was gonna…”, “ain’t”, “fixin’ to”, and (my favorite) “Them 'maters is sperlt.” (Those tomatoes are spoiled). Every such utterance was met with an immediate correction by the teacher. Every time, without exception. And in my case, these teachers were natives of the region, not transplants, and were quite aware of the prevailing dialect. As they explained it, “If you sound ignorant, people will think you are ignorant.” Which I think is the entire point of the OP.
The people who appear on Judge Judy seem to fall into two categories. Idiots who just want to be on TV, and intelligent people who know that the people who they’re up against are complete idiots, to whom Judge Judy will administer liberal whackings with a clue-by-four.
Now now, at least I don’t watch Jerry Springer.
Anymore
I was taught correct speech when I was in school. That was one of the purposes of presenting oral reports. Besides which, it doesn’t take a genius to realize that “this is the proper way to construct sentences” means that it’s proper for both written and spoken sentences. I find it well nigh impossible to believe that anyone could be presented with the rules of grammar and not realize that they apply to spoken English. I mean, the spoken word is just a way to vocalize what’s on paper (or vice versa). They’re different representations of the same thing.
Very true. However, the situation in question (being an a courtroom) is reason enough to closely examine what you’re about to say before you say it. I always assumed that at least half of the reason that Judge Judy insists on correct grammar is that she wants to send the litigants the message, “think before you speak.”
No, it’s not. Willful ignorance is not realizing that “proper” English is sometimes called for, or not bothering to change to a more appropriate speech pattern when its need becomes apparent.
For example, lets say that I walk into a store in some part of the country that has an extremely “non-standard” way of speaking. A sales clerk walks up to me and says something to the effect of “Watcha nee man? He’pyoo wi sumpin?”. If I give him a blank stare (or if I say, “Could you repeat that, my good man? I scarce could understand a word you said.”) then the clerk should switch over to “Standard English” and say, “What can I help you with today, sir?” One who refuses to do so, despite knowing “Standard English”, is being willfully ignorant.
Why? Imho, he should be polite enough to surpress his laughter at an archaic and pretentious construction like “scarce could understand”, and then repeat what he just said a little more slowly and with something more of a “newscaster” articulation, along the lines of, “Can I he’p you with sumpthin?” I don’t see any need for a clerk in a store to try to mimic the speech patterns of customers.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize that people do not talk like textbooks. Unless they’re foreigners who learned to speak from textbooks with little or no exposure to native English speakers, that is. I have worked with older EFL students in that situation, and all of them have been keen to improve their spoken English so it doesn’t sound like that anymore.
That’s not actually true, although a surprising number of people think it is. Speech and writing are two entirely different forms of communication.
This becomes more obvious if you think of a language like Chinese, which consists of many different spoken dialects (some mutually unintelligable) but has only one writing system. The character for “mountain” and the various Chinese words that mean “mountain” all represent the idea of a mountain, but they have precious little to do with each other. If you see the character for “mountain” on its own, devoid of context, there’s no way to tell how the writer intended for it to be pronounced if read aloud. You can’t even tell for sure which language it is. Mandarin? Cantonese? Could even be Japanese, they use the same character.
Even in English, with our somewhat-phonetic alphabet, there’s a huge difference between writing and speech. “Eye red uh buck” is nonsense when written, but if spoken it’s obviously “I read a book”. In spoken English the difference between “We read books” (past) and “We read books” (present) is clear, but they’re identical when written down. “Two”, “too”, and “to” are pronounced identically but written differently and have completely different meanings. When we write we are not simply making marks to represent what we would say if we were speaking, we are using a seperate and distinct language system.
I’m not talking about mimicking speech patterns, otherwise I would have had the clerk respond with “Pardon my presumption, kind sir; I was not aware that you hailed from elsewhere in our great nation. Pray tell, might I be of any assistance to you on this fine day?” I’m talking about using “normal” English when it appears that your particular regional (mis)usage isn’t getting the point across (or is simply not appropriate).
In fact, that’s my entire point. There exist situations in which it is preferable to use “Standard English”. Dealing with a diverse clientele is one such situation.
However, any decent education will make the point that the difference is in certain levels of formality (e.g. Contractions are fine when speaking with your friends, but not in a term paper. Slang is not appropriate for book reports. etc.) I’m talking about wholesale abandonment of grammatical rules. Big difference.
Again, I’m not talking about pronunciation (unless it’s extremely, hideously wrong). I’m talking about grammar. If you wanted to either write or speak the phrase “The mountain is tall” in Chinese, it would not be correct to either write or say (the equivalent of) “The tall is mountain.”
I have to disagree. Yes, there are going to be homonyms. Yes, it’s possible to write something nonsensical that, when spoken aloud, mayks purrf eckt sin s. But that is beside the point. None of those have to do with the grammar of the language, which is identical in both its spoken and written forms.
