Calling All Grammarians!

Parent Cafe
81

<p>Sadly, there is so much pressure to introduce so many concepts in school, albeit with very little depth, that the basics of our language has long been forgotten. I also wonder if some teachers even know these little idiosyncrasies, much less have the time in their teaching day to cover them.</p>

<p>Could also be a result of typing too quickly, not caring, text-typing (with tons of R U ok?) and English Language Learners. </p>

<p>I/me, he/him, she/her, we/us
then/than, passed/past, their/they’re/there, your/you’re, it’s/its</p>

<p>ETA: Marite! Where are you??? We miss you!</p>

82

<p>then vs than: Phonetic spelling reflecting regional pronunciation.</p>

83

<p>Kids rely on spell check and then/than doesn’t make a difference.</p>

<p>Just for fun, I typed every word longer than two letters wrong on purpose. Spell check got them all but the real language distinctions depend on the writer knowing that then and than are different words.</p>

84

<p>An Americanism which I find jarring is “the hospital”, as in “I was so sick they took me to the hospital”. They don’t specify which hospital, and the city has many hospitals, so to me “I was so sick they took me to hospital” sounds better.</p>

<p>Another odd phrasing is “I am kosher”, which is rather unlikely no matter how you are handled and processed, if you are human. “I keep kosher” is simple enough, or pompously “I observe the laws of kashrut”.</p>

85

<p>

The comma is the least of your problems.</p>

<p>First, it is not a sentence. There is no verb. It’s a phrase.</p>

<p>Second, you do not say “My dog and me.” It’s “My dog and I” - you wouldn’t say “Me was ready for a walk.” Therefore, the sentence should be, “My dog and I were ready for a walk.” Adding my dog does not change the appropriate first person pronoun.</p>

<p>You could then write the sentence, “My dog and I, in 2009, were ready to go for a walk.” Or, even better, “In 2009, my dog and I were ready to go for a walk” or “My dog and I were ready to go for a walk in 2009.”</p>

86

<p>Agreed Chedva. The statement was intended as a photo caption rather than sentence–</p>

<p>I noticed it online and thought it was poorly written/punctuated, but was undecided as to comma placement. You’re right it’s not a sentence and doesn’t need a period… Here it is:</p>

<p>“My dog, and me, in 2009, ready for a walk.”</p>

<p>For whatever reason, things like this often annoy me!</p>

<p>I might’ve said this: “Here I am with my my dog, in 2009, ready for our walk.”</p>

87

<p>When I ask my children how they did on a test, I usually hear, “I did pretty good.” Whenever I correct them, they will say, “Mom, nobody talks like that.”</p>

88

<p>And I really don’t like the expression ‘rearing’ for children. He was reared in Kansas. I can’t help thinking of piglets.</p>

89

<p>I’ve recently noticed younger people saying “verse” instead of “versus”. What’s up with that? (I know this isn’t really an issue with grammar, though.)</p>

90

<p>

That’s been happening since my kids were in middle school and they are all grown up now. I’m still battling it.</p>

<p>But my pet peeve lately has been the improper use of the word “myself”. I think people believe it makes them sound more intelligent when they use it instead of “I” or “me”. Not if you use it incorrectly. I’ve even heard politicians and newscasters do it.</p>

91

<p>in response to post 80:</p>

<p>I see that a lot here on the adult areas. Maybe it is difficulty spelling because of regional accents, or maybe some just don’t know the difference.</p>

92

<p>I am a college professor. I teach freshman English/composition among other things. Yes, many of the finer distinctions have been lost. Alas. However, I think clear thinking is more important than the than/then distinction, for example. Yes, making that distinction can clarify thinking, but there are just so many bigger fish to fry.</p>

<p>Sadly, no matter how many times I correct the same mistake it returns on the next paper. I have often thought to create a rubric for the papers that records the specific mistakes the writer makes and penalize the writer for not improving on a specific correction. However, it has always been too much work considering the volume of papers I must wade through each semester. It reaches 1000 some semesters if I teach six courses. Other semesters I am assigned more upper division classes and then the number of papers shrinks but the length of each paper expands.</p>

<p>It is easy to correct these errors, but it is not easy to find fertile ground in which the corrections can take route. Sigh.</p>

<p>My pet peeve is the new trend to use an apostrophe whenever there’s a plural, as in, “My kid’s don’t care about grammar.” I see this mistake made by students all the time, but now I see it made by parents on CC, even in thread titles.</p>

<p>Worse is the tendency to insert the apostrophe whenever an “s” appears as in, “We’re getting clos’e to our destination.”</p>

<p>My pet peeve is the unnecessary preposition “of” which has crept into many phrases. I can’t think of a perfect example right now, but one would follow the form, “We are the best of friends,” when “We are best friends” would serve.</p>

<p>We have lost the distinction between me and I in many cases. In trying to be correct there has been so much overcompensation that I is frequently, incorrectly substituted for me as in, “Charles listened to David and I.” I don’t think we’re going to be able to pull this one back.</p>

<p>To the poster who had difficulty with “to the hospital” in place of “to hospital” there is just a national difference. “To hospital” grates on my ears, but I understand that it is correct in its context. (Dr. Who, Doc Martin, MI5 have all given me a good idea of Brit-speak.)</p>

<p>All I can offer in consolation is that language always evolves, mistakes and all, and it always tends toward greater simplicity. The extremely inflected Ancient Greek has given way to the almost uninflected English. That’s just the way of language evolution.</p>

<p>If I got upset with the mistakes my students made I would be much less effective as an instructor. I value, in this order, having something interesting to say, knowing how to organize ideas, having adequate support for an argument, having a vocabulary expansive enough to express complex ideas, paragraphing that clarifies thought, writing cogent sentences with proper tenses, and only last, grammar and usage. Yes, I correct the mistakes each and every time, but without something interesting to say, grammar is really unimportant.</p>

<p>I have had to reorient my ideas so my students are not afraid to think and write. The greatest tragedy would be if anxiety about grammar dimmed a desire to really communicate.</p>

93

<p>Interesting article on comma use recently in the New York Times: [The</a> Most Comma Mistakes - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/the-most-comma-mistakes/]The”>The Most Comma Mistakes - The New York Times)</p>

94

<p>One colloquialism that continues to drive me nuts is the phrase “out of” to mean “from.” As in, “Mary is out of Cleveland,” or “the warrant for his arrest is out of Ohio.”</p>

<p>I suppose it is a leftover from the German, “Herr Schwarzenegger kommt aus Wien.”</p>

95

<p>Mythmom, you are the best kind of teacher in that you can look past the grammar to help your students learn to express themselves well. They’re lucky.</p>

<p>Me? Crimes against the apostrophe enrage me!! And yes, I see them everywhere, including on CC by parents, on notes sent home written by teachers, and in articles on the internet! Argh!</p>

96

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<p>And it’s interesting how much, and how relatively quickly, English has evolved toward simplicity. About 1500 years is all that separates us from our common West Germanic ancestor that also evolved into German and Dutch and Frisian, yet those languages have evolved a lot less (at least in terms of syntax and morphology). Of all the Indo-European languages, English is the only one that has lost almost completely case and gender and conjugations. An interesting book for the layman that takes apart some of the conventional wisdom of English is “Our Magnificent ■■■■■■■ Tongue: The Untold History of English” by John H. McWhorter, [Amazon.com:</a> Our Magnificent ■■■■■■■ Tongue: The Untold History of English (9781592404940): John McWhorter: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Our-Magnificent-■■■■■■■-Tongue-History/dp/1592404944/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1338052410&sr=8-3]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Our-Magnificent-■■■■■■■-Tongue-History/dp/1592404944/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1338052410&sr=8-3)</p>

97

<p>Not as a grammarian, but as an American and a layman, here’s what I think of when I hear the “hospital” phrases.
When I hear an American say someone went “to the hospital”, I think more specifically of the building they went to, to get medical help.
When I hear a Brit say someone went “to hospital” I think of it as meaning more that they needed professional care located in a specific building.
Only a subtle difference I know, but with one the building where one gets care comes to mind, and with the other, the first thing that comes to mind is getting care in a building.</p>

<p>I agree learning to express oneself well is a good thing. But if we “look past the grammar”, is one helping others to express themselves well?
Even in this forum, I sometimes have to read and re-read sentences with then/than because they do not sound alike to me, as well as to and too errors.</p>

98

<p>Jaylynn: thank you so much.</p>

99

<p>younghoss— well, I think what I meant was that one (or people like mythmom) can see what a student is trying to say while helping them learn/correct their grammar as well. It should be both, of course.</p>

100

<p>I take the descriptive linguist’s point of view that when it comes to everyday conversation, there’s no correct or incorrect. There are only differences of dialect.</p>

<p>However, in the academic/professional world and our written language, we all need to be on the same page. We’re doing a great disservice to our students when we fail to prepare them to communicate correctly in this dialect. The level of written literacy even among lawyers is appallingly low.</p>