Newsgroup: it.cultura.linguistica.inglese
Titolo: [NEWS] Caring for the English language

Where's your grammar? Gone to the pictures, the ancient joke has it.
But these days, gone to the dogs would be a more appropriate answer.
If a linguistic team from Lancaster University is to be believed, the
golden age of grammar has gone into meltdown. The rules ain't what
they used to be.
According to Professor Geoffrey Leech, the main reasons why we no
longer know, nor care about, the difference between who and whom,
can and may, may and might, me and I, us and we, are the
Americanisation of English and colloquialisation.
Despite their distressing tendency to use nouns as verbs, as in to
access, and long-winded euphemisms like correctional facility for
jail, most of the Americans I know speak better English than the
English. Mark you, I have few friends in the South Bronx.
As for colloquialisms, the Professor has a point - up to a point.
Radio disc jockeys and TV soaps, know what TV mean, must share
with John Prescott their portion of the blame for the decline in
grammatical standards.
But above all, we should be pointing out finger at the schools. Children
don't know no grammar because their teachers don't neither. I may
have mentioned before that when I was on a government committee
on the teaching of English some years ago, we visited a teacher
training college where in the course of a chat with the students one of
them asked: "What's this syntax you all keep banging about?" This
girl is now teaching English and no doubt claiming that self-expression
is more important than grammar.
Well, now: we have reached the stage where a government guide
called Not Whether But How: The Teaching of Grammar is being sent
to every secondary school in the country. And already, wouldn't you
know it, teachers are warning that children's creativity could be stifled,
while their trade union leader Doug McAvoy cautions that while the
handbook may be helpful it must not be too prescriptive.
Prescriptive means laying down rules of usage. If a handbook on
grammar doesn't lay down rules of usage it might just as well be
thrown in the bin.
In fact, far from being a sweat, grammar is much easier to learn than
it used to be. This is because there is less of it about. The language
is being streamlined all the time. Take punctuation. The contraction
shan't, in my lifetime, used to be written sha'n't, while in the Thirties
detective novel I am presently reading the word pub. is written so,
with a full stop to indicate that it is an abbreviation of public house.
Few, these days, would care to discuss the difference between a
transitive and an intransitive verb, or why one should not use a
preposition to end a sentence with. But caring about the language,
as most of us do, does mean knowing the basic rules.
Some rules are just made to be broken. When even Royals say you
and I when they mean you and me, a battle has been lost. But that
doesn't mean to say it was not worth fighting. I have been saying for
years that it is not all right to write alright, and a fat lot of good it
has done, but I shall go on saying it.
I get letters all the time about the decline and fall of the English
language. (An amusing one last week. Man points at the sign Grape's
in a greengrocer's and asks: 'Do all of your grapes have apostrophes?'
Greengrocer. 'No, those over there are seedless.') Most of them are
about personal bees in the bonnet such as the wrong use of hopefully
or teeth-grinding expressions like 'at this moment in time'. But they
do show that we still care about our language.
As we must. Language does change, it is on the move all the time.
But it doesn't have to go downhill.
Keith Waterhouse
Daily Mail, August 16, 1999
Ciao,
Dario
ITA

 they used to be.
(big snip)

ITA
Thanks ever so much, D.
Isa
Work like you don't need money,
Love like you've never been hurt,
And dance like no one's watching

...
:>Where's your grammar? Gone to the pictures, the ancient joke has it.
:
:(snip)
:>But above all, we should be pointing out finger at the schools.
Children
:>don't know no grammar because their teachers don't neither.
:
:Shouldn't that be _don't, either_?
Indeed it should! Also: 'Children don't know any grammar, or Children
know no grammar'.
I couldn't agree with Professor Leech more!
Betty.
Piesse: Dario, heartfelt thanks for sharing.
****
"I think not", said Descartes, and promptly disappeared.

 :Dario ha
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 I couldn't agree with Professor Leech more!
Those are not errors.  They are there to show the reader how bad
the situation with English grammar is these days.
Do you remember that post I copied and pasted about grammar rules?
I went something like:
1.  don't'use no double negatives.....
2.  and never start your sententces with a conjunction
3.  don't use adverbs unless they are absolutely, positively, truly
    necessary.
etc.......
This is the same idea.
ciao
Arianna
Sent via Deja.com 
http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.

Arianna
Indeed. This is called irony -- at least it is one form
of irony, involving a self-contradiction.
Purtroppo l'ironia e` uno dei tropi, o figure retoriche,
piu` difficile per lo straniero da comprendere.
Raymot
[[[[[[[[[[[
, 

 I went something like:
.....and look how bad the situation is with MY OWN grammar.  I
meant "It went something like".  Actually, that is a typo.
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