What's happened to our language?

[mandp]

Both written and spoken...

Why don't we now know the difference between `To` and `Too`, between `Your` and `You're`, between `There`, `Their` and They're?

What's happened to the capital letter at the start of a sentence, the use of full stops and commas?

How come when we speak, `With` becomes `Wiv`, `Thanks` becomes `Fanks`, `Thought` becomes `Fought`, `Birthday` becomes `Birfday`?

I could go on...but I will not.

Bad education? Television? Mobile phones? Social networking?

I'm sure I'll get some `fancy` relies to this...I'm standing by!

Regards.

Mike.

[BossFox]

Brought and bought?

Brakes and breaks?

The list goes on...

Education and being in a rush all the time, or just not caring I guess.

[craig180]

Gutted I found no errors in your grammar :(

Although you did miss your *apostrophes* off they're.....

Edited 25 January, 2013 by craig180

[ColinD]

I'm trying to improve, was guilty for a very long time of abandoning any alternative of there, using there pretty much all the time.

I also try to blame spending 50 hours a week trying to strip vowels from words when typing code.

print = prt, screen = scr

Didn't help much.

I think the major change is in texting/internet comm's. I wonder if it's the shorthand of the typed world?

I can't read some of the texts I've processed, they must mean something, just I cannot decipher them sometimes.

Then the other day I posted who's got there diary, except I typed dairy... it looked fine to me. A small part of me suspects, like many do, that I've got a hint of dyslexia at certain moments.

[Llanigraham]

Your and you're

Causes? Laziness, text speak, no pride in what they do, and a general slovenly attitude.

On another Forum I frequent they have banned text speak completely, and really poor spelling, including some as pointed out here, automatically gets picked up and a slightly disparaging comment replaces the error.

[Jockdooshbag]

If i was writing a formal letter or an email at work i would give 2 5hits but on a forum or when texting why bother wasting the time with proper grammar?? "Text" speak is quicker, ok not a lot but it is quicker hence why people use it.

My cousin is bad for it, i can hardly make head or tail of some of his texts.

Probably just habit now as everyone does it. Languages evolve over time, just need to accept it and move with the times, hardly a biggee IMO.

[WRCSixtyThree]

It's the same lack of education that leads to the situation whereby the BBC, once a shining example of correct English, now allows its correspondents to say 'sked-yule' instead of 'shed-yule' and 'vun-rubble' instead of 'vuln-er-able'.

As someone who works in a professional services business, I find it astonishing that so few of my supposedly well educated colleagues are able to properly use, or even care about, such simple things as apostrophes.

In the last few months I must have written forty or fifty thousand words of articles, white papers, and the like; language is something I use every day, and I do not understand for the life of me why people can't follow a few simple rules.

[WRCSixtyThree]

If i was writing a formal letter or an email at work i would give 2 5hits but on a forum or when texting why bother wasting the time with proper grammar?? "Text" speak is quicker, ok not a lot but it is quicker hence why people use it.

How is it any quicker to not use proper spelling and grammar? As for 'why bother'; perhaps because it's helpful to other people in making meanings clear and posts more readable.

[Jockdooshbag]

How is it any quicker to not use proper spelling and grammar? As for 'why bother'; perhaps because it's helpful to other people in making meanings clear and posts more readable.

It is quicker as you dont need to bother with all the apostrophes and commas etc. Most people can understand the things written on this forum yet the grammar is terrible a lot of the time.

Bad spelling on my part is my hands going to fast for my limited typing ability and then a lack of spell checking before i post it. I normally have to "edit" my posts a few times straight away after posting right enough so in the long run i would probably be quicker taking my time but hey ho.

Not saying i agree with bad grammar just saying i can see why people do it. It doesnt really bother me though as there far bigger problems to worry about in the world at the moment than grammar.

[craig180]

Nothing more annoying that spending twice as long reading a message that took half the time it should have done to type...

[Easy-Pd]

I sent an email to 98 people once. always end 'Regards, Jamie'

this time I hit the t instead of g. sent 'Retards, Jamie'

not one person pointed it out, so I guess they never read my emails.....

sent via Playbook and Tapatalk

[MartynVRS]

It is getting worse. Even speaking well is getting worse. I think I speak fairly well, confident with customers in the shop etc until I heard myself on my Blackvue talking to my mother on the phone (handsfree of course). It was all correct and no bad language but I sound awful. Almost sounded like I was drunk slurring. Got quite conscious of it since. My spelling though has always been good but have noticed lately I'll miss letters just because I think I've typed them in my head but haven't.

[craig180]

I sent an email to 98 people once. always end 'Regards, Jamie'

this time I hit the t instead of g. sent 'Retards, Jamie'

not one person pointed it out, so I guess they never read my emails.....

sent via Playbook and Tapatalk

Glad I'm not the only one to have done that.....

sent via my work's PC and IE8 with my fingers

Edited 25 January, 2013 by craig180

[Skully]

What I don't understand is why someone would type 'ov' in place of 'of'.

[WRCSixtyThree]

What I don't understand is why someone would type 'ov' in place of 'of'.

Simple. They are chavs.

[David 8]

Its the difference between knowing your **** and knowing you're ****

[KenONeill]

Serious answer - About 50 years ago, educationalists decided that "there was no need to teach children grammar". Everything else except txt spk follows on from that.

[WRCSixtyThree]

Simple. They are chavs.

I've just come across another example of this phenomenon which I'd forgotten about; people who replace 'I' with 'a'.

'A went shopping and A bought a car'

Even writing that I can't help using a capital A, although most witless chavs wouldn't bother.

Another irritation I keep coming across - 'been' instead of 'being'. What's that about?

This thread could drive me, literally, to drink.

[Llanigraham]

If i was writing a formal letter or an email at work i would give 2 5hits but on a forum or when texting why bother wasting the time with proper grammar?? "Text" speak is quicker, ok not a lot but it is quicker hence why people use it.

My cousin is bad for it, i can hardly make head or tail of some of his texts.

Probably just habit now as everyone does it. Languages evolve over time, just need to accept it and move with the times, hardly a biggee IMO.

Oh, what a perfect example of slovenliness. Thank you, sir!

And as this thread proves, everyone does not do it.

[RainbowFire]

It's the same lack of education that leads to the situation whereby the BBC, once a shining example of correct English, now allows its correspondents to say 'sked-yule' instead of 'shed-yule' and 'vun-rubble' instead of 'vuln-er-able'.

Schedule starts with the same three letters as school. Does this mean school should be pronounced shool instead of skool?

Part of the problem is that the english language is not consistent within itself.

Ough: Cough (pronounced 'coff'), through (pronounced "throo"), rough ("ruff")

Edinburgh: "EdInBuro"

Earlier you wound a bandage round your wound.

You can use wind to wind something up.

I could understand the need for txt spk when texting was expensive, so you needed to try and keep below the "next text" threshold. Now that messages are basically free, there's no need to shorten them. In e-mails it is inexcusable: the extra second or two that you shave off in typing won't really make any difference to your life.

Also correct spelling helps you convey your meaning without issue. I was involved in a discussion with a "spelling challenged" person who kept using "cnt" (those three letters) e.g. "you cnt thats not possible". Turns out she meant "you can't, that's not possible", not 'cnt' with a 'u' in it. For someone who was working in local government, I'd have expected better really. She got more grief for calling people c?nts than for what she was actually trying to say.

Its the difference between knowing your **** and knowing you're ****

Or more aptly for Briskoda:

The difference between knowing your nuts and knowing you're nuts ;)

[craig180]

I've just come across another example of this phenomenon which I'd forgotten about; people who replace 'I' with 'a'.

'A went shopping and A bought a car'

Even writing that I can't help using a capital A, although most witless chavs wouldn't bother.

Another irritation I keep coming across - 'been' instead of 'being'. What's that about?

This thread could drive me, literally, to drink.

*of instead of have.....

I may of inadvertantly mistyped this sentence...

[WRCSixtyThree]

Schedule starts with the same three letters as school. Does this mean school should be pronounced shool instead of skool?

Not at all. I'm suggesting that people should be taught how to pronounce words properly, without applying the simplistic American English method of 'one spelling, one pronunciation'.

[WRCSixtyThree]

*of instead of have.....

I may of inadvertantly mistyped this sentence...

Yes indeed. That is incredibly irritating.

[craig180]

I love how everyone's being uber cautious in this thread making sure they dot their 't's and cross their 'i's.... Hahaa

Edited 25 January, 2013 by craig180

[mandp]

If i was writing a formal letter or an email at work i would give 2 5hits but on a forum or when texting why bother wasting the time with proper grammar?? "Text" speak is quicker, ok not a lot but it is quicker hence why people use it.

My cousin is bad for it, i can hardly make head or tail of some of his texts.

Probably just habit now as everyone does it. Languages evolve over time, just need to accept it and move with the times, hardly a biggee IMO.

Shame on you.