Chris71 wrote:
Bad grammar and spelling do make me squirm.
I think this is more prevalent in the English language, compared to say, French or other European languages where there is a cultural attachment to their own language and they feel a need to speak it properly, as well as deriving pleasure from correcting each other over the tiniest mistakes.
In contrast, the English language has become a tool around much of the World for "getting the message across", with little cultural attachment to the language.
The reason why some people in Continental Europe think of English being an easy language, is because English-speakers typically tolerate extremely bad use of the language. They can visit the US or UK , make lots of mistakes in English, and nobody will correct them because they don't care. An English-native expat living in France will probably have the opposite experience.
So basically, a smaller proportion of English speakers really care about grammar and punctuation.
I don't know if I'd agree with this unless I saw an actual study. I think that some of what you've observed could have to do with how large some English speaking countries are, and how relatively new they are. Canada and the US nearly encompass the whole continent of North America. That means that even in countries where English is the primary language, you have a lot of geographic and cultural division.
There are plenty of native English speakers who are stuck-up about the English language. But I, personally, am not because I think it's pretentious to assume that territories as large as the US and Canada should be expected to speak proper British English. We have tons of dialects in the US, and we have a lot of culture mixing here. I see no reason to think that this diversity makes the language any worse by creating new slang or using unusual sentence structure.
French, Spanish, and Italian are all Latin based languages, so I assume that they evolved from Latin, am I right? Does that make them all "badly" spoken Latin? Or no, because some rich academics got together and standardized the language and drew a bunch of rules up to try to solidify the language and freeze it into their own time period?
Language has always evolved. I think it's cool that we have a lot of rules about written language, but I'm not about to assume that the proper usage, as defined by the rules, is better than any other improper usage.
That being said, I do like standardized English. It's a hell of a lot easier to read than Early Modern English--or Middle English. But I don't assume that improper use is always bad. Some times it makes more sense than what the rules say. And I don't judge people who don't grasp proper English. I consider myself a minority, because I've heard many more voices defending the proper use of English than discussing the mutability of language.
And maybe you're right about the cultural connection to language. North America was only conquered by Europeans fairly recently, so perhaps, especially considering we have a large population of ex-slaves in the US, not all of us feel the same cultural pride in the language as some smaller, less recently colonized nations. I know that in US Literature, the acceptance of "dialect" in writing (like as in The Color Purple) was greatly influenced by the indignation of minority populations for being criticized and excluded from public dialogue and literature for speaking "wrong." Even now, Americans argue over Mexican immigrants not speaking English properly, so I don't think we're as tolerant of improper use of language as we may seem to you.
I don't have a problem with anyone who gets irritated by the improper use of grammar or spelling, so long as they don't try to claim that their way of writing is superior to others--or criticize those who do not grasp English spelling. I constantly have to re-type words because many English words don't adhere to any rules--and they require memorization, which isn't my strength.
25 May 2012, 11:19 am
