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A few years ago I moved several hours away from my hometown to a slightly more rural area. Now, I understand that every place has regionalisms, and that rural folks aren't necessarily as concerned with "proper" English as some others might be, and I will be the first one to admit that I drop my g's and say "gonna" sometimes.
However, this is an area that is noted for its excellent school systems, and there are at least 5 colleges within a 45 minute driving distance. Yet every day I work with people who say "I seen" or "I had went," I have worked with teachers and teaching assistants who can barely string together a grammatically correct, complete sentence. On every sale site I see: rod iron, chester drawers, for sell. The first time I saw "chester drawers" I thought it was a joke!
It's beginning to drive me a little bit crazy. I don't understand why seemingly intelligent, well educated people speak and write this way.
I see you mention being from Illinois. You're probably American, as am I. You probably speak an American dialect. You know, that's a 'regional' use of language that differs considerably from, say, Received Pronunciation. So how is your grievance with those who don't meet your linguistic muster any different from an RP speaker who thinks, for example, that your hard 'k' pronunciation of 'schedule' is appalling or that your tendency, like that of most Americans, is to pronounce 'bitter' as if it is 'bidder', because the t -> d vowel shift is much further along in American English dialects than in British English dialects, is a travesty? It's no different at all.
See, the standard you set for proper English is not English that is free of unconventional - or, if you prefer, improper - usage. Rather, it is English that contains no more unconventional/improper usage than you tend to use. In other words, you have conveniently set the bar for acceptable English usage at a point such that your normal English usage just clears that bar. How convenient. How self-serving. That's not an objective standard; it's you deciding that what is convenient for you and satisfying to you should be everyone's standard.
They have a "firm grasp" of the local dialect.
I grew up in rural IL. There certainly is a regional "hick" accent and vocabulary. It naturally gets passed down from one generation to the next. I'd guess there is some pride and bonding associated with using a unique form of speech. Only those who move away have an incentive to change.
Yes, I think that every region has examples of how the locals have altered the original pronunciation of certain words and place names. I may be able to recall more examples later in the day, but two that come to mind right now are...
Buena, NJ: The locals pronounce it as "Beoona"
Houston Street, in NYC: The locals say "House-ton".
Also, I have been told that Cairo, Illinois is pronounced as "Care-oh" by the folks in that region. Or, was that in reference to Cairo, NY?
Bastardization of place-name pronunciation is common. In western Ohio, we have a town called “Versailles”, pronounced “Vur-sales”; “Lima”, pronounced “Lai-mah”; “Bellefontaine”, pronounced “Bell-fount’n.” While to a bemused foreign visitor these would sound ridiculous, they can be ascribed to local color, to what locals organically choose for themselves. After all, if a person is named “John”, but chooses to pronounce his name as “Tom” or “Paul” or "Rumpelstiltskin", that’s his prerogative.
But once again, there’s distinction between local idiom and clear mauling of the rules of language. We can bicker over whether there ought to be two spaces between a period and the start of a new sentence, or one. We can say “come with” as idiomatic contraction of “come with us”, or “do you happen to be wishing to come with us?”; <-- see, I probably misused punctuation right there! But blatant disregard for subject-verb agreement is not a colorful privatization of rules, or lilting innovation, or particularity of our village vs. your village.
Bastardization of place-name pronunciation is common. In western Ohio, we have a town called “Versaillesâ€, pronounced “Vur-salesâ€; “Limaâ€, pronounced “Lai-mahâ€; “Bellefontaineâ€, pronounced “Bell-fount’n.â€
At least I can see a little phonetic sense in those pronunciations. The town where I live, Ruidoso, is pronounced Riadosa by almost everyone. How does "ui" turn into "ia"? My guess is that someone liked the sound of it better, and it caught on. But no one bothered to change the spelling.
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MoonBeam33
Yes, it's possible. But I simply cannot understand the mindset of not caring if you sound uneducated or unintelligent, especially when dealing with the public.
As far as (American) teachers are concerned, they should not be allowed to teach if they do not have a firm grasp of (American) English word usage, grammar, and spelling. They are teachers!
Being uneducated is considered a good thing to many Americans these days. The educated are the "elite" and the enemy. They are prideful of ignorance.
I can recall several instances of one of my high school classmates--whose family name was Garcia--being referred to as "Gar-sha" by teachers. Even after he would politely correct their pronunciations, some of these teachers persisted in pronouncing his name as "Gar-sha".
I can recall several instances of one of my high school classmates--whose family name was Garcia--being referred to as "Gar-sha" by teachers. Even after he would politely correct their pronunciations, some of these teachers persisted in pronouncing his name as "Gar-sha".
But in their defense, there might have been a previous student who did pronounce their name "Gar-sha". I went to school with someone with the last name "Hebert" who pronounced it "HEY-burt". I later had a coworker with the same last name who pronounced it "ey-BEAR". Neither was wrong--it's the way they pronounce their own name.
I was also brought up with the 2 spaces at the end of a sentence, but I know many online editors don't do it that way anymore. Drives me nuts & I have to "fix" it, in most cases. Though some editors don't allow it to be "fixed"
Almost all editors now mandate one space. I have not adapted to it for my personal authorship, but if I share in editing a document, I compromise by doing a global replace of two spaces with one space.
Apparently the style guidebooks changed the recommendation from two spaces to one after a sentence or colon during the 1990s. Probably this occurred during the early 1990s when PCs supplanted typewriters, judging by the age of my colleagues who use only one space. I learned typing in the early 1980s, and the hard-and-fast rule was two spaces.
I also learned two spaces between state and ZIP code: Chicago, Illinois 60606. I'm not sure if that is still a rule.
A few years ago I moved several hours away from my hometown to a slightly more rural area. Now, I understand that every place has regionalisms, and that rural folks aren't necessarily as concerned with "proper" English as some others might be, and I will be the first one to admit that I drop my g's and say "gonna" sometimes.
However, this is an area that is noted for its excellent school systems, and there are at least 5 colleges within a 45 minute driving distance. Yet every day I work with people who say "I seen" or "I had went," I have worked with teachers and teaching assistants who can barely string together a grammatically correct, complete sentence. On every sale site I see: rod iron, chester drawers, for sell. The first time I saw "chester drawers" I thought it was a joke!
It's beginning to drive me a little bit crazy. I don't understand why seemingly intelligent, well educated people speak and write this way.
I'm wondering why you used four exclamation points in the headline to your topic.
You did what you are criticizing; educated people are still as prone as anyone else to all the common little language things that surround them. A spoken mistake often leads to a phonetically written spelling mistake.
Punctuation mistakes make it all the worse.
How many time.... have we seen.... writing like this????
Or: HEY, MOONBEAM!!! WHY DO YOU THINK ILLINOIS IS SO SPECIAL!!!!
One exclamation point is like a hammer blow. Two or more is like a jackhammer. After a while, a reader becomes deafened to the written noise because it's so common.
People are creatures of habit, and use spoken and written language they usually think is correct. We are all prone to imitating what we hear and see, whether it's correct or not.
I don't know if its just me, but those are my kind of people. When I'm among folks like that, I feel like I'm with family. And this is coming from an Ivy-educated attorney
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