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Instead of new spelt words, society is reusing old words under new definitions.
I always like to use the word " cool " as an example.
In my old days " cool " meant weather was changing and a sweater was needed.
Today it means you are " hep or the man".
Back to my rocking chair.
Instead of new spelt words, society is reusing old words under new definitions.
I always like to use the word " cool " as an example.
In my old days " cool " meant weather was changing and a sweater was needed.
Today it means you are " hep or the man".
Back to my rocking chair.
There's nothing new about slang that co-opts existing words.
There's also nothing new about cool as slang meaning something akin to fashionable or great. It's nearly a century old, having arisen in African-American usage and then percolated into the general culture when used by popular jazz musicians. Snoopy's alter ego Joe Cool debuted in 1971. Really, cool is a survivor. It lives on while its contemporary slang equivalents - terms like groovy and far out and boss - have mostly fallen out of usage.
Finally, cool has long meant other things as well. When someone is cool about an idea, for example, they're not very enthusiastic about it. When someone is cool under pressure, they have a tendency to maintain their composure in the face of adversity.
I would venture that most of the words both of us have used in our posts have derived from other attested meanings.
... terms like groovy and far out and boss - have mostly fallen out of usage.
"Far out" was in use long before the 1960s. I came across it in a couple of books from about 50 years earlier. In each case, it was used by a cowboy, and meant "very impressive."
I think one book was by O. Henry, the other by H. L. Menken.
Everywhere I look I am inundated with it. I don't mind a minor flaw here or there in writing. But, I consistently see horrific misspellings, run-on sentences, lack of paragraph structuring, incoherent themes, etc.. What makes me cringe the most is when somebody presents themself as being educated and their post looks like it was written by a third grader.
What has happened to our educational system?
I totally agree with you. My mother tongue isn't even English; when I started learning it, I was already an adult. So, where did all these Americans go to school?
I wish that I could answer your question!
I began grading student papers somewhere around 1960, in order to help my mother with her workload from being a 5th grade teacher, coupled with being a wife/mother. Later, after I became a teacher, I continued to grade student papers, albeit on a high school level.
That being said, with those student papers, I never saw the types of semi-literacy that I encounter daily via the internet.
As just a few examples, I never saw elementary or high school students spell "a lot" as one non-word, namely "alot".
I never saw student writers who couldn't distinguish between "your" and "you're", or between "there", "their", and "they're".
I never observed students who could not distinguish the difference between words such as "break" and "brake".
I rarely encountered students who did not know how to construct a complete sentence, and this includes students as young as 5th graders.
So, from circa 1960 through circa 2005, I never (or, at least... rarely) observed the horrendous misuse of the English language that I see every day, courtesy of the internet.
I really have no explanation for this phenomenon, unfortunately...
I was taught some grammar, much of which did not stick. How I learned to communicate was by reading. I read everything I saw from a young age. I read constantly. But most of what was available to me to read
was grammatical. I think now we are surrounded by poorly worded or ungrammatical prose.
Where I see terrible grammar is on FB posts when locals comment on crimes or accidents. Frequently posts begin with "I seen--" But I did hear a butcher tell me this about missing turkey tenderloins: "They don't make them no more."
I think bad grammar has always been around though. We just see it more because more people communicate via written posts.
I think bad grammar has always been around though. We just see it more because more people communicate via written posts.
Now that I have a bit more free time at my disposal, please allow me to elaborate on my argument.
I know a woman who is now in her late 70s, and who completed two years of college in the mid-late 60s. She clearly does not know the difference between "your" and "you're", nor can she use "there", "their", and "they're" correctly.
A friend of mine used to get birthday cards from a Great Aunt, who attended school back in the early part of the 20th Century. On those cards, she used to sign her name as "Ant Mary".
A few years ago, I visited an antiques and collectibles store, and I took a look at their extensive collection of picture postcards from the early-mid 20th Century. These cards had all been sent from various resort locations to local people, and the percentage of the messages on those cards that were--at best--semi-literate was probably somewhere around 60%.
People with severely-compromised literacy have always been around us, but we didn't get to view their written communications until the advent of the Internet Age.
Last edited by Retriever; 11-06-2019 at 04:15 PM..
To further expand on my point, I know a man in his early 70s who has both Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Computer Science, from Syracuse University. Surely, he must have been required to take English courses while at the University, yet he clearly can't distinguish between "than" and "then".
To blame the obvious language problems that we observe on the internet on "modern education" is to ignore the reality that people with compromised literacy have always been in our midst, even if we didn't recognize that sad fact until they began to post their comments on the internet.
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