Death of the English Language

"You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test."
~ President George W. Bush, Feb. 21, 2001

I'm afraid I have bad news to pass on. One of our most beloved companions has passed away. For many of us, this companion allowed us to talk to other members of our nation and other people throughout the world. With this tragic passing, our ability to communicate- in a clear and concise manner- is now in dire jeopardy.

English Language
R.I.P.
5th Century - 21st Century

Yes, I'm being facetious here, but my point is quite valid. There is a conscious mindset in the (American) English speaking world, predominately by the younger generations, that being able to spell or speak the language properly is not important, especially once you begin discussing language online. With this uncaring mindset, the death of the language begins.

While online in games or on forums, you can't throw a letter Q without seeing countless atrocious errors in spelling and grammar. No one is perfect when it comes to spelling, and when you're talking about the online experience, typos are to be expected. The only danger in always ignoring your errors is when you do need to be perfect, perhaps in school but more importantly the professional environment, you will find yourself falling into the same habitual errors you are used to shrugging off. You will not simply cease all of your bad grammar habits magically.

Don't believe me? Turn on cable news and watch nothing but the ticker for half an hour. I know one day I counted no less than 24 errors in spelling, grammar and omissions. 24 errors in half an hour? On a major news source? No boss in any environment will find that acceptable. Nor should you. There are examples of this kind everywhere you look- schools, billboards, TV shows... just listen to any single speech by our current President! Fair or not, people do judge other people's writing and speaking as a large indicator of their level of intelligence.

You don't agree? Tell me, which of the following people would you assume is more intelligent, if you'd never met them and just read the following conversation online:

Person A.) "u no I can spell great when I want too- its not like i do this in the workplace."
Person B.) "I'm afraid that's untrue. If you're used to making those types of errors, you'll make them in other areas of your life, costing time- which is money."

Obviously, not only is person "B" far more clear in your ability to understand, you absolutely will believe that person is more intelligent. It's not to say they are, but the judgment will occur. And who wants to present themselves to others as stupid? This is all something that is easy to overcome! With the spell checking tools available online, many of these simple spelling errors can be eliminated without taking more than six or eight clicks of the mouse! Often you don't even have to retype a word- just click and select the correct spelling! The point is- you should WANT to correct your spelling errors.

What of grammar, though? Spell checkers do not catch the majority of grammar errors. This is shown all too often in those who rely on them to solve all of their writing woes. A quick solution for improvement is making sure you understand homonyms and possessives.

Let's start with homonyms. Homonyms are words that sounds alike but mean different things. For instance, steak and stake. I don't know about you, but I certainly wouldn't wish to try eating a stake. Even with ketchup. There are many homonyms in English, but you can vastly improve your language skills simply by knowing just the top five most used ones.

At the top of that list? Words such as there / their / they're. If you're going to travel to another destination, you're going to go there. If someone has or owns something, it is their item. And if your friends went to the bar an hour ahead of you, they're likely already drunk. Sound insulting and basic to you? Look around online- you'll be surprised how common these words are incorrectly substituted for each other.

Possessives are also constantly being misused. One of my biggest pet peeves is the lack of knowledge surrounding your and you're. It's extremely easy to master this, and makes you instantly look 100 times more intelligent! You're is a contraction. It stands for you are. Tell me- when you consider that, does it make any sense at all to see the sentence, "Your stupid!" Absolutely not! When I see someone say something of the sort, my first response is "I don't own a stupid!" or "My stupid did what?" Not so coincidentally, the original speaker never quite understands my response. Get in the habit of reading contractions out in your head- when you see "you're" your mind should be auto-translating to "you are". Once you begin doing this, you'll rarely make mistakes of this sort again.

Where is this laziness towards proper spelling and grammar coming from? Poor education? Lack of interest? I feel it's a simple artifact of the new mindset of the young. Having grown up inundated with information bombarding them constantly, there's a need to shorten everything into small, manageable bursts. That's why another pet peeve of mine, content length, is an additional casualty of the new broken-English language. Brevity has its place in professional settings, where word space is limited and costs money. But why is there anger present when someone on a message board leaves commentary longer than two paragraphs? I certain I've lost several readers because this post was longer than a few sentences. If the "short" content mindset continues to prevail, future online communications will consist of nothing more than one to five word "bursts" and emoticons.

There's no problem in having length to your online discussions! Even a lengthier entry like this shouldn't take you longer than a minute or two to read at most. If it does, you need to work on your reading skills! It simply doesn't take any time to read ten or twelve paragraphs of information and still comprehend it! The more you read, the faster you'll learn to read. If you continue to read nothing but two paragraph blasts with smiley faces, you'll cause yourself to become stagnant with a limited vocabulary- and, you're not going to be getting any decent content out of those blurbs while you stunt your linguistic skills.

Consider your personal good and bad habits concerning English, particularly online. Ask yourself if you're helping maintain the traditional rules and structure- necessary for understanding each other- or helping the language die its quick death.

In the meantime, I'll go by some "flours" to place by my dear English language's early grave.