Yes, I KNOW English is a “living language” and, as such, constantly is open to modification.
But I ALSO know, in part due to the educational system that molded today’s parents’ appreciation — or lack thereof — of the language, it is sorely abused.
I am NOT referring to Ebonics1, ghetto English that found favor among the liberals a few decades past; I writing about “tv English” as spoken by tv “personalities” and advertising “spokespeople” of all races.
Free gift in one of my least favorites.
If whatever is offered is a “gift,” it MUST be free; “free” and “gift” in this case are redundant.
At least the good folks who designed the old Cracker Jack box never promised a “free gift.” The box let kids (of all ages) know there was a “surprise” inside. When I was a kid, the prizes were pretty good; today, not so much.
But wait …
As we near Thanksgiving (in the U.S. and Canada) the song Over the river and through the woods comes to mind. In this instance, “over” is used correctly; the sleigh and the passengers riding on it will literally pass over the river — assuming there is a bridge or the river is covered with thick ice. Over means “above,” not “more than.” (Lazy spelling, e.g., “thru” for “through” is another matter for another time.) The same problem occurs with “under.” The troll lived “under” the bridge; but quantities are “less than” not “under.”
I am amused when someone tells me this or that object is “cheap.” It may indeed be cheap, but what the speaker usually means is “not expensive.” “Cheap,” for this scrivener, always had the connotation of “shoddy workmanship with inferior materials” or, currently, “Made in China.”
Years ago, when cigarettes were advertised on radio and tv, the Winston commercial read “Winston takes good like a cigarette should” to which another voice corrected the first announcer’s grammar with “Winston tastes good AS a cigarette should.” Bad grammar won out; a company for which I labored as a technical writer asked me to comment on a proposed advertisement. I made the notation about grammar and pretty soon I was looking for a new job.
Fowler’s followers regularly end sentences in propositions. I presume they are too lazy or too impressed by their words to rewrite the thought to avoid the faux pas. Winston Churchill apparently was a Fowler follower, at least in respect to ending a sentence with “to.”
THEN WE HAVE “unique.” I hear how a product is “very unique” or “most unique” and I know the copy writer never got past the third grade (if that far). When we are gathered together “en familie” and hear “most unique” it’s a race to see who can point out the error first.
When I was a reporter in Trenton NJ (Times-Advertiser) the night editor had a pet peeve: a “landfill” was, according to Sam, a “dump.” He was right … and he was wrong. The basic difference between a dump and a landfill is that the waste dumped into a “landfill” is covered over, unlike a dump. I think Sam just enjoyed needling the local township politicos.
I will concede that I am a language curmudgeon — pedant may be a nicer descriptive, albeit not by much. I for too long labored as a reporter, editor, or technical writer, the latter work demanding precision of language; ambiguity in language could cause injury or death to a reader.
As a junior high student the chorus performed the music from My Fair Lady an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion with words and music by Lerner and Loewe2. To this day I STILL wonder Why the English can’t speak … the language, only in my case, I substitute “Americans” for “English.”
I don’t expect the average citizen to have a vocabulary to match that of the late Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. or Wm. F. Buckley Jr., but it would be nice if schools —and parents — helped today’s youngsters expand their vocabulary. Reading books — hard cover, soft cover, “e” — is the easiest way, but having three grandchildren, I know prying them away from their smart phones or tv is a “challenge.”
Seeing Mr. Humphrey and Mr. Buckley, I am reminded of yet another language faux pas: So-n-So SENIOR. Unless “senior” is on So-n-So’s birth certificate, So-n-So should be referred to as “the senior Mr. So-n-So.” Normally “junior” is dropped from a junior’s name at the senior person’s demise.
1 Ebonics: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ebonics
2 My Fair Lady: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Fair_Lady
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
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