Goodbye, cruel words: English. It's dead to me.

[celeste17]

I got this in my email and thought it was really interesting. I thought I would share it.

By Gene Weingarten,

Pulitzer-prize-winning author

The English language, which arose from humble Anglo-Saxon roots to become the lingua franca of 600 million people worldwide and the dominant lexicon of international discourse, is dead. It succumbed last month at the age of 1,617 after a long illness. It is survived by an ignominiously diminished form of itself.

The end came quietly on Aug. 21 on the letters page of The Washington Post. A reader castigated the newspaper for having written that Sasha Obama was the “youngest” daughter of the president and first lady, rather than their “younger” daughter. In so doing, however, the letter writer called the first couple the “Obama’s.” This, too, was published, constituting an illiterate proofreading of an illiterate criticism of an illiteracy. Moments later, already severely weakened, English died of shame.

The language’s demise took few by surprise. Signs of its failing health had been evident for some time on the pages of America’s daily newspapers, the flexible yet linguistically authoritative forums through which the day-to-day state of the language has traditionally been measured. Beset by the need to cut costs, and influenced by decreased public attention to grammar, punctuation and syntax in an era of unedited blogs and abbreviated instant communication, newspaper publishers have been cutting back on the use of copy editing, sometimes eliminating it entirely.

In the past year alone, as the language lay imperiled, the ironically clueless misspelling “pronounciation” has been seen in the Boston Globe, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Deseret Morning News, Washington Jewish Week and the Contra Costa (Calif.) Times, where it appeared in a correction that apologized for a previous mispronunciation.

On Aug. 6, the very first word of an article in the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal was “Alot,” which the newspaper employed to estimate the number of Winston-Salemites who would be vacationing that month.

The Lewiston (Maine) Sun-Journal has written of “spading and neutering.” The Miami Herald reported on someone who “eeks out a living” — alas, not by running an amusement-park haunted house. The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star described professional football as a “doggy dog world.” The Vallejo (Calif.) Times-Herald and the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune were the two most recent papers, out of dozens, to report on the treatment of “prostrate cancer.”

Observers say, however, that no development contributed more dramatically to the death of the language than the sudden and startling ubiquity of the vomitous verbal construction “reach out to” as a synonym for “call on the phone,” or “attempt to contact.” A jargony phrase bloated with bogus compassion — once the province only of 12-step programs and sensitivity training seminars — “reach out to” is now commonplace in newspapers. In the last half-year, the New York Times alone has used it more than 20 times in a number of contextually indefensible ways, including to report that the Blagojevich jury had asked the judge a question.

It was not immediately clear to what degree the English language will be mourned, or if it will be mourned at all. In the United States, English has become increasingly irrelevant, particularly among young adults. Once the most popular major at the nation’s leading colleges and universities, it now often trails more pragmatic disciplines, such as economics, politics, government, and, ironically, “communications,” which increasingly involves learning to write mobile-device-friendly ads for products like Cheez Doodles.

Many people interviewed for this obituary appeared unmoved by the news, including Anthony Incognito of Crystal City, a typical man in the street.

“Between you and I,” he said, “I could care less.”

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[charlabob]

One of our project reviewers sent a mail message to the entire team castigating us for making numerous grammer(sic) errors. (S)he used the term numerous times. I, who do know from where my next meal cometh, did not reply, except to quietly fix the errors. :-) Another nail in the coffin.

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[metrognome]

I think English is doing just fine; it’s American that has died. On Monday’s Headlines portion of Jay Leno’s show, he featured a want ad in which an ‘assettling’ torch was offered for sale. I had not heard of this method of weight loss before … unfortunately, the advertiser’s phone number was blacked out so I was not able to make an offer.

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[HMC Rich]

Its it’s,

your you’re,

to too two many rules,

Ingles es muy malo (Please excuse my Spanish, I really don’t know that language either)

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[anonyme]

I recently saw a headline on CNN about flouride in water. Even the American Dental Association has used this spelling on their website.

When English is spoken and written properly it is a beautiful thing. Meaning and nuance are essential to effective communication. When language is butchered and distorted, every relationship that relies on communication is similarly influenced.

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[redblack]

my wife and i stared at each other in disbelief recently when a commercial for some pharma snake-oil appeared on television, announcing that, if you need help paying for your prescription, astra-zeneca can help you with plans for less than zero dollars.

yes, the bold part is a direct and accurate quote.

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[JanS]

redblack…maybe they pay you to take it…kickbacks ;-)

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[Yardvark]

So glad to hear that english has passed. Such an horrible life it’s led. Chained down by the sine nobili. Forced to profer silent B’s, ignored S’s, unsplit infinitives. English has been broken since its start. Never nice in all its days. May Snobish give way to Globish. May communication reign.

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[JustSarah]

I’m sure it will surprise many to know that I care about this alot (sic). A friend and I were just discussing this issue over the weekend; “language evolves,” people say, “and you grammar nuts just need to get over it.” Yes, I understand that language evolves, and that evolution can be quite exciting – but it still depresses me when the evolution is due to ignorance, not innovation. I can’t get excited about the language evolving to default to, say “it’s” to mean both “belonging to it” and “it is/has,” because I know that evolution would only come about due to an ignorance of proper usage.

Yes, our language has some arbitrary elements, and no, I don’t want to discriminate against those who haven’t been given the educational tools to know the difference, but I really hate the idea of just giving up. Yet our public schools are definitely giving up on grammar.

I’m not going to pretend good grammar and spelling are easy to learn; in our language, they’re not. We’re the language in which George Bernard Shaw argued one could spell “fish” as “ghoti,” given our odd pronunciation variants. I just cannot abide giving up entirely on our strange but beautiful language.

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[KBear]

“The Lewiston (Maine) Sun-Journal has written of ‘spading and neutering.'”

There are some in this very forum who don’t seem to realize that spading a cat or dog is actually a very bad thing to do.

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[JustSarah]

KBear: I thought the same thing while reading that portion of the post. Someone in just the last few days wrote about whether a cat was “spade” – I had to bite my Internet tongue and not post asking if she could tell if the cat was club, diamond, or heart.

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[JoB]

the sad thing is that english hasn’t evolved…

it’s devolved..

sinking fast to the lowest common denominator:(

did i say that right?

;->

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[ws4ever]

I see misspellings in road signage, in college texts, in research studies, in magazine articles for “learned” publications. And not all are spell-check sound-alikes. Who’s on First? If paid news staff aren’t hep to these details, or being edited by other educated staff, what are we paying for? There are grey (or gray!) areas in politics, discussion, reasoning, but we should not extrapolate the ideas of acceptance to include grammar and spelling idiocies!! Shud wee (nails scratching on blackboard)?

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[datamuse]

The article’s third paragraph indicates the real problem, which is that copyeditors and proofreaders are no longer considered necessary. Standardized spelling and usage are actually fairly recent concepts where the written word is concerned.

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[dawsonct]

Good luck learning another language without a solid understanding of grammar.

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[sam-c]

that letter brings up many good points, but it has the time-line wrong. the language died when comic sans was invented.

thanks for posting the letter!

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[charlabob]

When did “asks” become a noun? When did “Questions” or “Issues” become “Asks” in meeting summaries. I can’t even get an answer from “Bing” so you all are my court of last resort.

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[KBear]

I’ll task you with making the ask.

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[waterworld]

I think “ask” became a noun right around the time “gift” became a verb (in senses other than, say, endowments). “My mother gifted me a car!” Ack.

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[redblack]

datamuse: widespread literacy is actually a fairly recent thing, too, then. i believe they’re about the same age, and probably evolved together with the propagation of the printed bible.

<peeve>and it’s alzheimer’s disease, people, not old-timer’s.</peeve>

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[KBear]

Actually, it’s “Alzheimer’s disease”, with a capital A.

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[redblack]

i’m from the e.e. cummings school of typing.

no disrespect intended.

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