Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be surprised to discover that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve used this statement in several past columns: It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a miracle that anyone learns English. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m instantly reminded of the song Professor Henry Higgins blurts out early in the movie and play, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My Fair Lady.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
The professor, a dialectician and grammarian, sings \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why Can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the English Teach Their Children How to Speak?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as he laments Eliza Doolittle\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s use of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153aawww\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gawwn,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a form of Cockney-speak people of that time and place had grown accustomed to.<\/p>\n
English is unpredictable. The schwa, for example, that phonetic symbol that looks like an upside-down \u00e2\u20ac\u0153e,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and is called a neutral sound, can represent any vowel sound. There are only five vowels in the language (six if you count \u00e2\u20ac\u0153y\u00e2\u20ac\u009d), but 14 or 15 vowel sounds, depending on which part of the country you live in.<\/p>\n
Yes, English is a strange tongue. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a language that renders the vowel combination of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ou\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a half dozen ways, representing a host of vowels.<\/p>\n
My first year of teaching high school writing classes, I discovered that almost all of the students who made noticeable and numerous errors in their compositions appeared to make the same kinds of errors. So, in my naivet\u00c3\u00a9, I set out to compose a tiny manual that codified the 50 or 60 errors students made. So ambitious was my plan that I figured my list of corrections might apply to all English-writing students.<\/p>\n
Yes, by isolating the various errors, showing how to correct them and prescribing exercises that would guarantee that students would never again commit those silly booboos; we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be on our way to perfect writing. After all, how difficult can remediation of half a hundred misuses be? Well, after 33 years of chasing commas and writing the same comments on students\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 papers, the errors continue to appear.<\/p>\n
As part of the Facebook generation, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a lot of regard for the finished products of submissions of many in my circle. Why is it so difficult to distinguish between your and you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re? Between to, two and too? between a lot, alot and allot? Or its and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s? How long have these linguistic butcherings existed?<\/p>\n
Over the years I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve acquired perhaps 40 texts on correct English. Almost without fail, the books contain lists of errant uses and mispronunciations. And though in my naive days, I assumed the list was small, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned the hideous truth: It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s enormous. Equally amazing is that some texts go back 60 years, with the same errors highlighted.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear why English teachers don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have any friends. Would you like it if some nit-picking, college-educated, smarter-than-thou teacher type prevented you from speaking or writing much because of constant interruptions: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mayhem, not mayham, unless you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re referring to a particular piece of porcine protein that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plentiful before June.<\/p>\n
As you may have surmised, I never finished that planned usage manual that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d hoped would enable everyone to speak and write like Rex Harrison, the protagonist in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My Fair Lady.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The list of verbal speed bumps is simply too large. And besides, some of today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s texting generation might have already created a vast lexicon of abbreviations meant to represent complete thoughts.<\/p>\n
Monday, traveling south on Eighth Street, I drove alongside a young man riding his bike on the sidewalk. I noticed that periodically he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d take both hands off the handlebars. Why? Well, he was texting, and a serious texter needs one hand to hold the cell phone and the other to punch in ROFLMFAO, LOL and IMHO.<\/p>\n
And that makes one wonder whether the thousands of words that make up the language of Shakespeare and Milton may eventually become obsolete, or be used only as part of a series of abbreviations. If we know that IMHO stands for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153in my humble opinion,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d do we even care about the meaning of each word being represented here? Can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t today\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s generation simply agree on what it means, without taking the trouble to dig deeper?<\/p>\n
IMHO, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a quick way to dismantle any language. And I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t LOL as I express that fear.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
Dining out is a great pleasure, even though treating the Trujillo clan can often cost up to 80 bucks.<\/p>\n
Inflation is real. In 1954, when the family drove to my sister\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s wedding in Las Cruces, the restaurant tab for seven of us, as they say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153tore the heck out of a 20-dollar bill.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nBut back to the present, when a full after-church restaurant meal, not including tip, costs as much as a car payment.<\/p>\n
Why, then, am I addicted to eating out? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great to gather around a table with the confidence that none of us diners needs to clear the table after the meal and load the dishwasher, or wash things by hand.<\/p>\n
I recall a meal at Dick\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Restaurant where I ordered a Cobb salad and was asked by the new, rather callow waiter what kind of dressing I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like. I told him I wanted \u00e2\u20ac\u0153French \u00c2\u00ad\u00e2\u20ac\u201d on the side.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Well, that puzzled the waiter, who obviously wondered whether I requested that all the dressing go to one side of the salad rather than being spread evenly.<\/p>\n
My oft-repeated complaint is that if I even mention a dressing, the salad sometimes comes back with six quarts of the stuff gooped over the lettuce and tomatoes. Finally, the young man seemed to have caught on. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, I see! You want to pour it on yourself.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
I said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153exactly.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Then my second-born, Diego, said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dad, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d look funny with dressing poured over your head!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d At that restaurant, thankfully, salad dressings comes in small plastic pouches, which let diners determine how much and whether the vinaigrette goes on one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s head.<\/p>\n
And if women can use mayonnaise to condition their hair, why can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t men pour on as much dressing as they wish?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be surprised to discover that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve used this statement in several past columns: It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a miracle that anyone learns English. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m instantly reminded of the song Professor Henry Higgins blurts out early in the movie and play, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My Fair Lady.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The professor, a dialectician and grammarian, sings \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why Can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the English Teach Their Children […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1392"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1393,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392\/revisions\/1393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}