Kids and English

[doomguardian]

Sorry to ask.
But is this (the above statement) even remotely serious?

I'm not joking, even look it up in the Urben Dictionary. www.urbendictionary.com

 

[Sheep]

For the record, I don't speak, or type like that.

SheepStar

 

[Rock&Roll Ninja]

Me and sheep here are teh ub:r 1337 haxxors, meaning:

A language in which numbers and symbols are put together to look like letters.

1337 isn't a language by any means... its English with a non-standard alphabet, like the signs from Futurama.

 

[claudermilk]

Nope, not a language. I'd say that falls under the heading of a cipher.

 

[shokhead]

My english is bad but i'm an english teacher compared to the elem school kids where i work. Hows this,i have a long handle dustpan and broom that they can use in the cafe. 9 out of 10 will ask,can i broom. I'll look at them and say,you mean can i sweep? Brick look and they just smile and dont say anything. Another one,they dont know what a urinal is. They crap in them. Somebody will come to me and say someone made a mess in the thing. I ask what thing. The long toilet.

 

[jaxvon]

Shokhead,

I cannot fault elementary school kids for ignorance, they're young. In certain situations, I can understand why they might not know about the verb "sweep" (though the misuse of the urinal is still strange). Nonetheless, I'm primarly talking about people sixteen or older who were born and raised with English as their primary language.

 

[agarwalro]

And you'd be incorrect again. Correctly the number would be "One hundred twenty-five and seven hundred eighty-nine thousandths." the decimal point always becomes the 'And'. Same with money.

When written, you are correct. I was mentioning the spoken way.

Wait, it might have to do with the use. I have seen and heard both of these styles, for example,

John Doe's score in the test is eighty five point one five percent (85.15%) and he is one and one tenth of a percent (1.10%) ahead of his friend who scored eighty four poing zero five percent (84.05%)

 

[doomguardian]

For the record, I don't speak, or type like that.

SheepStar

Poor guy...........

 

[shokhead]

Shokhead,

I cannot fault elementary school kids for ignorance, they're young. In certain situations, I can understand why they might not know about the verb "sweep" (though the misuse of the urinal is still strange). Nonetheless, I'm primarly talking about people sixteen or older who were born and raised with English as their primary language.

Hanging around the street corner to much doesnt help. Also,most everything starts in the home.

 

[majorloser]

Ahh, I'm sorry. I haven't been able to finish reading the posts.

Can't take my eyes off "shokheads" new avatar

 

[shokhead]

Ahh, I'm sorry. I haven't been able to finish reading the posts.

Can't take my eyes off "shokheads" new avatar

They just dont blink,do they?
Found a fun website with a ton of stuff. www.dribbleglass.com

 

[Rocky]

I beleive that the children in todays society know perfectly well HOW to read, write and speak. The main factor in my opinion is lazyness, or possibly the "cool" factor. Being a senior in high school, I see this all the time. For example, some of my friends can write perfectly cohesive scentences, but speak like complete morons. I tend to try to keep myself from dropping to that level though.

Ex 1) Mans be brave.

That seems to be a popular statement among a large group of kids at my school. Seriously though, does that make any sense? Not quite, and IMHO it makes the speaker sound stupid. BTW, I think they are trying to say "those guys are ignorant or brave" but it depends on the context. Anyways, being able to give a first hand opinion, kids are not becomming more stupid, or illiterate, rather they are just becomming lazy, or are falling into the all to popular "gotta talk like 50 cent" group. It's stupid, but what can you do.

 

[Hi Ho]

I just remembered an episode of 20/20 I saw a few weeks ago on ABC by John Stossel. I found it to be very interesting. HERE is a link to it but it but reading it just isn't the same.

 

[JohnOAS]

Regarding style guides, I wonder what such a guide would have to say about 'irregardless'. I was always taught that it is not a word and should never be used (the correct word is 'regardless').

I can honestly say that I dont recall having ever heard that one before. Is it likely that it's an Americanism?

I can't see how this affects this forum. If the members understand what you're typing, then whats the big problem?

Sheep has a good point. There is a lot to be said for context. If your grammar and spelling are suficient to get your point across, in a forum such as this, that is usually good enough. If, on the other hand, you are writing an academic paper, or preparing documentation which is intended to be incorporated into a formal body of knowledge on some subject, it would certainly be appropriate to prepare it accordingly.

I am an eighteen year old high school senior and I must say that many kids these days do not know any sort of proper English. I hear it all around me every day. "yo dude i got to get that thing"....

The education system is certainly partially to blame. Education, like most disciplines, has "phases" or even "trends". Here in Australia, teaching the fundamentals currently seems to have less focus than it did when I was at high school. It wasn't taught very seriously then either, in my opinion. I never particularly enjoyed English at school. This was probably because, in my opinion, too much time was spent interpreting various literary works, and too little on the basics.

The ability to write properly directly relates to the ability to read. The more exposure to the written language, the more likely the person can compose a proper sentence. Familiarity breeds knowledge.

I agree completely. I'm sure that a large portion of my comprehension and writing abilty is a result of the fact that I read a lot when younger.

[rant]One of my (and my wife's) pet peeves at the moment is all of these "educational" toys that claim to help "educate" your child. Various electronic book type toys where you buy plug-in stories and let the kid learn to read by themselves. If you can't afford to read an actual book with your child, or get your hands on some real books that will engage them, then a bucketload of AA-cell powered nonsense is not going to solve the problem. Our not-quite 2 year old daughter watches the occasional kids DVD, but she spends several times as much time with real books. (That last sentence doesn't feel grammatically correct, it's the two "time" words I suspect, but I think my meaning is clear).[/rant]

 

[Amechwarrior]

I had a conversation about this topic a couple weeks ago with my friend. We are in our early 20s and are heavy computer users. He was compaining about hearing a young girl say "kthxbye..." in real life. This went on into a 10 min joke conversation, role playing as kids years from now, who use todays IMspeak as spoken words. We managed to get 10 min. out of spoken IM and 1337 involving a group of kids and a old guys representing us, telling them off about how they speak. It was all very funny in a "had to be there" moment.

I ended up thinking that if language is used to convey ideas from one person to another, the "dumbing down" of english could also be looked at as stream-lining, making more efficient or weeding out unnessesary parts. If what I say,write or type quickly and easily gets my idea to the recepient, does it matter how it looks or sounds as long as it gets the job done?

But if you go off on your own, more efficient language, who can you talk to but yourself? This is where standards come in. Language is evolving and new standards of how words are used and when are constanly changing. It seems every generation has its new uses for older words, new words and words that are no longer used. With every new set there are those who get left behind, they mainly converse with those who speak like them and so too, the new gen. does the same, although both sides can still talk to each other.

I will not even try to come to a conclusion of the older ways are better, or is the new way making us dumber. Consider english from 200 or 400 years ago, I bet our well written engish looks dumb to the writers of the past.

As a side note, I remember reading this somewhere online about punctuation use in chat, consider:

"She had a crack baby."
"She had a crack, baby."

In the end who is to say this or that way of using a living language is right or wrong, if you do not understand what everyone else in the room is saying maybe your are the one who is wrong.

NOTE:
My bad on any spelling, grammar errors.

 

[shokhead]

I can honestly say that I dont recall having ever heard that one before. Is it likely that it's an Americanism?



Sheep has a good point. There is a lot to be said for context. If your grammar and spelling are suficient to get your point across, in a forum such as this, that is usually good enough. If, on the other hand, you are writing an academic paper, or preparing documentation which is intended to be incorporated into a formal body of knowledge on some subject, it would certainly be appropriate to prepare it accordingly.






The education system is certainly partially to blame. Education, like most disciplines, has "phases" or even "trends". Here in Australia, teaching the fundamentals currently seems to have less focus than it did when I was at high school. It wasn't taught very seriously then either, in my opinion. I never particularly enjoyed English at school. This was probably because, in my opinion, too much time was spent interpreting various literary works, and too little on the basics.



I agree completely. I'm sure that a large portion of my comprehension and writing abilty is a result of the fact that I read a lot when younger.

[rant]One of my (and my wife's) pet peeves at the moment is all of these "educational" toys that claim to help "educate" your child. Various electronic book type toys where you buy plug-in stories and let the kid learn to read by themselves. If you can't afford to read an actual book with your child, or get your hands on some real books that will engage them, then a bucketload of AA-cell powered nonsense is not going to solve the problem. Our not-quite 2 year old daughter watches the occasional kids DVD, but she spends several times as much time with real books. (That last sentence doesn't feel grammatically correct, it's the two "time" words I suspect, but I think my meaning is clear).[/rant]

OMG Every forum i've been in but for one has had somebody correct my grammar,or lack of it. Most the time its when they get mad at me. I've said it once,i've said it 1000X,everybody is brave behine the keypad. 99.9% of the people just would'nt correct a 53 year old man. I'm a one finger chicken pecker typist and just did'nt care about school,my fault and nobody eles's but mine but on the forums,if you understand what was typed then that should be good enough without comment. LOL,my 19 year old corrects me enough.

 

[Hi Ho]

If there is one thing I find annoying on forums, it is when people correct others' grammar. I would never do that.

 

[JohnOAS]

If there is one thing I find annoying on forums, it is when people correct others' grammar. I would never do that.

I wouldn't bother with a post with the specific purpose of correcting grammar. However, as I find real bad grammar (as opposed to that used for a purpose, be it humour, brevity or some other context) a bit frustrating, I may make suggestions politely on occasion tacked onto a post I was going to make anyway.

For this reason, I don't mind people correcting me either. Typo's are just a fact of life and not worth pointing out on forums, IMHO, except for perhaps my own if something needs clearing up.

 

[Hi Ho]

I wouldn't bother with a post with the specific purpose of correcting grammar. However, as I find real bad grammar (as opposed to that used for a purpose, be it humour, brevity or some other context) a bit frustrating, I may make suggestions politely on occasion tacked onto a post I was going to make anyway.

For this reason, I don't mind people correcting me either. Typo's are just a fact of life and not worth pointing out on forums, IMHO, except for perhaps my own if something needs clearing up.

Correcting really bad grammar, so bad that it is difficult to read, doesn't bother me either. It's when people nitpick and point out the smallest details. What's really annoying, and funny at the same time, is when the "correction" is wrong.

 

[naisphoo]

Does it matter really? Does everyone here knows that the English language you are speaking today is much more different than the one spoken by Shakespeare? I have to confess, English is not my native tongue, French is. And it is a much more rigorous language than the English one. And the same goes with the French language that the one spoken today is very different than the one spoken by Moliere. So what it tells you is that languages, any language as a matter of fact, when being spoken is evolving. The same goes with writing. The only language that is not evolving is called "dead language", like Latin ( I know it because I studied Latin for 7 years when I was younger, beside German and English and Greek and French of course, those are part of the requirements of the French educational system because I was a very good student, although my major was sciences, amazing isn't it?). Though supposedly, Latin is the official language of the Vatican with Italian, but you know what, Latin is only used for religious services. So does it matter that kids today can't write or speak the English language properly? Not at all. Because if those kids are not speaking English who will?