[Heineken]

Would anyone care to speculate on WHY English has gone to hell?

[mgibbons19]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('coyote', 'A')t the risk of arousing feminist ire, two that get a groan from me are 'womyn' and 'wimmin.' Really, can't we have a discussion without expressing our outrage by deliberately mispelling words? It's like bucking the establishment by putting your pants on backwards.

Of course, perhaps I'm just being an insensitive myn.

('Grrrl,' on the other hand... oh, behave!)

[MalcolmV]

It's all much of a muchness as my dear old Mom used to say. There is a retreat from reason. If you don't question the conventional paradigm you get to live in a McMansion and drive a SUV. Of course it does give rise to a certain cognitive dissidence, short attention span and denial of reality, like Peak Oil. Poor grammar follows from unclear thinking. See Al Gores' new book Assault On Reason. What can we expect when politicians, media and business bombard us with constant untruths?

We were sitting at the dining room table with friends when the definition of a word came up for discussion. My sister got the dictionary. This guy accused her of cheating because she got reference material.

I am so glad that I don't do corporate business meetings any more. I've stopped reading Dilbert. People would make these statements that only sounded like they meant something. I've even seen them vote on the laws of physics! Now I don't have to use a Bafflegab Generator or play Buzzword Bingo

[Carlhole]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'W')ould anyone care to speculate on WHY English has gone to hell?

[CrudeAwakening]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'W')ould anyone care to speculate on WHY English has gone to hell?

[CrudeAwakening]

Actually, Heineken, I think it's due to a combination of influences - including the postmodern notion that absolute standards are to be regarded with suspicion, so inaccuracies are allowed to creep in. Recently, where I live, it was proposed that "text/SMS" language should be permitted in answering school examination questions.

But I think a large part must be just that people don't seem to read as much - there are so many competing demands for our leisure time these days. Anyone who reads a lot and has a reasonable visual memory should never spell "losing" as "loosing". Good readers tend to be good spellers, in my experience.

[Heineken]

This would be my short list of the reasons why "English has gone to hell"; they start off with the ones already mentioned by SpringCreekFarm and CrudeAwakening:

1. Educational systems and methods are deteriorating.
2. People are reading less (and spending more time on I-Phones, I-Pods, computer games, and the idiot box).
3. New communication technology (e.g., text messaging, chat rooms, and Blackberries) has caused people to treat English as infinitely plastic and endlessly customizable.
4. English has become the language of globalism. It's an easy language to learn poorly but a hard one to learn well; as a result, billions speak bad English, and thus bad English has become the norm.
5. We've become taxed for time (for a whole separate list of reasons, but information overload is a key one), and constantly look for shortcuts. This affects the care we put not only into writing things but also into reading.
6. English has been hijacked by politicians, interest groups, entertainers, and advertisers, who twist and torture it mercilessly to serve their own ends. (Yes, the "womyn's" movement is an example.)
7. Growing specialization of occupations (fueled in large part by the Oil Age) has led to severe deficits in writing skills even among otherwise well-educated people, who can't afford to spend time on anything other than their narrow fields. (This factor overlaps some of the others.)
8. The printed word, increasingly, is being replaced by the electronic word, which seems more impermanent and therefore less important as an object of care and deliberation.

I'm sure this list can be added to!

[TheDude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', 'W')ould anyone care to speculate on WHY English has gone to hell?

[TheDude]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', '7'). Growing specialization of occupations (fueled in large part by the Oil Age) has led to severe deficits in writing skills even among otherwise well-educated people, who can't afford to spend time on anything other than their narrow fields. (This factor overlaps some of the others.)

[katkinkate]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mekrob', '.')...We've shifted away from reading Dickens and the like for fun to reading Harry Potter and Steven King.....

[coyote]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Heineken', '
')1. Educational systems and methods are deteriorating.
2. People are reading less (and spending more time on I-Phones, I-Pods, computer games, and the idiot box).

[dinopello]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('coyote', 'W')hat did folks do before we sat around staring at a box? Read, perhaps? Talk?

[Heineken]

Although it is certainly more "interactive," I think the Internet has some TV-like qualities. Like TV, it involves sitting and being entertained by staring at a screen and fiddling with various keys and knobs. Without great personal discretion and control, it can be a monumental time-waster. I'm not sure whether it contributes to better writing or has just been another feed into the general decline.

[AndyK]

My personal peeve...

Affect and effect. They are not the same! One is a verb and the other a noun.

[CarnbY]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Aimrehtopyh', 'W')hat drives me up the wall is when people say "different than" when they should say "different from". Spelling and grammar crimes are bad enough, but this error is such a glaring logical inconsistency it makes my scalp twitch.

"The lighting in here is different than the other room." Sounds okay to most people but makes me want to commit felony assault.

[Heineken]

Here's a good one: It's "desiccate," not "dessicate."

Hardly anyone knows that.

[coyote]

That is a good one.

[CrudeAwakening]

"separate" not "seperate"

using the wrong principal/principle

"your" for "you're"

and "their" for "they're" or even "there"

[coyote]

Here's a relevant article: the No Child Left Behind policy is expanding on reading and math, to the detriment of other studies:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he report, being released Wednesday, says that of the districts reporting an increase, elementary schools are spending on average 37 minutes more per day on reading, math or both since the law was passed.

Nearly half of the districts said they have cut time in elementary schools for non-tested subjects such as social studies, science, art, music and gym. The cuts across these various subjects totaled about 30 minutes a day, according to the report.

[pillowhead]

In the larger scheme of things... I would say we are moving towards having a single language that will eventually consist of nothing but 0s and 1s. This is not at all a "degradation" but rather an extreme perfection through which language finally reaches its death. English, the most mechanical language with the most nouns, is already much closer to this.

(If the doomers are right, and we get a Mad Max scenario, then the exact opposite will occur. The survivors will be split up into isolated regions so that a multiplicity of languages will evolve. In the North-West US, perhaps some will evolve into a totally different species or will have no language at all.)