Verily, Thou Hast Razed My Battle Frigate

Were I able, kind (and not so kind, but I love you anyway) readers of One Hundred Hundreds, to control just one thing about the world I may just well pick the use of language. Well, okay, I probably wouldn't select that if I only had one global power, but it's still something that is important to me (for reasons that, as a mathematician, I'm still not entirely sure of, mind you...) - I'd be much more likely to choose the control of education in general (assuming I had to pick a realistic social aspect.)

Anyway, my point is, would that I could ensure that the native speakers of a language did not butcher it to the point that it is almost unrecognisable. As my native language is English, that is what I shall be focusing on in this post today, however all of my points would (assumedly) have their parallels in, for instance, Japanese or Greek.

There are two main areas where, as a conscious speaker/reader/writer of English, I feel somewhat violated on what is approaching a more than daily basis. The first, and I would say most prolific, is Internet/Text talk. You all must surely know what I'm talking about - you see people on Facebook or some forum typing something along the lines of

"i lyk dis dis is teh funiest ting eva. also u is my best best frend in tha wurld lol lol"

I have tried, now, for some half an hour to come up with a phrase to write here that sums up my disdain for people who think that this is both an effective and intelligent method of communication. Alas, dear reader, I simply cannot put into words the ire that these people cause me. I can, of course, forgive the occasional spelling mistake made out of ignorance (e.g. spelling 'weird' as 'wierd') or out of the need for haste (e.g. saying 'teh' instead of 'the' when you have to post before a deadline - one hand may type faster than the other, and if you don't have time for proofreading then it's a casualty that, on occasion, cannot be helped.) I can also understand the use of initialisms and acronyms such as 'LOL' or 'BRB', and I don't mind them being used appropriately (generally only in chat sessions, mind you...And if you use them in actual speech then...well...woe betide...) It is when the error is deliberate that I gradually turn into a seething ball of hate - the literary Hulk, if you will.

The other area where I get incredibly annoyed is when I have to listen to people spout absolutely and utter grammatical codswallop - I swear I have, at various times, actually heard people misspell a word. Not mispronounce - misspell verbally (yes, in these situations, there is a difference...) Now, what I'm not talking about here is people who have terrible diction - instead it is people who insist on mangling their language as though it was some form of regurgitated cud. People who, for instance, upon attempting to say "Would you like to go to the bar tonight?" instead say "Issit that you wanna go out ta pub laters though?"

Issit that you wanna go out ta pub laters though?

Really, that's their idea of rational thought? I could have been dropped on my head as an infant and I'd still be able to come up with a more coherent thought than that. Goodness, people in their first lesson of conversational English can come up with better sentences than that - and they know what they mean.

Still, I can't get too upset, because the evolution of language is a natural process, and one that is quite important (to a point, though...) Were it not for our language changing over time, then 'you' would still be considered the plural form of 'thou', and anybody who used a contraction would be thought a moron. Still, though, it would be nice if the average person had a slight understanding of grammar, and perhaps some of the history of the language they are speaking/writing.

So, I suppose that I will sit here, wallowing in my tepid rage until it becomes linguistically acceptable to say "I gun go shoppang" and then head off to the supermarket. Until then I suppose that I won't be able to convince people that it's important to correctly use 'then' and 'than'; that it will be too difficult to make people understand why they should be using 'were' instead of 'was'; that it just won't matter if I inform people of when they should say 'me' and when they should say 'I'; and that there's no point in pointing out when someone could have removed the ambiguity from their speech by reordering their words so that tenses match, and the subjects and objects are clear. Still, at least it's okay to split the infinitive and end sentences with prepositions.

The moral of this story is that no one man can change the world, no matter what people say. If you want to better yourself intellectually then I would truly suggest you read a book on basic grammar (as well as a book on basic mathematics, but that's another blog post for when I'm annoyed by people on various feeds I read and can stand it no more...) but there is probably no point in trying to get the world as a whole to love the language they were born speaking, and all others they can learn. At least they aren't acting like teenagers and communicating in a series of indecipherable grunts.