I should have averted my eyes, I know. It’s my own fault for looking, and I’d only bought a copy of heat because I’d already read this week’s You. But once you’ve read a statement like “Move aside, Lady Gaga: Justin Bieber has taken the reigns as the most powerful person on Twitter!” you just can’t un-see that. When basic spelling errors start appearing in magazines read by impressionable young sales people called Candice or Jade, you know that civilisation is circling the plughole and there’s nothing you or I can do about it.
Normally, you can prevent these kinds of horrible encounters. You can stay away from Facebook or Twitter, refuse to read work emails, and generally eschew the company of stupid people. But it’s getting harder and harder to avoid the kind of egregious grammatical confusion that now infests our media and advertising.
This is what bugs me, you see. Not the fact that people make these mistakes, which is to be expected, but the fact that people whose job it is to not make these mistakes still get it wrong. Ads and magazines are written — supposedly — by people specially trained in the correct use of the language. They’re supposed to be checked by copy editors and signed off. And yet more and more ads, especially those on radio, are full of the kind of basic errors that would have seen my Std 5 English exercise book covered in red crosses.
Now, the urge to correct spelling is nothing new. The trenches of Twitter are patrolled by a vast army of grammar Nazis, and the war on Your vs You’re has been going on for years now. There are Facebook groups devoted to it. Google it and you’ll get over 1.6 billion hits; some rapper even made a video about it to the tune of Gotye’s someone that I used to know, which got 1.8 million YouTube views. (Clearly, it’s an issue.)
But there are other contenders sneaking in, other sources of confusion that are gradually infiltrating the words we see and hear, and becoming so prevalent that soon there will be no distinction between right and wrong, and we will be faced with grammar anarchy (grammarchy, if you’re looking for yet another portmanteau to add to the collection).
These are the ones that worry me the most:
Reign vs rein. As the heat example above demonstrates, reign and rein are now so completely confused that one might as well give up and let the forces of darkness take over. But just for the record: it’s a riding term, so it’s give someone free rein, not free reign. The troglodytes should not be given free rein to reign over us etc.
Less vs fewer. Less is not more. Less is used for things that aren’t measurable in individual increments, like water. Less water, fewer bottles of water.
Amount vs number of. Same problem. Nobody seems to understand that if you can list things — like cars, or accidents, or traffic jams as a result of a number of cars encountering other cars in a number of accidents, you use “number of” not “amount of”.
Loose vs lose. My old pet hate, it’s been around for so long now that I no longer have the emotional energy to invest in caring about it.
Does any of this really matter? Perhaps not. But somehow, as someone who works in communication and who loves words, and who believes that they matter, I can’t let go of the idea that there’s some kind of injustice here. That if we let the gossip magazines and radio ads get away with misusing them, all of us who use the language lose out.
I refuse to stand back while Justin Bieber takes the reigns.
grammarchy. i like that one; it’s one of the more amusing portmanteaux i’ve seen lately.
my main pet peeves involve marketing-speak. at the top of the list is “to incent” … and since i deal with a lot of corporate conference calls, i hear “incents” a lot. blah. the use of “incents” does nothing but incense me.
i can’t deal with loose/lose either. i’ve been known to come close to blows over it, actually.
speaking of which, i very nearly smacked my kid’s english teacher on one parent night when he was grade 10 when said teacher said, “i really don’t focus on that much on grammar.” dafuq?
yeah, this was an afrikaans medium school, but really? omfg.
And “incredible” means “without credibility” while “decimate” means to “destroy one tenth of something” – their misuse are my pet hates.
simple, it’s a pun innit?
I think that “takes the reigns” is clever. Bieber, asides his virtual horse, riding the cyber wave of teenage hysteria, clearly rules.
@Paul: English is a dynamic language used as a compulsory communications medium by many, for whom it is a second or third language. We have to accept that english philology will change according to changing needs – especially in technical and IT babble. In many way this makes English one of the most exciting languages, if we can learn to overlook the occasional cringeworthy useage .
Incredible has long had a much wider meaning than “without credibility”. Decimate derives from the Roman habit of killing every 10th member of a cohort, as revenge or
until the traitor /truth emerges. Its use in modern language has long forgotten that fact
Grammarchy is also a pet hate of mine. It’s a shame how much the written word is taken for granted. My only solace for now is that at least some books are written well enough for me to take a holiday from bad grammar.
I’m constantly shocked at the poor quality of subbing in The Daily Maverick. Last place you’d expect to see such bad grammar.
“Let someone in the queue in front of you with less items” – one of the suggestions on the FNB You Can Help website. This, to me, is a far more offensive aspect of the campaign than those video clips.
Well, it is a windmill. Tilt away, just don’t expect much to change (besides language use, that is).
(don’t you sort of feel like you are becoming your parents when you do this? And what is it with all that rap music these days?)
…and what about the common error : comparing something “to” something rather than “with” something ?
Absolutely right Sarah – drives me mad when I hear the misuse of words, due to a lack of understanding – or just not caring. It’s probably because I also work with words – as a translator.
Teeth on edge for me – ‘I’m looking so forward to…..’ which I have heard in a radio ad. My English teacher must be turning in her grave!
Falling standards since English became the language of mass communication is something mother tongue speakers are going to have to live with. Power of the masses, whatever. Or at least until Mandarin takes over. As Hameeda says, we can draw solace in reading books, internalizing the higher standards. But what a battle! Even as I write, the yank spell-checker removes the ‘s’s from my verbs, replacing them with ‘z’s. One gets tired of correcting the corrector and lets things slide..
Obsessing over grammar rules and spelling is yet another “vile white practice” to silence the voices and to belittle people whose primary language may not be English. In fact English is most likely their 3rd or 4th language! I wonder how many languages you’re fluent in?
Furthermore, English is made overly complex by the self professed guardians of the English language which creates a class/caste system so that the “educated” can cling to their privileges.
Its shameful to foist these OCD tendencies onto a diverse culture like ours. Fortunately, in our new world of social media that transcends geography, culture, class…NOBODY CARES about adhering to your Queen’s grammar rules. Instead, we simply make ‘em up in cyberland as we go along!
I used to be used to the use of useless uses of conjunctions. But I got over it.
OK, Sarah, you really need to read this article–how social media complicates life!
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/02/should-what-happens-at-applebees-i-stay-i-at-applebees/272756/
@Dave Harris. I totally disagree. Standardisation of language helps avoid confusion. It seems that aspiring towards excellence is another “vile white practice”, while you would have us descend into mediocrity.
P.S. there are some grammar errors in your post: 1) comma after ‘in fact’; 2) ‘self-professed’; 3) ‘It’s shameful’.
Dave, are you a bot? A massive in-joke? An experiment? You surely can’t be a real person. I did wonder how you’d respond to something completely non-political and my goodness you are consistent. I’m not referring to people who speak the language, by the way. I’m referring to English language copy writers who are paid to use it correctly in ads and in magazines – and who by their misuse are proliferating incorrect usage and doing a disservice to everyone. In fact, many of the people who get this wrong happen to be white, but that’s neither here nor there.
But you conveniently miss that point because, as usual, you can’t be bothered to read anything properly – you just assume. Unless of course you are in fact just a bot.
dave harris — i’m native-level fluent in four languages, reasonably fluent in six more, and can muddle my way through three additional languages. what *is* your point? people are actually confused as to what my “mother tongue” actually is because i go back and forth so effortlessly.
[my late mother was native-level fluent in five languages, and taught three of them in a classroom setting. my "mother tongue" is whatever she felt like speaking to me at any given moment.]
nguni — mandarin won’t be a language that “takes over” for a long list of reasons. if you have a reasonable grasp of chinese history, you will know why. [most people i know who in fact do have a reasonable grasp of chinese history are baffled that people think that will be a chinese-language conquest on the same level that there was of english, french, and spanish]
Sarah, calling people “bots”, “experiments”, “jokes” etc. is demeaning and does not engender civil discussions.
“respond to something completely non-political”
Foisting your Queen’s English on us here in Africa is extremely political, my dear. We would and should all be communicating in an African language if white supremacy did not exist.
@mundundu
My point is demanding unrealistically high proficiency in English is another tactic to discriminate against non-native English speakers, especially in the workplace.
@Dave Harris. Please stop referring to ‘Queen’s English’. There are rules that one has to adhere to when using any language. While it is understandable that non first-language English speakers may struggle with certain nuances of the English language, it is essential that rules are emphasised, so that the grasp of the language improves. A blanked dismissal of language rules being unimportant is just plain stupid. You really do want us mired in mediocrity don’t you?
Sarah:
one of the other important aspects of English usage is that of understanding proper definitions. Certainly, grammar is important, but without proper definitions, communications and understanding itself is impossible.
you clearly need to brush up on the difference between a bot and a troll.
Dave, by your reasoning schools should stop teaching languages and we should all just speak our own version of Funigalo or Internet slang?
Did you know that Is even more offensive to the respective cultures than trying to at least speak properly?
I fail to see how you can possibly justify making this article out to be racist, and in fact believe that people like yourself who constantly search for racism in day to day banter do this country far more harm than racists themselves.
@Harris: “Sarah, calling people “bots”, “experiments”, “jokes” etc. is demeaning and does not engender civil discussions.”
This coming from one of the most abusive posters on Thought Leader?
And, once again (as Sarah has already pointed out), you show a complete lack of ability to read an article property before commenting. And when Sarah points this out to you, rather than acknowledge you are wrong, you latch onto a tiny part of her post and ignore the rest.
You really are abusive, childish and intellectually dishonest. It is quite sickening.
I LOVE reading Dave Harris’s comments, they are so wonderfully silly and OTT that I can’t help but giggle out loud. How he manages to mangle together personal insults, a lecture in lefty political correctness, and be racist in a small space is well…… admirable. Sarah did you check it for any bad grammar ?
@Robert
Its obvious that any language has inherent grammar rules etc. but the question is, must we all aspire to Sarah’s standard (her Queen’s English) or are we to be more tolerant and accepting of non-native English speakers. Why can we be more tolerant of written English in the same way we are becoming more tolerant of the diversity of non-native speakers’ English accents? Remember how African/Indian/Coloured accents used to be mocked and demeaned on the Springbok radio?
Since racial discrimination is illegal, nowadays employers find other subtler ways to discriminate against non-native English speakers – even in the US with it strict anti-discrimination laws http://employment.findlaw.com/employment-discrimination/national-origin-discrimination-and-english-language-only-rules.html
The attitude people have towards language, especially the written word, blows my mind. There is a damn good reason we have rules; they are there to substitute for what is usually said with tone, hand movements, body language, etc.!
There is a reason the abbreviation tldr (too long did not read) has come into popular usage – people hastily spitting out walls of text without considering that their presentation, spacing, punctuation, grammar, spelling, capitili(s)ation, and so on, affect the reader’s experience and understanding.
English, or any other language for that matter, is a beautiful beast that has grown organically over centuries. Of course it will change, in fact it has to! However, unadulterated laziness is a poor reason to change a working model.
Here’s my favourite – ‘there’ and ‘their’. Like Harris, very annoying.
Hey Sarah, can I lend your ear for a minute? Will you borrow it to me?
Another one of my pet hate’s is the rogue apostrophe. Its something that Australian’s seem to get wrong all the time, apart from the misuse of “less”. I don’t think they have discovered the word “few” yet. Perhaps they weren’t taught it in schools twenty years ago because the mistake even appears in print.
Dumbing down to save people’s embarrassment isn’t the solution. Let’s not join the degeneration of civilisation in the “first world” evidenced by lazy language usage. (Dave, I have with my tongue firmly placed, cheekily hidden some “mistakes” here just for you – dude, are you serious?)
@Harris: “but the question is, must we all aspire to Sarah’s standard (her Queen’s English) or are we to be more tolerant and accepting of non-native English speakers”
Ever the dishonest troll, twisting what people say.
Sarah’s criticism is aimed at people whose job it is to write correct English. It is what they are hired to do. It is *not* an attack on non-native speakers.
Really, is there not a fibre of your being that is capable of honest debate?
Furthermore Harris, if someone were to write an article criticizing the incorrect use of an African language by those who are hired to write the language correctly, I doubt you would be posting such vitriol.
In fact, I am willing to bet you would take the opportunity to rage about white people not bothering to learn the language properly, say they are are disrespectful for not using the language properly, etc.
Oh Harris, you must be in the department of basic education if you think we should dumb down the English language for non native speakers. Drop the bar to raise the results.
And the Springbok jibe is really a feable attempt to inject racism into this topic. There are many examples where other accents (used by white South Africans) have been used in jest.
My pet hate is to/too – I cannot believe people mess that up.
I saw somewhere today break/brake which is a new one for me (used in context – “tax brakes” – hahaha – maybe not so much of an error).
Anybody ever seen the famous “Two Ronnies” sketch on “Four Candles”? Verbally doing what bad spelling has done for years…
Actually, DH’s English is pretty good. It was the first thing I noticed about his writing. This gaping discrepancy between HOW he writes and WHAT he writes. Normally his ideas are shared by folks who battle to spell every second word.. What a waste of a reasonable education!
@ Mundundu
I don’t have much knowledge of Chinese history, pray tell: why should Mandarin not become the dominant language on earth within 10 years? 1.3 billion people is not a bad start! Is the rest of the world lacking the necessary IQ to learn written Chinese?
So what do you do with your 10 fluent languages, are you a translator?
@Reducto
Firstly, your assumption that this article is “aimed at people whose job it is to write correct English” is being dishonest. There are no jobs at Twitter, Facebook etc. to police the use of English! LOL
Secondly, why can’t “people whose job it is to write correct English” be non-native speakers too? Job reservation to favour native English speakers becomes discriminatory, doesn’t it? But then again, as a beneficiary of apartheid, its a privilege that hard to wean yourself off.
Thirdly, your claim “if someone were to write an article criticizing the incorrect use of an African language ” is pure fabrication. In realist, its rare (I have NEVER witnessed it) to see ANY African demand that non-Africans should adhere to the grammar rules that govern African languages.
So who’s really being dishonest here?
Anyway, back to the issue – don’t you think that demanding the Queen’s English from workers leads to discrimination in the workplace against non-native English speakers who are usually the economically disadvantaged. Btw, just to point out that this goes beyond just race, this also includes Afrikaners?
CORRECTION: “Btw, just to point out that this goes beyond just race, this also includes Afrikaners!”
@nguni
“Normally his ideas are shared by folks who battle to spell every second word.”
You bizarre view of the voiceless in our society actually proves my point. Its you and your ilk with your arcane English grammar rules that stifles these voices who are non-native English speakers with your arrogance, name calling and intimidation. How sad indeed.
@Harris:
“Firstly, your assumption that this article is “aimed at people whose job it is to write correct English” is being dishonest.”
Again, you show your inability to actually read an article before commenting. Sarah says: “This is what bugs me, you see. Not the fact that people make these mistakes, which is to be expected, but the fact that people whose job it is to not make these mistakes still get it wrong.”
So to twist the meaning of her article is typical Dave Harris dishonesty.
“Secondly, why can’t “people whose job it is to write correct English” be non-native speakers too? Job reservation to favour native English speakers becomes discriminatory, doesn’t it?”
Nobody is advocating job reservation for native speakers you dishonest troll. But if you are hired to write correct English, then you should know the difference between “reigns” and “reins”. It is your JOB not to make that mistake, native or non-native speaker. I was merely pointing out, Sarah was not attacking non-native speakers as a group for making the mistake. But you seek to twist what I say, as usual.
As for your third point, given your track record, I highly doubt you would not take the opportunity to attack white people over their use of an African language should that be the subject.
Part 2: “”don’t you think that demanding the Queen’s English from workers leads to discrimination in the workplace against non-native English speakers who are usually the economically disadvantaged.”"
There should not be work place discrimination against non-native speakers. In most fields, being a non-native speaker should not count against you. But if your job requires the correct use of a language – such as being an editor – then you *should* be able to use the language correctly, and not get mixed up between “reigns” and “reins”.
How are you not getting this?
My pet hate is when people (english-speaking) say Old Year’s Eve – there is no such thing unless we are going backwards in time!