Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2003-06-12 12:36 am
azurelunatic) wrote2003-06-12 12:36 am
Why my speechings are so well
I grew up in a strict household, though I didn't realize it at the time.
Among the many rules were my father's rules for speech. Slang was discouraged. As small children, he corrected us and made us say "Yes" instead of "Yeah". Sentence fragments were small. And far between.
The result was that I have a near-instinctive ear for fairly correct English. I score 99th percentile on most English tests, and can identify errors and correct them, though I may not be able to name the rule that the errors violated.
I know many words. I have to restrain myself from correcting the journal entries of my friends, especially some particular repeat offenders. It's not that they're stupid, it's just that they never learned English, even when it's their first language.
(I don't generally have difficulty with those who have learned English as a non-primary language. Most of these people are making an effort to write correctly, and it's certainly not their fault that English is one difficult and twisty bastard to learn.)
Current peeves:
Apostrophes are not pretty decorations. They are used to mark where a letter (or more than one) was removed from a word, or to indicate a state of ownership. (Examples: Darkside isn't Azz's Pretty.) They are also used as single quotes to, in the US, quote within a quote, or, elsewhere, quote things.
Insight is a special deep knowledge of something, a seeing-into kind of thing. I am granted insights into Darkside's behavior that most of his friends lack. To incite is to cause someone to do something. That Idiot Fuzzy would incite his friends to join him on more and more moronic missions that would inevitably land them in deep trouble.
Among the many rules were my father's rules for speech. Slang was discouraged. As small children, he corrected us and made us say "Yes" instead of "Yeah". Sentence fragments were small. And far between.
The result was that I have a near-instinctive ear for fairly correct English. I score 99th percentile on most English tests, and can identify errors and correct them, though I may not be able to name the rule that the errors violated.
I know many words. I have to restrain myself from correcting the journal entries of my friends, especially some particular repeat offenders. It's not that they're stupid, it's just that they never learned English, even when it's their first language.
(I don't generally have difficulty with those who have learned English as a non-primary language. Most of these people are making an effort to write correctly, and it's certainly not their fault that English is one difficult and twisty bastard to learn.)
Current peeves:
Apostrophes are not pretty decorations. They are used to mark where a letter (or more than one) was removed from a word, or to indicate a state of ownership. (Examples: Darkside isn't Azz's Pretty.) They are also used as single quotes to, in the US, quote within a quote, or, elsewhere, quote things.
Insight is a special deep knowledge of something, a seeing-into kind of thing. I am granted insights into Darkside's behavior that most of his friends lack. To incite is to cause someone to do something. That Idiot Fuzzy would incite his friends to join him on more and more moronic missions that would inevitably land them in deep trouble.
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(And I really hope I haven't made too many errors in this comment - that would be too embarrassing *g*)
Your writing is interesting, so I have taken you up on your offer and friended you.
Maria
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Welcome to the asylum! Hope you enjoy your stay!
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(I have a good excuse - I'm trying to teach myself New Joiseyan.)
(Oh, and I got a kick out of your description of the obnoxious, drawling Bostonian. I have one of those! Annoying Boston accents, I mean.)
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(I'm not too worried about entertaining you. The only person worth the trouble for anyone to entertain is ourselves, and when you do that, entertaining the audience tends to fall naturally into place. Smile and the world smiles with you, and all that drivel.)
(And in a way, the whole concept of being a stickler for spelling/grammar is ludicrous because of the nature, historically, of language - it's constantly in flux. Literally, it can change overnight. The dangling participles rule was invented by a 19th century grammarian who inserted it into his guidebook on a whim (his name escapes me, but he was really famous... I should know this). It technically doesn't exist otherwise. As I'm at least as uptight over correct spelling/grammar as you, I embrace this realization as an absurdity and get a great deal of amusement out of it.)
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I boldly split infinitives with the best of them, though.
Most grammar rules are bull (commas and apostrophes aren't ;D)
So, when you are told not to split an infinitive, it's because in Latin, it was impossible! Latin infinitives are ONE WORD!
The whole dangling participle thing I'd have to ask that old professor of mine who told me all this, but we're out of touch. Ah, well.
I highly recommend Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. It's short, sweet, and cheap.
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(By the way, New Jersey accents vary a lot. I have never heard the Brooklyn accent that is supposed to be a New Jersey accent outside of movies and speech defects. As far as I can tell, New Jersey's effect on my speech and that of people I grew up with is a slight overdulling of vowels, making more schwas than in other accents.)
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