Ralph Bailey: Just sayin' we should pay attention to grammar
| Friday, Aug 28 2009 12:57 PM
Last Updated Friday, Aug 28 2009 01:03 PM
Images
Alex Horvath / The Californian Ralph Bailey columnist
I recently read with great joy a columnist in this paper explaining the difference between it's and its. I felt like a freed slave! (As if my suburban self knows anything about hard labor.)
However, I finally felt emancipated to expose and correct some of the more common English errors made in everyday conversation. Mistakes that are too often committed by you, radio folk, television broadcasters and even lazy teachers.
Some will resent this column, insisting who does this Bailey think he is looking down his highfalutin grammatical nose at us. But I guarantee I will change how you speak!
I guarantee it!
Let's begin with the use of the verbs "go" and "like" as synonyms for the verb "to say" or "said." For example, "My husband hates Bailey's column, and I'm like, 'Well honey don't read it' and he goes, 'but I love to read the paper,' and I'm like, 'Well read someone else.'"
UUUGGGG!!!! My ears are bleeding!!!! And you sound like your 14-year-old daughter talking to her friends at the mall!
More technically, the past tense of the verb to plea is pleaded. The defendant pleaded not guilty, not pled. Yes, some dictionaries later recognize "pled," but any self-respecting journalist who's ever read the reporter's Bible (AP Stylebook) knows that the colloquial "pled" is totally unacceptable. Some editors and producers claim "pled" is more "conversational." Well, so is "ain't" but I wouldn't use it in a news show!
Why pick on television? Because this conversational craze has oozed into the national media's vocabulary. CNN, once a ground-breaking news organization, launched a regular segment in which a woman spews a short, editorial-like pet peeve and closes with the phrase Just Sayin'. For example: "... and that's why I hate parking meters. Just sayin'!"
Just sayin'? From a global news organization? (And yes, I know those are fragments.)
Furthermore, you do not feel BADLY for someone. I could get into how linking verbs are modified by adjectives and not adverbs but you probably would fall into a coma. Just trust me. You feel bad. If you truly felt badly that would mean Tony Soprano just burned off your fingertips with acid and you feel things badly because of the injury.
And finally, and the one I literally hear every single day ... I could care less. If you're trying to tell someone you don't care you mean to say you COULDN'T care less. You care so little, it is impossible to care any less. Use of the phrase "I could care less" shows you're simply parroting what you've heard someone incorrectly repeat because it's not even logical if you stop and think about it.
So why waste a column on grammar and speech? We have become a pitifully lazy nation. Texting, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and the like have created an unrecognizable language that, OMG has me LOL. In fact, I'm LMAO. Our kids, however, are adopting this as the King's English. Not to blame the youth, because we as a society dummy down everything.
We have parents complaining that a high school exit exam, which uses eighth-grade content, is too tough; the most popular "how to" books are the "Dummies" series: "Journalism for dummies," "Column Writing for dummies," etc., etc., and and let us not forget the wave of "Ebonics" that erupted in an Oakland school district and nearly swept across black America until it was thankfully squashed.
We seemingly celebrate minds unwilling, not unable, to grasp elementary ideas about language and then somehow to ease our conscience and make the playing field supposedly "level," we lower standards instead of lifting people up. Have you seen recent SAT and STAR English scores? It's kind of a linguistic welfare we've created by tolerating poor English skills, which buries some folks in poverty because one of the first things any employer examines is your attire and what's coming out of your mouth. We must raise the bar and demand more from ourselves, our students and our society.
I'm just sayin'! TTFN!
-- Ralph Bailey is one of four conservative community columnists whose work appears here every Saturday. These are the opinions of Bailey, not necessarily The Californian's. You can send e-mail to him at rbailey@bakersfield.com. Next week: Heather Ijames.
