I hear that! It drives me crazy, especially to consider how it might be affecting me!! I might be getting dumber by osmosis!! :-)
And while I'm in a "you kids get off of my lawn" moment, add to the list the demise of proper use of colloquial metaphors such as "tight as a drum" or "dry as a bone". Those get butchered daily around me and I feel powerless to stop it! The other day I overheard someone actually say, when referring to someone who needed to do more to accomplish a given task that he should "step up to the pump". I laughed, and cried, inwardly. Or is that inward. Nothing to do whatoever with Centros and Treos and Pres (oh my!), but whining and complaining is good for the soul! Cheers, Don From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Craig Froehle Sent: Monday, August 16, 2010 8:24 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Treo] Re: My Dad & His MemoPad Dilemma (webOS) It isn't just adverbs that we're losing. Simple, basic grammar and proper punctuation are becoming ever more scarce. When I teach undergrads, I often give them a quick, 11-question grammar quiz, just to get a sense of their writing abilities. In 5 years, only one student got all 11 questions correct...and he was from Romania! As my sister, who is a grade school teacher, points out, a general shift to "whole language" English education about 15 years ago in American schools has created a vast chasm of ignorance to open up. For example, no longer are sentences diagrammed, so understanding the relationships among nouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, etc. is all the more difficult. It really is sad. And then, of course, phone-based interaction has only heightened the perceived need for brevity, so non-essential elements get dropped. Idiocracy...it's not just a movie, it's a prognostication. On Mon, Aug 16, 2010 at 7:53 AM, Michael J. Barnes <[email protected] <mailto:michael%40vocal-ease.net> >wrote: > Honestly, as a college professor, I can attest that the adverb has been > disappearing for about 15 years. I blame Apple for it. It seems to be > concurrent with their "THINK DIFFERENT" campaign. Since I'm a > dialectician, I'll stand in for Henry Higgins (and I've coached accents on > those shows five times). > > > > Michael > > > > > > > > Michael J. Barnes > Vocalease > Email: <mailto:[email protected] <mailto:michael%40vocal-ease.net> > [email protected] <mailto:michael%40vocal-ease.net> > AIM: atremorer > YIM: atremorer > Skype: vocalease.michael > > > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > > > ------------------------------------ > > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
