PRESS ONE FOR ENGLISH

In 1970, Dottie and I flew to London to begin a bus tour of European countries.  Our guide was a tall good looking young named William (Bill) Lindscott.  He was a gregarious man of about 26 years of age who spoke with a slight Scottish accent but with words and phrases that were clear and easy to understand.  Bill traveled with us on our bus ride visiting France, Brussels, Germany, Yugoslavia, and Italy seeing to it that the 20 or so people under his charge were well taken care of.  As a matter of fact, no matter where we were at any time of the trip, he would easily shift into the indigenous language of the country of the moment and communicate with those serving us, solving any problem of misunderstanding we had caused by our inability to speak the language.  We admired this linguistic capability and spoke of it frequently when we returned to America, wondering why natives of our country had such limited ability to speak a language other than English.  

In today’s America, it is questionable whether the typical citizen is capable even to speak or write our native language correctly.  Why is this?  What has happened to the education system or our student’s incentive that has prevented our grammar school English teachers from being able to teach us or restricted our students from learning the “Kings English”, so to speak?  Almost every senior citizen has memories of sitting in an English class with a  certain teacher, “Miss Hamilton”, carrying a ruler poised to rap the knuckles of students only slightly offending the English language.  She would pounce on subject-verb disagreements.  She would cringe at violations of the rules on the case of pronouns.  She could ferret out any misuse of simple linking verbs.  These days, of course, my dear English teacher would run out of rulers; her students out of knuckles.  She would be swatting knuckles left and right as major TV networks display on the screen toward the end of a basketball games, “Who to foul,” or as people on the news or in just everyday conversation say “just between you and I,” or “I feel badly about that,” or as today’s youth stumble through entire conversations, grunting and groaning at one another, apparently all the while actually transferring some information-known only to themselves-from one brain to another.  My favorites are the following:

“Like, she was likewhoa, so I’m like how’dja know that? and she’s like what’s the big deal? and like I’mlike-who-like-cares? Know-I’m sayin?

So I’mlike, who cares? Indeed. Who does care?

Some would say that the problem is that we have too many immigrants both legal and illegal who make little or no effort to learn how to speak even rudimentary English.  But our country is a land of immigrants so that statement can’t be used as anything other than a lame excuse.  I believe that the deficiency in the common use of our language is partly because of the public idolization of Hollywood celebrities, so called music professionals, and certain sports stars, a large number of whom still carry bruises on their knuckles for not paying attention to Miss Hamilton.  With accommodating State and Federal elected representatives insisting upon bilingual printing on ballots and all other public documents, what is the incentive for people to learn English grammar, let alone vocabulary? With a media that frequently demonstrates its shortfall in the use of proper grammar, how can we expect our children and grandchildren to insist upon a higher standard for their own speech?

I offer the young of this country one general reason and one only.  If you want to be a leader in your business career, enjoy a reputation for expressing clear understandable ideas, and take pride in the ability to influence others on issues that you believe are important, then building a broad vocabulary and learning proper English grammar will make the critical difference and is essential to your success.  I am not advocating that our young students stop depending on spell check or grammar check on their computer word programs.  Today’s writer can benefit from this kind of editing, but knowing what word or conjugation to select is essential to earning the reputation for being a competent writer or speech maker.  When one uses the correct language, people listen rather than wonder if you really know what you are talking about.  

One Man’s Opinion  –  Bud Brewer