I like language, specifically the English language. It has been said that English is the hardest language to learn due to all the “exceptions to the rules”. It’s also been said that it’s as melodic as listening to a cat fight. Nevertheless, I am fascinated by it.
I grew up in a house full of readers. Everyone read constantly. To this day I can not remember a time when my mother wasn’t involved in a book. Not to mean that every spare moment she has is spent reading, but there is always a book in the works and one waiting in the wings.
As little kids, my parents read to us every night. I don’t know how they did it, reading some of the same old stories over and over to our unwavering delight. My grandmother belonged to a children’s book club in the 1970’s, so there was always a fresh supply of great books –
Mog the Forgetful Cat, Hooray for Captain Jane, Here Comes Tagalong, A Child’s Garden of Verses, etc. We devoured every word – slipping into some alternate reality of imagination. Even when it was considered “uncool” to read so much, the public library remained one of my favorite places to spend a Saturday afternoon.
Now, I have always liked language – let’s be honest here – because it came easy to me. Frighteningly easy to me. Do I think it’s because I possess a gargantuan I.Q. or that I’m smarter than the average bear? Nope, I believe it’s because of the books. (In fact, a very good friend of mine once accused me of “throwing my vocabulary around” – whatever that means). The books that we read as kids exposed us to proper sentence structure. As well as my parents correcting us when we would say things like “I did it
on accident”, or “I
got the flu”. My parents didn’t want us to go out into the world equipped with a sub-par vocabulary. They knew that the hard reality was, people judge you the minute you open your mouth. Trust me – boy, oh boy do they.
Anyway, growing up, English classes, language arts classes, even spelling came easy to me. Most of the time I didn’t know
why a sentence was wrong (dangling participles and whatnot) I just knew it by ear. Bad grammar sounded wrong. Improperly used grammar has the ability to make me cringe just like the first three weeks of American Idol. (Yeah, it’s that bad). I also love that you can pick apart the English language and discover a word's meaning by its parts. It’s kind of like forensic reading.
So, imagine my horror this morning when I heard an anchor at a top 3 market network station utter the following:
“The four females were held captive in this house…”
The four WHAT??? Females? “Female what?” was my question. Now I know there are many, many people who use this word – an adjective, by the way – as a noun. I am not one of them. But the mere fact that I heard this uttered by a Chicago newscaster on a network broadcast made my blood boil. Female hostages, female complainants, hell – female bears would have worked. But just to use plain old “females”? Nuh-uh.
This is my plight, the bane of my existence, if you will. I am doomed to forever roam the earth having my ears assaulted with things like:
- “Don’t disrespect me” or worse, "He disrespected me".
- “Irregardless”
- “So I go, what do you mean by that? And she goes nothing…”
- “between you and I”
- “He denied my baby” (Denied your baby what? Food? Love?)
There are many, many more. In fact, I’m sure I will hear several within the next few hours. I understand that any language is like a living thing, growing and changing with society’s needs. If it didn’t, we would still be speaking like Shakespeare. But throwing the rules of grammar out the window certainly doesn’t instill confidence and it doesn’t help us sound like we know what we’re talking about.
Just remember, bad grammar is like bad breath. It’s offensive and even your best friends won’t tell you that you have it.
