Debra- Is English Dead? (A who-done-it in 3 parts)

Seriously, dude. Is English dead? Has language moved past the precision of the last 1600 years or so? And if we are at a crossroads in which well-used language is the murky path, who is to blame?

1) Text messaging
A necessary evil born from the frowns of those who were tired of teen phones ringing incessantly.

2) Twitter & Facebook
A necessary evil to reconnect with community in a ridiculously busy world.

3) Dude
The word that has single handedly replaced whole sentences as a form of communication.

See what I mean:

Dude. (You can’t be serious.)
dude. (I’m weary. You win. I can’t change it.)
Dude. (Pay attention you slacker.)
DUDE (This is going to be a problem.)
du-oohd. (Oh, man, is that going to be hard!)
Dude! (Quick. Come here.)
Doooo-ooo-d. (I’m am so jealous, but I have to give you props.)

I could go on. And I haven’t even started on the variations that come with facial expressions or body gestures like shrugs.

Hopefully, I’ve amused you, but my real questions are these: Can we ever recover from the inattention to grammar and punctuation? Can we ever recover from the common man’s inability to use vocabulary appropriately? (One of my favorites is the reported incident in which the Miami Herald’s story of someone “eeking out a living” wasn’t a story about the individual running a haunted house business.) Do we care? Is change the nature of a successful language? Or as we fragment our language do we lose something valuable?

My answer is: Dude, yes.

How about you? How do you feel about the state of language?

So Kathleen's like, "That's apostrophe abuse!"

The list we've all been waiting for is finally out. Most annoying expressions. According to a recent survey, the winners (?) are: #5 at the end of the day; #4 anyway; #3 It is what it is; #2 you know; and the #1 totally most annoying phrase is...Whatever. Or What! ev-aarrr. Apparently whatever annoys more Midwesterners than Northeasterners. I know I'm sick of hearing it roll off the tongue of one particular 5-year-old female.

I hesitate to proceed, knowing that whenever I stick my English teacher nose in the air I'm sure to trip over my own feet at least once in the ensuing diatribe. But I got nuthin' else this week. Here goes.
Cliches used in the media. Fun stuff. We all use cliches. Lord knows my head is full of them, and they do ooze out. The above small print puts at the end of the day at the top of the list. The other one that's beginning to get to me is thinking out of the box. (Where else is a square like me supposed to do her thinking?) And That said... Is there another transition out there somewhere? Just for fun what cliche or catch phrase would you strike from the airwaves if you could? How about from the printed page?

Onward. I haven't entered the Face Book world yet, but if and when I do, I'm going to check out the one called "I Live In Reading...Fear Me." A guy (after my own perverse heart) goes around taking pictures of grammatically incorrect signs and posts them on what is becoming a very popular site. I got this one from Google images. The apostrophe is the most tortured punctuation mark alive. (Yes, my children, they're alive!) In my younger, more insufferable days I tried to interest a waitress in removing a misplaced apostrophe from the menu. I actually tried to explain the difference between plural and possessive. My next heroine will be a waitress who has me for a customer. She will serve up a single French fry on a plate.

But seriously, writers and readers, I do think grammar matters. The media is falling down on the job. Why, just this evening I sat up in horror when David Gregory uttered "Take your hand off of me" on The Daily Show. Granted, he was quoting his son, but still... Off of is one of those nails on chalkboard utterances. What's happening to our models?

My daddy was a stickler for proper grammar. I don't believe in keeping kids from expressing themselves, but I do believe in gentle correction. We don't talk baby talk in our house, but we do talk. Complete sentences from birth on. And when I turn on the news, I want...well, news would be nice, but I expect the talking heads to communicate effectively, and that requires a working knowledge of English grammar along with an extensive vocabulary. They should know that a word like unique doesn't need a modifier. You can't be more unique. You try to; you don't try and. What is often times? If something is the same as something, it's the same. Exact same? Exact opposite? Come on. In this age of "speaking in thumbs" we're either firing vowel-less code into cyberspace or we're throwing out five words when one will do. What does "at this point in time" mean? Anything like now? When did utilize become the mark of an educated speaker? Does it sound better than use?

I'm not proposing stilted dialogue. Conversation should be relaxed. In our books, dialogue should be true to character. It should sound like people talking. But writers and reporters, pundits and people in the public eye should know the rules before they break them. We all indulge in lazy speaking and writing sometimes. But what's wrong with raising the bar? Children need models of good grammar. Heck, we all do. Becoming aware of the meaningless phrases, the tired cliches, the tortured construction and misused punctuation is half the battle. And it's a lifelong endeavor. English teachers screw up, too.
But you put that lesson in your toolbox, and you drag it out when you need a Friday blog post.

What are your least favorite commonly used expressions? Your language peeves? Your personal pitfalls (Damn you, lie and lay!) or funny flubs?