The disclaimer first: all the opinions laid out here are entirely my own. No offense is meant and if you take any, give it back, it's mine.
I try really had not to be a complainer but anyone who knows me knows I do have a tendency towards the whining and can express quite strong opinions on things that seem trivial to most. It's not that all of the things I rattle on about matter all that much but they have stirred me in some way. For example, this morning I was at the bus stop waiting to go to work and this chubby teen age boy came in and sat down. He was pretty rough looking but quite normal for the area I live in. The thing that properly got my goat was when he started hacking up flemgh and spitting it - no hawking it - all over the floor of the bus shelter. It made my stomach turn. There is absolutely no need for it. I actually just had to stop writing for a minute because it made me feel so queasy. And it's not like this boy is the only one who does it, all over town you can see little globs of spittle on the pavements. Personally I have decided it's footballers faults.Tthey hack up all over the pitch during games. It's probably not their fault but I like to blame them, they earn too much money for kicking a ball around a field, they deserve a little blame.
There are lots of little things in everyday life that can get me going but there is one thing that infuriates me enough to state it first. Bad grammar, punctuation and spelling. And the erosion of the English language. Especially the last part. We are losing words and gaining new ones. Have you noticed how everyone, including news readers, now say gonna rather than going to. Coz has become more popular than it's full version of 'because'. It is incredibly frustrating. Especially when I voice this thought and I am met with disbelief and responses such as 'the language is evolving' and 'our society is less formal now'. Of the first point, just because it is changing doesn't mean it should. Just because the English language has changed massively over the past however long, it doesn't have to keep changing at the same rate. We are mostly letting technology change our language, short forms of words are used to fit them into texts and computer code slots into our normal terminology. I have never felt comfortable with a brand becoming a verb but Google has done it, as well as Hoover although that is such a normal part of our speech now no one remembers. Change isn't always good, history often repeats itself and rarely for good reasons. Sometimes progress isn't the answer. Something the human race have never been able to grasp. We progress so fast without thought that we end up in situations too difficult to reverse. Climate change as my case in point. But I digress. To the second that society is less formal. I often get laughed at for the way I talk. Not particularly posh but still with an 'educated' twang to it. And I say some words funny apparently. Castle, path, bath, laugh, staff. I say them with a long 'a' rather a short one. It's hard to describe! I say Starf, most people say staph. To me it seems right and it is the way I have always spoken but I do get accused of snobbery because of it. There is no snobbery, it's just how I think the English language is meant to sound. And until not that long ago quite a lot more people agreed with me. What it seems like to me is that the whole of our society is aiming to relax, dumb down, lose rules, lessen taboos. And I don't know whether that's a good thing, It seems we are losing a little of our ethics with it. This is a strange train of thought and certainly not where I thought I was going when I started this. But I have one major thing to say on this and then I will be quiet until another annoyance hits me - not learning to spell or use grammar and punctuation is lazy. Yes yes some people are dyslexic and to a degree that let's them off although it is possible to overcome it, Richard Branson's doing alright for himself. I went to a fairly typical comprehensive school, I am an average student with average grades, I am ditsy and I barely attended school towards the end. But despite all of this I can still spell, know which mark to use when and above all know which there to use where. All children are taught this stuff at school, everyone has to read, everyone is taught to write, massive parts of our world are tamed around language. But still huge amounts of people are now not able to pick the right option when saying "you're great" or "this is your house". Asking if someone can "borrow you a fiver" rather than lend. Why is that? Really? It can't be down to the information not being available. I honestly think that it's because most people don't care. Well I do. I refused a date with a man because he text me saying "i'll meat you their". Never gonna happen.
More tomorrow.
