Save the adverb

I am a card carrying member of the Society to Save the Adverb. So far our group is only 5 strong, but recruits are welcome. Our mission is to promote the use of adverbs and to reduce the usage of adjectives as adverbs. Adjectives are hard working words and they need to rest. Using them as adverbs helps to create lazy adverbs who hang around in bars talking about the time when they too were a used and respected part of speech. They remember the day when School House Rock devoted a song to them. Some are heard singing softly, "lolly, lolly lolly... get your adverbs here"

All languages change over time, and the use of adjectives as adverbs is one that I have noticed taking place in American English. This seems mostly to be taking place by television broadcasters.

Finding my Inner Grammar Police

I think that all of us have something that will set off our personal grammar police and make us say, Wait, that just isn't right, you shouldn't do that. Today I had two examples of this one for me and one that some one else encountered. The first was a friend who had just returned from a trip to California and telling about the rudest person he had met on his trip. Bob and his wife were driving the Pacific Coast Highway and had to stop at a gas station. Bob really needed to go the bathroom and asked the attendant if they had a bathroom. The man replied "No, but we have a restroom." For Bob his encounter made him mad. Especially when after going around the building he discovered that the door was locked and the gas station didn't have a key. I don't know if the attendant was just being a wise-guy or if the use of bathroom instead of restroom was really a grammar no-no.

The second was my own. My husband and I were just relaxing and watching TV when the station ran a public service type ad about proper disposal of household hazardous materials. The person from the DNR started his appeal by stating "Garages and basements has many dangerous items. I was more asleep than awake but when I heard that I had to set up and say something. My husband's comment was "I was wondering how long it would take" Now I don't think that the use of HAS was that bad, but I have to say that I think that a person who is making an official statement should try to use correct grammar.

I can't believe I am blogging.

As I start with this assignment for class, let me say that I very seldom read blogs, and I never thought that I would myself be blogging. As I was thinking about this it occurred to me that this is part of the future of communication. Already the use of electronic communication has changed the way many people communicate. For many people this leads to a debate about the effect this will have on written language. Texting has created a new form of writing, and has caused concern about the future of written language. For some this is gr8, and if this is u then this last sentence doesn't upset you in any way. How ever if you are some one like my mother-in-law, this goes against everything that you believe about English.

She was a very dear lady, but as a child she developed a prescriptive view of language. Her teacher taught her that there was one correct way to write and to pronounce words, and for the rest of her life she held firm to this view.

That was my mother-in-law, but what about me, what is my view. As a teacher I find myself torn between helping my students be able to function and communicate on an educated level. When a student is writing a paper, or creating an article for newspaper, their use of English needs to follow standards of language. But when I am teaching beginning language I feel that the ability to be understood is more important that following all the standards for the language. As the language is being learned being understood is more important than total grammatical correctness.