🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <9207282034.AA09794@nms.netman> kartik@hls.com (Kartik Chandrasekhar) writes:
                      [stuff deleted]

>	Considering the above I was disturbed to see how the language
>is used here in the USA. I am in full agreement with the idea of 
>American English with colour spelt as color or rumour spelt
>as rumor. Hmm.. maybe it makes more sense. What I have really come to 
>despise are expressions such as:
>
>"I did not get the invite."
>"Dont do drugs." (Seen on billboards all over the country.)
>"Why Bush cannot be beat". (Instead of .... cannot be beaten).
>
>There is a lot of difference between the British or Indian Newspapers
>who use chaste English and the US newspapers who are careless and 
>irresponsible. They have to realize  that it is through thier colomns 
>that a language flourishes in todays world and they should not butcher 
>the language. The editorial should also provide the everyday lesson in 
>English to the people.
> 

I believe that you might find the relevant facts addressed by Chaucer:

          Ye know eek, that in forme of speech is chaunge
          Within a thousand year; and wordes tho
          That hadden price, now wonder nice and straunge.
          Us thinketh hem. And yet they spake hem so.

Now there's some *real* chaste English :-) It would seem that one person's
linguistic progress (i.e. natural historical development, divergence of
dialects, etc.) is another's corruption. One might be able to halt
linguistic change for a time, at least in the standard or "literary"
language, but it is inevitable at some time -- unless we want to
end up with a delightfully archaic standard tongue which would be highly
removed from spoken usage.  

Kurt Vonnegut has a line in one of his short stories suggesting the 
reason American schools are so bad is that every student is made to feel
like an idiot unless he or she speaks like English Victorian nobility.
I wonder if there isn't some truth in that.  Back in my undergraduate days
I was the sole liberal arts major in a dormitory wing full of engineers.
Consequently they often came to me for help in writing papers. I found
during our informal interaction that their writing wasn't *so* bad,
but that they often changed their work to reflect how they thought
they were supposed to write. I think we have enough problems writing in
a contemporary style -- to attempt to write in the style of a 
nineteenth-century English schoolmaster is hopeless. 
 
BTW, it's truly a pity that English lost that impersonal construction. It 
would be wonderful to revive it, methinks.

--jake  lcjst2@unix.cis.pitt.edu