🚀 go-pugleaf

kartik@hls.com (Kartik Chandrasekhar) writes:
>
>I was disturbed to see how the language is used here in the USA.
>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.)

When one learns a language in school that is not one's mother-tongue,
one has to memorize a lot of rules that come naturally to a native
speaker.  It is easy to get so wrapped up with these rules that one
begins to see the rules as the language itself, and not as abstrac-
tions from it.  It is also easy to superimpose the norms of standard
written English on living speech communities, forgetting that, be-
cause you are not part of a living community of first-language Eng-
lish speakers, you haven't had the opportunity to learn the various
subtleties - regionalisms, levels of formality, etc. - that charac-
terize British, American, Australian, South Afreican, Canadian (etc.)
speech.

If you find colloquial dialects unbearable, given your background,
then try reading alt.usage.english.  You may find partial fulfillment
there....

-- 

   -Richard L. Goerwitz              goer%midway@uchicago.bitnet
   goer@midway.uchicago.edu          rutgers!oddjob!ellis!goer