Sunday vent: All right, I'm far from perfect. I do get things wrong. But geez, I DO resent the President's 3rd grade gaffs. I don't find them amusing at all.
dailynews.yahoo.com
To me, it's like an insult. Disrespects people who love the language or who try to study the language to improve themselves. And people coming to his defense send a message to me - that speaking well is irrelevant and unimportant. Not a subject to waste time on. I don't agree. (His political defenders may also be saying get over it, that's the way the man is. So... eventually... I guess I will lighten up.)
To me though, managers and leaders who speak so poorly are people who are not readers, have no love of learning, no love of books, and to me, that somehow limits them in ways that I find disturbing - especially when I'm subject to their actions. I am always wondering if their thought processes are as sloppy as their careless disregard of their language.
What I don't get is this: The man's a product of private schooling and Harvard--- how could this be? Where were his teachers? Nobody corrected him? He spoke and I assume, wrote like he spoke, yet nobody corrected him? Or he was told, but it mattered too little to him?
Could it be me? Got old and cranky at a young age. With the typical geezer complaint - that standards are going to Hell in a handbasket -g-. When my mother was in high school she studied Latin and Greek. When I was in high school those subjects (Greek, certainly) were disappearing. Maybe after my time, lots of other stuff got lost too -- maybe it's all become multiple choice - nobody needs to write or speak or study grammar anymore.
Paul Senior |
