Americanish

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Big News » A European women's soccer team lost a big game against a major rival the other day because their goalie decided to take in a concert instead of minding the net. The score was 50-1. I'm taking bets on how long before said team decides she should be replaced.

Now, today's story...

I'm sure you read the title of this post thinking I'm nuts. Well I'm not. If anyone's nuts, it's Jeff Rubin. He's the self-proclaimed creator of National Punctuation Day. (Read about how to celebrate it. If you like writing, you'll probably laugh.)

I was reading about him in today's Trib. It may seem a little — what's the word I'm looking for? — crazy, but the fact is that grammar in this country is in a horrible state of disrepair. And sadly, most people just do not care.

Well I care.

Americans don't really speak English anymore as far as I'm concerned. We speak Americanish. It's a form of English that pays little to no attention to grammar, punctuation or spelling. But speaking Americanish is all right by me, as long as we don't all start writing that way.

I pride myself (with humility) on writing my blog grammatically correct, with proper punctuation and spelling. The few times when I sidestep that general rule, I am more or less trying (yet usually failing) to be funny or silly. That and I'm a bad proofreader when it comes to my own work. I usually have to have somebody else read over my work to catch my mistakes.

But aside from journalists and students, most people do not write in English anymore. For example, take a look at almost any blog here on Blogger. Most people write the way they talk. And I don't mean like the conversational style that I use to write my blog. I mean they write the way they talk.

And many of these people just shrug off their grammatical travesties by saying, "it's just a blog," meaning "merely a blog." In the four months I've been writing in this blog, I've come to a realization that this is one of the greatest tools ever invented. Afforded to every person with access to a computer (nearly every literate person on the planet) is the availability of sites like this for people to just write.

The privilege of having a blog is one many blog writers take for granted. Yes, you get to spread your opinion to the masses, but why not use the opportunity to practice using the language correctly? I take a piece of writing much more seriously if it is well-written and thought out as opposed to being something a 10-year-old might scratch out. The 10-year-old is still learning the nuance of the language.

One last thing that bugs me is people who say "that doesn't sound right" when a grammatical error is corrected by a teacher or editor. There was a time back in the late '90s when the Spice Girls sounded right to millions of people. Sounds can be deceiving. The fact is, if everyone would learn to speak and write coherently, the day may come when grammatical correctness sounds right.

But since no one cares, that day may be far off.

And with the odds highly favoring the notion that I am thoroughly unimportant to a world packed with six billion people, I am content to be ignored. In fact, I expect it. But for any ear that's listening, I encourage you to stop writing in Americanish. Speak in Americanish. IM your friends in Americanish. Please, though, for the sake of freedom or whatever gets you up in the morning, write in English.

Write in English.

Mornings On WQYK: ...will never be the same. That's how Tampa's biggest and oldest country station is touting its new morning show featuring recording artists Cledus T. Judd and Chad Brock. The singers bring a whole new dimension to radio that WQYK will be the first to pioneer. Frankly, I was curious. I caught a short segment this morning on WTVT-TV (our FOX affiliate) with Russell Rhodes who visited the new morning crew in the studio. You can watch that video here. The guys are a riot.