Is proper grammar really going downhill?

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In linguistics, one speaks of language varieties rather than asserting that members of a certain race, socio-economic class, age, region, or ethnicity "don't know how to speak" their native language. When language varieties exist over geographical space (other criteria may also be used), they are called dialects (dialects often overlap, however). Varieties that diverge on the basis of socio-economic class are sometimes called sociolects instead of dialects. The variation of a language based on level of formality versus familiarity or written text versus the spoken word is called a register of a language. An accent is a varied way of pronouncing the language although grammatically and lexically different accents may still be quite similar (and thus not qualify as distinct dialects).

Over the course of history, certain dialects gain prestige over other dialects in a set of relatively mutually understandable dialects; often the prestigious dialect becomes known as the standard, or proper, form of the language while the other dialects come to be noted for having "bad grammar" (which linguistically makes no sense) or showing a lack of intelligence on the speaker's part. Standard English is one of those things; for a period, the dialect of Wessex played the most culturally significant role in the English language; by the time of Early Modern English, however, that prestige had shifted to London, the capital of a growing British Empire.

England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa all share a fairly similar standardized, formal written dialect (with a few vocabulary and spelling differences), but the pronunciation differs significantly. Various colorful localisms and slang are the source of the evolution of the language. Slang and local color are in a tug-of-war against global communication over divergence of English into increasingly less interintelligible varieties. This is how language has always been; no one uses Elizabethan English or Old English anymore. Romance-language speakers use French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian-Moldovian, Catalan, Occitan, Rhaeto-Romansch, etc. instead of Classical Latin. The Chinese speak Mandarin, Cantonese, and other languages rather than the common ancestral Classical Chinese.

HEY, I have MY vices also. I think I did say once here that I used to always write in lowercase, and my first computer originally did only upper, and people NOW often ball me out for "yelling"! OH WELL. BTW I wish Eddie Murphy (just for Y'ALL!) would clean up his act, as I feel with MOST of any color(including white) today. I do feel he has talent, and like him as an actor though. And I like how Will Smith ( ) DOES try to keep his act clean! I like HIM as an actor also.

And PLEASE don't think less of me for not liking Tyra. I dislike all people like that. In fact MOST that I dislike like that happen to be white! Oh well, I still like the fact that Heather(I wish you could have seen that I just remembered to capitalize heathers name. And SHE'S white. Oh well, I finally remembered.) is still in the game.

I a lot of people don't even seem to know what grammar technically is anymore. I got into a debate (well, more of an argument, since he wasn't making any points whatsoever) with a boy who at one point said, "Trust me, I'm a Grammar Nazi. I know what I'm talking about," which would have been all fine and good, except we weren't talking about grammar.

Part of the problem is apathy. People don't want to learn, and they're not exposed to proper reading material often. Quite a few people seem horrified that reading can be a "fun" and chosen activity, instead of one that's only assigned. Likewise, even the "advanced" English classes complain when any reading is required, even if it's just a few pages. Without exposure, there's really no way they're going to be able to absorb it. Classes aren't enough to teach the finer points, and most written communication (IM, texts, email, ect.) is written in slang and abbreviations. Add that to the fact that most people don't want to write, and well...

Of course, the internet and text messages haven't made it any better. Fast paced games require many to type shortened words (as they can't keep up with full length sentences), and laziness is also a factor. Why write out words when people seem to be able to understand b4 and g2g or whatever else they use now?

Naturally, there are a lot of people who, for various reasons, cannot learn proper grammar/spelling/whatever, but there are many who can and simply don't.

Are languages simply becoming more simplified over time?

For example, we often view classical Latin has having been a perfect language. Modern Romance languages have lost the inflections, and lost the neuter gender.

English lost all genders for nouns.

Since Elizabethan times, we lost the second person singular.

French lost whole verb tenses.

When the English language was first written, it was actually phonetic.

Ha! Not even talking about grammar! That's funny.

A true grammar-Nazi would never profess to be one; in their own minds, they are are merely people who really love the language and want to protect it. They are people who want to communicate the rules (ie, status quo) and give people a chance to correct the error of their ways.

For any of you folks that don't believe that grammar and language skills have become poor over the years, be sure to take a look back at old newspaper articles. The writing style is truly amazing and something that is simply not seen in today's modern world of news reporting. Very descriptive, writing that's also clear and concise. Take a look at some of these newspaper articles that date back to the civil war. I wish I could write this good!

http://richmondthenandnow.com/Old-Newsp ... -1899.html

To be fair, we were talking about writing. However, the sentence in question was grammatically correct; there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. He objected to a word in it, as the same word had been in the previous sentence. However, the diction of those sentences was not accidental; it was specifically repetition, which is a literary technique, but it's not grammar. Like I said, the grammar of the sentence was perfect. It's not really that big of a deal, but someone who knew grammar well would recognize the difference.

I noticed the downfall of grammar in business memos and advertisements about 15-20 years ago. It coincided with the end of the quality push at Ford Motor Co. and a general impatience with details. People in the middle to upper income levels were overbooking their days at a feverish pace and they were overbooking their kids, too. It seemed that people were cutting details they thought were unimportant just to get through the day and get everything on the list checked off. Checking grammar and spelling wasn't considered necessary as long as the meaning of the message came through, unless the document was for an external customer. It was also about the time that apostrophe misuse became normal.

It was weird, as though every graduating class in the country for one year suddenly was turned loose with a new set of grammar, spelling and punctuation rules.

I'm not convinced that correct grammar is somehow being suddenly lost. It seems, to me, technology instead, has drastically increased exposure to such things. It used to be that to get written word out publicly, it had to be much more correct. The internet doesn't have that limited access, so all writing types are represented. Some being far worse than others.

T.V. is the same, now with so many channels, and an increasing amount of internet material being shown on t.v.

The writing style was certainly different, but I would not say that it was "better". The sentences are long--modern writers (especially for newspapers) would break down the larger sentences into several smaller sentences. There are a couple of out-of-place prepositions: i.e., "Nothing was talked of, or thought of": "of" is a preposition, left dangling there. The author could have written "Nothing was discussed, nor cogitated, save..." And, refering to President Lincoln as "the old ape?" That is pretty crass. A modern journalist would not even use a similar epithet to describe Osama bin Ladin. The is also a bit of hyperbole in describing "the wildest, most enthusiastic and irrepressible expressions of heartfelt and exuberant joy", as if he is describing fans whose favorite team has just won the world series. In modern journalism, we save the hyberole for the sports pages. And, what could the author be talking about in reference to the "assertion of Southern rights and equality?" In many of the Southern states, the majority of the inhabitants were slaves.

"The interest of our citizens in the exciting events lately occurring in the neighborhood of Charleston, South Carolina, always intense, as manifested by the crowds that have thronged around the bulletin boards of the different newspapers during the past week, culminated on Saturday evening on the reception of the news of the surrender of Fort Sumter, in one of the wildest, most enthusiastic and irrepressible expressions of heartfelt and exuberant joy on the part of the people generally, that we have ever known to be the case before in Richmond. Nothing else was talked of, or thought of, save the great triumph achieved by the heroic troops of the glorious Southern Confederacy in obliterating one of the Illinois ape’s standing menaces against the assertion of Southern rights and equality. – So far as the opinion of the people is concerned, it would have been more to the old rail-splitter’s credit had he ordered Anderson to leave Fort Sumter, as an untenable and undesirable place, than to attempt, as he and his coadjutors did, to make the undoubtably gallant Major the scapegoat of his insidious and damnable views. We repeat, that had wise counsels prevailed, the old ape would have had all the credit between a graceful leave taking and an ignominious expulsion at the cannon’s mouth."

I think that there is an increasing number of people who are using proper grammar, less often. People either seem to be talking like Valley Girls or Wiggers. I can't talk to most people any more, because of that. I don't know if I'm being asked or told something by most NT females, and an increasing number of NT males, as well. I don't understand what a young man is telling me, when he speaks 'Street Talk' to me. I feel that this is the wrong time in history, for me to be living. I should have been born in the 1950s.

You obviously didn't read my post which came just three before yours. I suggest you go back and read it before continuing with your prescriptivist notions of grammar.