I know I should get a life but...........

[Lottie]

I'm so glad you put a dipthong in "haemagglutination" DingleDangle :up:

 

[dingledangle]

A perfectly reasonable point of view "dinglegangle" but I do think our language and the way we use it is important. When you hear people use English really well, I think it's fantastic. Whatever we think about his politics, Enoch Powell was a brilliant speaker and wordsmith. Also, Winston Churchills's wartime speeches must have been so inspiring to listen around 1940 when an invasion was expected anytime. Somehow, I don't think the nation would have rallied round like it did if Churchill had come on the radio and said "Look, like, we've gotta do sumfink abaht this bloke 'itler, like, innit!"

'nuff respect!!

Why, sir. The line you offered sounds exactly like something Ed Miliband may say. By saying this I'm NOT making fun of his speech impediment. It just sounds like Ed!

 

[inatizzy]

Somethink instead of something. La Franks does it. Ggrrr.

I totally agree with you AMN !

The whole world now appears to use SomethinK when they clearly mean SomethinG

Do somethink -grrrrrr
Say somethink - grrrrr

It drives me nuts !

As does the spelling mistake - SEPERATE It's SEPARATE with an "A" I tell you an "A"
No such word as seperate with an "e" in the middle just remember it's got "a rat" in the middle !

Off for a lie down now, in a "separate" room - on my own - "separated" from others...........

 

[ERICS MUM]

Heads Up (or is that Head's Up ?) What a horrible expression.

 

[Alley Cat]

Why, sir. The line you offered sounds exactly like something Ed Miliband may say. By saying this I'm NOT making fun of his speech impediment. It just sounds like Ed!

Ed Miliband has a speech impediment?

 

[Alley Cat]

How about Jill Franks' use of "kitsch" when she actually means "retro". Daft woman.

It's clear that nobody at QVC knows what kitsch means. I couldn't believe it when they recently repeatedly ran a trailer saying "kitsch Kipling". I emailed them suggesting that they look the word up in a dictionary, and pointed out that they'd be lucky if Kipling didn't sue them. I didn't receive a reply.

 

[Brissles]

Of course you didn't Alley Cat, they are still probably trying to discover what a dictionary is !!!!

I know its going to sound old and ageist, BUT, we are now reaching the stage where even the name Frank Sinatra conjures up blank faces on anyone under the age of 35 ! This morning on Saturday Kitchen, James Martin was asked by Michael Ball if he remembered a song that was sung by Jim Reeves - JM said "who ?"

My point is that sadly EVERYTHING is changing, from English Grammar and Language, to falling standards in manners, behaviour and appearance in general.

 

[Alley Cat]

..... I know its going to sound old and ageist, .

Nothing sounds old to me any more - I'm at the age where I open my mouth and I hear my mother's words come out!

BUT, we are now reaching the stage where even the name Frank Sinatra conjures up blank faces on anyone under the age of 35 ! .

No blank face here. My name is Alley Cat and I'm a Sinatraholic. Since the age of fifteen I've collected and catalogued all his recordings. I'm now so ancient that I have not just almost everything he recorded, but all the different recordings of each song by all the different arrangers. Was also lucky enough to see him live every time he came to the UK from 1972 until he died. Call me sad, I couldn't care less, the voice, the phrasing - the man was a musical genius. Favourite newspaper headline, from The Sunday Times: "This Is The Man Who Invented The Word Charisma"......
Okay, I'll shut up now.

My point is that sadly EVERYTHING is changing, from English Grammar and Language, to falling standards in manners, behaviour and appearance in general.

In my opinion standards are not so much falling as prostrate. What I really hate is the lack of respect people have for each other, and particularly for the older and elderly. I used to respect older people as having experience and knowledge I didn't have and could learn from. In today's Britain it seems that the older you get the more useless you're considered to be.

 

[mimi]

Can we stop with all this standards declining, good old days nonsense? There was never a golden age when everyone spoke probably and had respect for their elders. There's always been badness and lack of respect around.

Also, language is living and breathing and the English language has achieved prominence because it will adapt. Hell, if it didn't adapt we would still be speaking like Shakespeare. Do we really want a language like French where they defend it against every change and get sniffy and legislate about new words? Also, as has been said before, some people have not had the educational advantages of others. I hate to see grammer Nazis stifling their expression because of linguistic rules.

The thing that annoys me, and nobody else it seems, is 'lol'. Its never actually put after anything genuinely funny, its just damned irritating. Quite a bit of that on this forum.

 

[amn]

I totally agree with you AMN !

The whole world now appears to use SomethinK when they clearly mean SomethinG

Do somethink -grrrrrr
Say somethink - grrrrr

It drives me nuts !

As does the spelling mistake - SEPERATE It's SEPARATE with an "A" I tell you an "A"
No such word as seperate with an "e" in the middle just remember it's got "a rat" in the middle !

Off for a lie down now, in a "separate" room - on my own - "separated" from others...........

And stationery / stationary gets on my tiddies - not even a misspelling but a completely different word. We live opposite a little newsagents' shop and they paid a fortune to have a sign made which now proclaims that they offer 'confectionery - cards - stationary'. They don't move then, amazing.

The thing that annoys me, and nobody else it seems, is 'lol'. Its never actually put after anything genuinely funny, its just damned irritating. Quite a bit of that on this forum.

I can't stand it either minim. :emo:

 

[Alley Cat]

Can we stop with all this standards declining, good old days nonsense? There was never a golden age when everyone spoke probably and had respect for their elders. There's always been badness and lack of respect around..

Nope, sorry, while I agree that there's always been badness and lack of respect around, I most certainly can't agree that it's no worse today than it used to be. It's way worse now than it used to be. As for language, I don't criticise individuals for their spelling or grammar because, as you say, not everyone has had the advantage of a good education, but I most certainly do criticise a TV channel that doesn't know what it's saying in its trailers to the point that it's actually insulting its vendors. There's no excuse for that.

As for lack of respect, a friend of mine who was a teacher for almost 40 years recently left the job he used to love because he just couldn't cope with the abuse and threats from the kids any more. He'd been at the same school for 25 years, and the decline in the behaviour of the kids since he began there was evident to anyone who witnessed it.

A teacher is now being violently attacked on almost every school day in England - an increase of almost a fifth in the past 10 years. A recent survey showed that 49% of teachers have suffered some form of physical abuse at the hands of pupils and 1000 pupils a day are being excluded from school for abusing or attacking a teacher - a number that's doubled in the past year. The biggest single reason for a kid being excluded is for physically attacking a teacher, and incredibly 15 of the 1000 kids being excluded for this each day are aged between 4 and 6. Last year 44 primary school teachers needed hospital treatment after being attacked by pupils. It's now so bad that Parliament has lifted the no touching ban so that teachers can defend themselves, and the number of teachers leaving the profession because of abuse and attacks is becoming a flood. The number of attacks on teachers by parents is rising equally. The basis of all this is a lack of respect for others. Such attacks and abuse were so rare as to be virtually unheard of 30 or 40 years ago, and now the lack of respect these people show when kids in school is carried with them into the workplace and the rest of society.

Over half of doctors have reported that abuse and physical attack from patients is a growing and significant problem, and most professional organisations are now advising their members on how to handle such attacks and abuse from their work colleagues because of the rise of violence and verbal abuse in the workplace. I see for myself every day the dismissive behaviour shown by so many younger people to their older colleagues when previously their experience was respected. Only yesterday I saw a 19 year old tell her 52 year old manager to “butt out” when the manager was trying to show her how a job should be done. I and my colleagues would never have dreamed of speaking to our manager like that when we were 19.

I’m sorry, but I just don’t see how you can say that respect for others hasn’t declined in the face of this overwhelming evidence.

 

[Mam]

Completely agree with you Alleycat.

 

[BusyMum]

Alley Cat - YES, YES, YES! To my mind a lot of this stems from when corporal punishment was stopped in schools - I'm almost 64 and at my senior school the boys got the strap if they deserved it - it was rare, but it did happen. The girls weren't physically punished. But most of us wouldn't have dreamt of the kind of behaviour that pretty much seems to be the norm in schools and society today...it's a sad and sick world when infant school pupils attack teachers - their parents want a bloody good hiding and in many cases so do the kids. I was in Dunelm the other day and one of the staff was showing me where something was located..there was a young mum with her child and this child was dancing, rolling on the floor and generally misbehaving and getting in our way while the assistant was trying to lead me to what I needed (me with shopping trolley) - the mother didn't so much as look up from what she was looking at to ask the child to desist, get out of the way or anything else. Sales assistant and I raised our eyebrows at each other - the poor woman said to me that it was going to be like that till they went back to school in September. Remind me to stay indoors till then!

 

[Frazzled]

The thing that annoys me, and nobody else it seems, is 'lol'. Its never actually put after anything genuinely funny, its just damned irritating. Quite a bit of that on this forum.

I can't stand it either minim. :emo:

OMG, LOL - actually ROFL! (off to hide!)

 

[Lottie]

I disagree about the link between behaviour and corporal punishment. People's behaviour has got worse and attitudes and respect for others changed and I would say that it coincided more with the attitude of the Conservative government's me me me think of number one attitude of the 80's. Respect is learnt from your parents, not from beiong belted with a strap. My father regularly got beaten by teachers, not because he'd done anything wrong, but because many teachers were serial abusers in those days (1940-50's) and the withdrawal of corporal punishment was as a result of stamping out this type of bad practice.

As for the naughty child, well some children do have behavioural disorders and one way to deal with it is to ignore it because otherwise you give the child the attention they are craving. Sticking them in the trolley is one way around it, unless they are so bad they are liikely to climb and fall. Who knows why we have more ADD/ADHD these days than before? Could be to do with all the rubbish that's put in every type of food we eat these days...could be anything to be honest from food to deodorant to skin products as it all ends up in our bloodstream and inevitably into our unborn children.

I was a primary teacher in the 80's and although most parents were fine, there were some who had a complete lack of respect for teachers and authority - they were the ones we had problems with and inevitably their children will one day have followed suit and the results of that we are now seeing today as those children now have children of their own. It was those parents who made my life a misery that caused me to leave a job I loved and go into the private sector although I'm now back in education again at a college - dealing with naughty teenagers and repenting adults!!!

We also do a lot of work with schools, particularly the early years and their families in an attempt to try and turn things around. It's all about understanding....trying to see why and where things go wrong and helping people overcome their past problems. However, we have never lived in a perfect society - in the same way as language is ever-changing, life and its problems are ever-changing too. Go back 50 years, 100 years and there were still social problems, it's just that they were different back then, often hushed up and not splattered all over Jeremy Kyle and made to appear to be "normal".

 

[BusyMum]

kids/young people today fear nothing & nobody - they know that whatever they do, nobody can touch them - that's wrong. If a bit of fear keeps them in line then I'm all for it - if we can't cane them, let's stick them in the stocks..maybe a bit of humiliation would work? Respect for other people and their belongings came naturally to us - we didn't go round in gangs terrorising neighbours like they seem to now and if we broke a neighbour's window with a football or something, then we knew what to expect - things are just totally out of hand these days. I'm sure the pendulum will swing full-circle again eventually, but not in my lifetime.

 

[loveheart]

I worked in a school in the early nineties and was shocked by the lack of dicipline. The teachers paid so much attention to the more'colourful' (in terms of character) children the good ones were left to their own devices. No treats or praise for them, only the difficult ones. I have been brainwashed into not calling them 'naughty children' I'm afraid.

 

[Brissles]

Well, I'm glad we all agree on something !

(sorry, off topic) but I might also add that if all of our school playing fields hadn't been sold off to housing developers during the past couple of decades, there might not be the explosion of obesity in children we are now witnessing. Games and sports were always on the school curriculum - which was dreaded in the cold and wet of winter when we had to don hockey gear and "get out there", but loved in summer when the rules of tennis and cricket were learned.

So yes, we HAVE made progress in certain areas, but equally have gone backwards and not for the better, in others.

 

[Lottie]

Kids do seem to think they are invincible...even my son goes on about ringing Childline sometimes when I'm having a pop at him. Never mind childline I tell him, it's parent line I need - I'm the one being abused!!! Nawwww seriously, he's OK

I think the biggest influences on our children (apart from parents) are computer games and the TV. All far too violent. It never used to be like this...

 

[loveheart]

When I went to school we would never be rude to a teacher, or any other grown up especially a policeman.