When did we start losing our articles? Indefinite or otherwise, they are dropping like flies. I don’t even think it’s a collective laziness on our part, it appears to be a concerted grammarcide.
I was watching a television advert the other day – it could have been for Argos, which is horrendous enough with its arse-clenchingly contrived ‘Argos it!’ punchline – the advert included the sentence: “Get £99 off Xbox 360 with Kinect!”
When did an Xbox 360 become simply Xbox? And more to the point, how have we allowed this to happen? I blame our education system, and I blame the parents. In no particular order.
We have a similar situation at work, where we have taken a style guide decision to ignore the Driving Standards Agency’s efforts to call itself simply ‘DSA’. DSA does this, DSA announces that.
I realise we live in a time of increasing government frugality, but slashing reasonable use of the word ‘the’ is certainly not going to save the billions that the chancellor needs in order to meet his spending commitments over the next five years.
Whilst the entire establishment and much of academia scratches around for a meaning behind the ridiculous riots of July 2011, I suggest we put it down to bad grammar. I might write to prime minister and tell him so.
1 hour ago
Don't even get me started on the adverb.
ReplyDeleteIs there a government agency grammaticaware.co.uk that could mayhap prompt H.M. Public to "Do grammatical"?
The English language is being displaced by the American language. It is some sort of foreign karmic quid pro quo for the British Empire. I'm sure that the American language is a fine one, but it makes me twitch and frequently knits my eyebrows with the effort of clarification.
I run a rescue centre for abandoned adverbs, the notion that "couple" is a number (instead of an indication of a number) and for the word "take" which has largely been supplanted by the word "bring". I have called it "Rescue Fresh, Rescue Healthy" and I drive safe to it every day.
Seems as though anything goes these days, the rules of the code we use to make English understandable between folk who have not previously met have been abandoned. So, in a "Happy Holidays" spirit I shall bid you "A very merry wibble moo fribble de-clomply" followed by a small, resigned "Harrumph".
Harrumph. Damned colonials.
I was hoping that a grammar quango might be set up at some point, but what with austerity being all the rage it doesn't look likely to happen.
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