...but you cannot take the classroom out of a teacher. I want to discuss two of my pet peeves - misspelled words for public viewing and mispronunciation of words.
Everyone knows that teachers are trained to teach kids how to read, write, spell, decipher, problem-solve, etc. It's what we do. As a former educator I am still a master at spotting spelling errors on signs, billboards, on social networking sites...and it drives me mad! I prided myself on being able to read and decipher any kids' writing. Why, I even think I may be able to decipher hieroglyphics if given the chance. Misspelled words make me crazy! I went through my share of "red ink" in my 27 years of teaching. Misspelled words make me crazy! I may even admit to some OCD traits when it comes to this, but it really bugs me. Now I know some will defend their spelling errors on social networking sites, like Facebook, Twitter, My Space, etc. (or even in texts or emails) claiming they are the result of typos. That may very well be, but I am saying that people just don't care about spelling things correctly. My own children, both of whom are college graduates, are always hearing it from me when they make errors in emails or on Facebook. Spellcheck? Don't even get me started with that. Spellcheck has fostered people's laziness. For goodness sakes, we get the little red squiggly line in our text when we are writing on the computer and misspell a word, and still people ignore that. The irony comes in that very squiggly line I mentioned. Spellcheck tells us how to correct words and we argue with it or ignore it completely. Grrrr...
My other pet peeve (or OCD trait) is hearing people butcher/abuse our language. I am not talking about people who are not American born. I am talking about people who took their first breath and every one since right here in the good old U.S.A. I know I have mispronounced a word or ten million myself, but hearing things mispronounced by people who are paid to speak makes all the hair on my body stand on end. People on television, in my humble opinion, have absolutely NO EXCUSE for mispronouncing words. Let me "aks" you, do you agree? How many media people cannot even pronounce the word ASK? These people are being paid to communicate, educate, or entertain with their words. Travel guru Rick Steeves is one of the biggest offenders. I cringe when he mispronounces names of places, historical information, artwork, etc. How many times have I heard him butcher the name of one of the most influential families in Italian history, the Medici family? He repeatedly says "MeDEEchee" instead of "MEDichee". Shouldn't he have a responsibility to pronounce things like this correctly? Rick is great at what he does, don't get me wrong, but when he says things incorrectly I want to scream! Hmmmm...maybe we should now have PRONUNCIATION CHECK in our computer tool bars?
I agree. My top pet peeve is when people say, "I feel badly." Really? Would you rather feel goodly? "Feel" is a linking verb and is modified by an adjective rather than an adverb. The sad thing is when so many people speak the wrong usage, it becomes the norm rather than the aberration.
ReplyDelete