Friday,February 7, 2003
Friday,February 7, 2003 |
| Learning
the Queen's English, and avoiding the dreaded red pen
By Rick Ryckeley The Boy was complaining the other day about how hard it is to learn a foreign language. He said he has to take two years of it just to graduate from high school. "That's nothing." I said. "When I was in school, I had to study a foreign language for five years." The Boy replied, "Yeah, and I bet you walked to school barefoot, in the snow, and uphill both ways too." The Boy he just gets smarter everyday. I answered, "No, the foreign language I took in high school was English, and every paper I turned in came back with lots and lots of red marks on it." "Dad," he said, "Trust me. Things haven't changed much." Why did our forefathers make the English language so difficult? I bet none of them had to diagram a sentence before they could get out of the eighth grade. Ever listen to a British sitcom on PBS? I have can't understand a single word spoken. The Wife say's it's called the Queen's English. Well, I got news for her: the Queen can keep it. No wonder our founding fathers left England; they got tired of talking that way. Think you have a good grasp of the English language, do ya? Got your nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adjectives all in order? Well, just start writing for a newspaper every week. Your perception will change quickly. You'd think, just because I've lived here for over 40 years, I'd at least know how to speak and write the language. Dad told me to always say what I meant and mean what I say. Well, below are just a few of the reasons why it's hard for me to understand what he meant, much less do what he said. Why do their and there, write and right, sum and some, sound exactly the same but mean something totally different? Why are can and can spelled the same, sound the same, but aren't the same? One can is a container, while the other is saying that you can do something. English is indeed a hard language to learn. Sea, er, see what I mean? I have The English Teacher look over all my stories before they go to the paper. That's only after The Wife checks them out first to see if they make cents, er, sense. The English Teacher looks to see if I break the paragraphs right, the tenses in the stories are correct, and the punctuation is all in order. Between the two of them they have two masters' degrees. They make me sound intelligent - which, by the way is no easy feet, er, feat. What? You think I can do this myself? My senior year in high school, I got a C in Miss Sanders' English Literature class. I saw more red in that class than in the movie "The Patriot." The English Teacher read my latest story, stopped half way into it, looked at me and said, "Rick, you have a dangling participle." Embarrassed, I said I was sorry and turned around. Looked down and finding everything okay, I asked her to explain. She then said I had a run-on sentence that it seemed like it went on forever, just rambling on and on and not really say much of anything. (Yep, sounds just like me. I've been accused of that a lot lately.) She added, "Rick, you have to be careful of the syntax also." I told her that Sonny Perdue and his new sin tax didn't bother me 'cause I don't smoke or drink, but I'll be careful just the same. She went on to say, "One last thing, people really don't use ellipses that much anymore when they right ... err ... write, understand?" I agreed with her and replied, "How did you know we sold the Eclipse and bought a Mercedes?" She just laughed, shook her head, and handed back my paper with a lot of red marks on it. Miss Sanders would be pleased with her. Looks like The Boy is right; some things haven't changed much after all. [Rick Ryckeley is employed by the Fayette County Department of Fire and Emergency Services. He can be reached at firemanr@bellsouth.net.] |