Why can't you write/speak proper?

I’m getting sick and tired of yet another sign of the poor use of the english language by native english speakers. These worrying signs suggest that good english is fast disappearing, and the bad habits are becoming the norm.

Again, I understand that languages evolve, but I’d much rather english evolve in a good way. What I’m witnessing is devolution, and that’s not a good thing.

My latest bug-bear: see/saw/seen

Here’s an example that I just witnessed in a news vox-pop, but which is typical of the spreading problem:

“That’s when I seen the flames.”

ARGH!!!

The correct sentence, my inarticulate countryman is, “That’s when I SAW the flames.”

Let’s get this right. Here’s how the three ways in which the verb “to see” are used:

1. “I see.” (Present tense. Example – “I see the car.”)

2. “I saw.” (Past tense indicative. Example – “I saw the car this morning.”)

3. “I have seen.” (Past tense subjunctive. Example – “I have seen the car many times.”)

So the problem is a confusion between the last two. The basic rule is that if you are talking about something very specific and precise (such as the one car in the second example above), then use “SAW”. If you are talking about something less exact, speculative, or general (such as seeing the car many times) then use “HAVE SEEN”.

Another helpful hint – “seen” will almost NEVER be used without the word HAVE in front of it. So if what you’re about to say would not be correct without the phrase “have seen”, then you probably mean to use “saw”.

Frankly, it’s easy. And I’m sick of people getting it wrong. It’s bad, and only serves to make you sound like a redneck idiot when you get it wrong.

We use signs every day to advise, warn or deter. They’re important. In some cases, the law depends on them. But how many times have we seen signs that make no sense, or are hopelessly ambiguous? Here’s a small collection of a few I’ve stumbled across recently …

To enter or not to enter?

I’d like to see this one tested in a court. It basically allows 24-hour parking, though I suspect that’s not the intention.

Pretty obvious really.

Requires a refined palate.

That’s taking it a little far …

Seriously Channel Seven, you need your on-air people to lift their game. Why? Because they are getting LAZY with the English language. In tonight’s Sydney evening news, we had these two clangers:

“Regyully”

“Particyully”

It’s not difficult to pronounce these two words correctly, and it could assist enormously in raising the language skills of your viewership, rather than perpetuate poor English usage. For the record, here’s the pronunciations you should be promoting among your on-air staff:

Regularly = reg-yew-lahr-lee

Particularly = par-tik-yew-lahr-lee

Channel Seven is beginning to appear in this list far too often for my liking. I’ve barely resisted the urge to scream at some of the very basic spelling errors that crop up in their news supers. But tonight’s news including a reporter piece to camera that included one of my pet hate turns  of phrase when she explained that smell:

“… was that big of an indicator of health …” [or similar]

Argh! Bad reporter! Bad english. I hear this often enough among uneducated speakers, but I never thought I’d hear it from a seasoned journalist that I assume has a university degree. Here’s what it should be:

“… was that big an indicator of health …”

One word. One superfluous little word.

I keep offering my linguistic services to Seven, but so far they haven’t taken me up on it. The offer is still open.

It will come as no surprise to any well-read net surfer that the world-wide-web is chock full of incredibly badly written pages. Now while there is nothing wrong with opening up the opportunity to publish to pretty much anyone, anyone who is writing for a public audience should make the effort to ensure their work is readable, intelligible and understandable.

Conspiracy sites are some of the worst (and they wonder why we don’t believe!), but even more unbearable are the personal blogs of people who think full length articles can be written like text messages. Sometimes you come across a site that was clearly written by someone for whom english is a second language, or who obviously just utilised google translate on a bad day. Other times the site is clearly by a native english speaker who just can’t seem to string a complete, intelligible sentence together.

Just a little extra effort, and these terrible “click out of there quickly” websites could have been so much better.

Here are just a few classic examples of websites that would otherwise be reasonably good value if it wasn’t for the atrocious writing:

www.supertravelpackages.com/top-3-mistakes-in-paris/

www.themakeupgallery.info/fantasy/mutants/xmystiquem.htm

tehgeektive.com/2012/02/25/how-cool-is-it-to-break-the-sound-barrier-that-cool/

topinfopost.com/2014/01/16/latest-invention-triton-oxygen-respirator-extracts-air-underwater/

pixelbell.com/90-absolutely-free-responsive-html5-css3-website-templates/

designinspirationmagazine.com/web/html5-audio-player/1529/

 technet.weblineindia.com/web/change-the-pitch-of-audio-using-java-sound-api/

An interesting video, but the sub-titles and other text on the video are woeful:

www.frequency.com/video/must-watch-hit-run-driver-in-southall/10821188/

I enjoyed watching the cricket over the summer, especially because the Australians regained the ashes in a glorious clean sweep. But that enjoyment was severely curtailed by the network’s terminal indecision about how to express simple english sentences. Occasionally (but only very occasionally, unfortunately) they got it right: “Australia leads by 300 runs”. But more often than not they screwed it up: “Australia need 3 wickets”, or “Australia are batting”.

Let’s make it perfectly clear, Nine: The Australian cricket team is a team. Singular. Referring to “Australia” as a plural is wrong. All references should be in the singular. Here are the correct phrases:

“Australia leads by …”

“Australia is …”

“Australia needs …”

If you want to refer to the members of the team, then use a personal collective, like “What the English batsmen need is …” (not “What England need …”).

The unfortunate thing is, because these mistakes are so public and the networks are (erroneously) seen as authorities, these mistakes take traction and are perpetuated by those that view these networks. So the mistakes grow, and more people use the language incorrectly. Yet again, I offer my professional services to the networks to assist them in improving the language skills of their on-air talent and super writers.

Unfortunately, even those writing the text that appeared on the big scoreboard got it wrong. In fact, even though Nine got it right occasionally, the scoreboard guys got it consistently wrong – at EVERY ground! Cricket Australia needs to take that one up.