You know when you were young and mum used to lament the demise of the English language and accuse everyone of talking in a slovenly manner?
No?
Just me then?
Actually, come to think of it, my mum correcting me on my language skills is hysterical as she was a proper Mrs Malaprop. I vividly remember her telling me very proudly that she had 'immaculate degeneration.' Of course she meant macular and I'm not sure why she was so proud of that. Maybe because she thought it was a gift from God.
As the woman who referred to lasagne as 'laz-ag-nay 'and Beethoven's Pathetique as 'Pat-et-iccur', along with constantly mixing up all her children's names she often had us howling with laughter. And yet we were given a quick clip round the lug hole if we stepped out of line, grammatically or otherwise. My mum was very free with clips round the lug hole. For the uninitiated, 'lug hole' means ear.
I'm from an era when parents were allowed to, nay, in fact, positively encouraged to beat their children for the slightest misdemeanour and my mum needed no encouragement in that department. It taught us from a young age to be nimble on our feet to get away from her flying hands. I still have a small scar on my arm from when she threw a knife at me and I didn't move fast enough to avoid it.
Ah, happy memories *looks into the middle distance with a sigh*
Anyway, moving on...
Now I have reached an age when now I notice the grammatical misdemeanours of young people.
Listening to the tv these days is an assault on my eras. When did we completely stop using the letter 't' in the UK?
For years it has been bastardised and used as American style as a 'd' but now it seems to have disappeared completely or turned into a sort of glottal stop. It's not an attractive sound.
So, I'm si''ing here wri'ing this and I'm fre''ing abou' 'ow I'm gonna converse withou' the le''r
er 't'in a sen'ence.
Shall I translate into RP?
So, I'm sitting here writing this and I'm fretting about how I'm going to converse without the letter t in a sentence.
Good grief. I know in good old Lancashire they used to leave entire words out of sentences. as in: "I'm going bed now." That was bad enough but how is it possible to just leave out one letter? It's not even as though I'm posh, I'm anything but. Not so much top drawer as under the drawers. Thanks to mums copious ear clipping antics though I did manage a decent grasp of our language.
I'm so pleased I'm old. Being young and cool is just too difficul'.
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