If you've been reading IMHO, you know I can get a little verbose. To
cater to those with a short attention spans, I try to correct that here. I keep collecting ideas I want to comment on,
but never seem to get around it. I might do better if
I simply post a few thoughts as they occur to me and as time permits. Your comments and feedback are welcome. Or add your own pet peeves and annoyances.
What's
bugging me now? So very much stuff it would take a three volume book
to cover it all. Here's today's short list: TV commercials and serious abuse... of my native language!
- Advertising
Prescription drugs Assuming you pay any attention to these commercials at all, you may have noticed that there are about fifteen seconds of happy people--pain-free, sleeping well, leaping out of bed ready to conquer the world! The other forty-five seconds are warnings about possible side effects. Personally, I'd rather live with my stuffy nose than trade it in for nosebleeds, indigestion, constipation, and occasional thoughts of suicide or... the possibility of bleeding to death unexpectedly (not that any of us expect to suddenly and for no apparent reason, just fall down on the floor and bleed to death)!
My sister had two close-call bleeding-to-death episodes from two different NSAID drugs. If her husband hadn't been home when they happened, she would have died years earlier than she did. Think I'm gonna try those drugs? No way.
Know why those makeup ads always show beautiful women who look like they're fifteen? Think you're ever going to look like that if you use the product being advertised? Forget it! You had your chance when you were a teenager and failed to appreciate how good you really looked. Even if you were dog-ugly, and other than some zits occasionally, your skin was probably unwrinkled and smooth--just like the teenagers cosmetic and other companies use in many of their ads.
On the male side, the outcome for almost every product comes down to sex. Have you seen the ad that starts with something like "How does this seventy year old doctor have the body of a thirty-year-old?" Notice it does not ask how he transformed his typically seventy-year-old body into a hot, muscular, number. It asks how he has the body of a thirty-year-old.
My response: If he had enough money to go from fat and flabby, with the effects of gravity showing themselves, the thirty-year-old woman whose body appears in the commercial probably assumed that the dude had the tons of money necessary to pay for his transformation, and--no doubt--volunteered to be the thirty-year-old body he has! The important message here though is his libido... the desire, they both agree, is practically non-stop. Whoop-de-doo!
I can tell you from personal experience that at seventy, nothing short of a gazillion dollars worth of plastic surgery, a life devoted to intense exercise, a few hormone injections, and heaven only knows what else, are the only ways any of us can reclaim the bodies we had when we were young and hot.
I've lost about thirty pounds over the last couple of years. Easiest thing I've ever done. Because of a genetic or metabolic malfunction, I gave up drinking regular milk and eating ice cream, and otherwise ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted! I exercise regularly, including pumping some iron, keeping my body limber, and doing some aerobics. But despite my best efforts... the effects of gravity are obvious. I have some wrinkles. And I earned every damned one them! - They should start teaching English in America's schools.
I know language evolves over time, but bastardizing a language out of ignorance is different from letting it evolve in a sensible way (if that's possible). Below are a couple of my favorite bloopers. They're all direct quotes I wrote down only seconds after hearing them, usually on cable news.
"... 6:00 A.M. in the morning." Duh! A.M. stands for ante meridian--literally, before noon or the time between midnight and noon. I think I learned that in the second grade. If you understand what A.M. means, you could not possibly say or mean 6:00 A.M. at night! If it's six in the afternoon/evening, it's 6:00 P.M., not A.M. Postmeridian (P.M.) indicates the time period between noon and midnight.
Use one or the other, or just say, "... six o'clock last night" or "nine o'clock this morning" and not 9:00 A.M. in the morning!
"I used to be a former congressperson" [names have been omitted and gender-specific references "neutralized"] Okay, so the only way you could be a former representative in congress is if you were one to begin with. And even though you may have a new job now, you still qualify as a former representative... How do you stop being a former anything? Maybe this speaker was referring to a previous life?
"The near proximity of..." Dictionary definition of proximity: "the state or quality of being near; nearness in space, time, etc." So, if proximity means near or nearness, you could just say "... the near nearness of..." which should give you a hint about just how silly the statement sounds.
"Between..." I've heard this several times recently. Somebody said it once, then it seems a lot of others picked up on it. The definition for between is too long to quote and anyhow, its meaning should be clear to just about every native speaker of American English.
Say you're showing a friend where your car is parked. Would you tell her it's the white car between the red and silver cars? Or would you say its between the red car and between the silver car. How on earth could your car be between another car? Maybe it's a toy car and it's on the floor between the front seat and the back seat. But your non-toy car sure ain't between another non-toy car and nothing else!
If you're trying to decide which dress to buy, you might have to choose whether to buy the purple velvet one or the gold chiffon one... you have to choose between two options. One or the other, not both. How much sense does it make to say you have to choose between the purple dress and between the gold dress? Truth is, it makes no sense whatsoever. It does make you sound like you're anything but a native speaker, and weren't paying attention in your 'English as a Second Language' class!
And don't forget Web sites like Ask.com, which has a great section on American English grammar and lots of good (and often funny) articles in its newsletter. Even if you're dumber than dirt (not that I think any of you are, of course), you can sound smarter with a just little effort.
No comments:
Post a Comment