IS IT PROPER?
Linguistics and languages are just two of my passions; English in particular. It may seem a bit out of the ordinary for English is my second language but I’ve come to love it. The more I have learnt about it (and there is still so much more to learn…It’s actually quite exciting), the more I’ve come to appreciate it. And this is precisely the reason why people who use improper language and make basic errors, drive me absolutely nuts!
Sorry to say, Americans seem to dominate this unfortunate category. I often get an impression that either people simply don’t care what kind of language they use or they are not very well educated. Part of me wants to lean towards the former, but the other part realizes that it’s most likely the combination of both. Either way, the effect is the same: too many people speaking improperly for my comfort.
What really ticks me off is when someone (whose English is in general pretty flawed) corrects me on my pronunciation or the use of idioms or other colloquial expressions. Hardly ever are they correct themselves, though. Let me give you an example here. The proper pronunciation of the word ‘herb’ in the English language includes the letter ‘h’, thus the ‘h’ is not silent, contrary to what the popular belief (therefore the pronunciation) is. One thing that gets on your nerves, for instance, is when I read an American book and come across such as this: “an historical event”. This is so incorrect it makes me want to scream: “Where the hell is your editor?!” Anyway, why is it incorrect; you ask? Because nowhere in the rules governing the English language does it state you can put an indefinite article before a consonant! Moreover, using ‘an’ in such a context implies that the ‘h’ in words like ‘history’, ‘historical’ etc. is silent. This, however, is not the case. The ‘h’ in ‘history’ is very much audible!
Well, these are just a few examples of the very basic mistakes Americans make on daily basis, which still makes me ponder the reasons behind such occurrences.
First, I just stumbled upon your blog a few days ago, and I couldn’t help to mention that you should write a book since your writing is very good. Second, I know how you feel when you feel like you need you need to go off on someone when they make errors. As a geography major, I get easily annoyed when people don’t know how to pronounce the names of various countries, or don’t even know that some countries even exist(that’s a whole other story). Third,about what you wrote regarding the word ‘herb’ and the ‘popular belief’. I think you’d find some helpful information about why the word herb is/can be pronounced differently. Here’s a link (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_and_British_English_differences) ( scroll down to the “HISTORICAL BACKGROUND”) . I don’t think that anyone is pronouncing the word incorrectly, it’s just where you’re from.
Thank you for your comment. I do appreciate your opinion, however I don’t regard Wikipedia as a valid source of informaton since it tends to have many errors. And as an English major with linguistic background, I think that there is a big gap between the way words supposed to be pronounced and the way they are, regardless of where one comes from.