I keep hearing people using "is when" and it drives me crazy.

You see, I happened to have some teachers who were sticklers for grammar. It's not like you could tell from this site, especially with the many spelling errors, but it still drives me batty.

Here are some common errors that I hate:

• The "is when" error (the "is when error" is when someone writes something like this)
• The "mid scentence tense switch" (this sentence needs fixed)
• Excessive and redundant use of "basically" (basically, this is an example)
• The use of "can I" instead of "may I" (can you go to the bathroom?...I sure hope so)
• "Very possibly"

These usually don't bother me so much that I have to rant so publically. But then it happened...

I was watching T.V. (I do that sometimes) and a commercial for a Fisher Price product showed one of their usual educational toys in which one of the little talking men says to the fireman "can I visit the fire station sometime". ARGH!! If you're asking permission then it 'aint a question of ability! Why try to teach that to kids!! Why wouldn't you check your grammar!!? Beh. What do you expect from a company that makes christian propoganda.

"Basically"

...I have heard that word abused by more morons trying to sound smart than just about any other word. Quite often the person who uses "basically" in their description couldn't tell you any more about the topic than what they've just said. When some smartass says something like "basically, a guitar pickup is a magnet" press them to see what more they know about it and chances are, they don't even understand what they just tried to say (BTW: a guitar pickup isn't just a magnet, it's actually a little electric generator). "Basically" is a crutch for the metaphorically challenged. Most of the time you can drop the word "basically" out of any sentence and it suddenly sounds much less wimpy.

Go check out Alt.english.usage for some more information on this error and other little grammatical quirks. I don't really know where this rant is going. It's not like I'm a linguist, I live with someone who is studying linguistics and you haven't heard hair splitting until you've dealt with a pissy linguist.

Ah, screw it.

The language is changing. That much is obvious, and as someone who tends to work with more of a "conversational" grammar and take common usage as rule It shouldn't bother me. But it does. I love the english language and want to see it taken further, not deconstructed in some kind of "beyond thunderdome" dystopia, driven by mass communication of ungrammatical sentiments.

I'm sure some of us will 'member the old grammar from the before time and we'll pass on the 'memberings...

###