One of the worst peeves is people dropping letters from their words. This happens especially with hard consonants on the ends of words, for some reason. When people prefer sloppy enunciation for spoken communication, at least there was the refuge of textual communication. I do empathize if you have crazy teeth, or a tongue made of putty, or some other physiological problem which affects your speech. But text appears to be something of an equalizer in that regard. It does not seem too difficult to actually type that extra r, g, or t at the end of a word.
I hate that posting trainwrecks of poor diction netside such as “dunno”, “gotta”, or >choke< “prolly” and " 'em" seem to strive to normalize lazy speech. It inspires me to feel that people hate their language, or at least certain consonants. I can cope with a silent e and gh, but not silencing most hard consonants.
Or maybe it’s because they sell so many better local options!
U-Pick apples is a thing in this area of the country. Once you’ve picked 12 different varieties from various trees in an orchard and tried them all, the so-called “Delicious” apples just don’t stack up.
Now I know: whenever any other Boinger comes to town, we plan a meal or a beer or a coffee; but when you come to town, we’ll have to drive to SW Michigan and pick us some apples! (Hint: late summer, early fall)
I spent quite a few years in the 1980s saying things like " 'e" to avoid saying he or she, as a way to play with people’s sexist assumptions about whether or not the doctor or police officer or teacher or love interest I was mentioning was male or female.
You, of all people on this forum, should be thrilled by this sort of language use.
Playing with people’s assumptions I agree is helpful. But I was quite specific in complaining about language mangling as a consequence of laziness. I suspect that people would be able to explain if using “dunno” achieved anything beyond sounding lazy. If new and creative uses of language serve a purpose in communication, then I would not call those lazy. I grew up with this problem, in the form of my family dropping r from the ends of words, with no apparent reasoning.
Sure, it is snobby of me. But I struggle to understand why people decide to do it, and how they think it actually sounds/looks good. What goes through people’s minds when they decide to elide the enunciation of those 5-10% of syllables?
My guess is that poor diction and similar informality is a minor act of nonconformity to the system.
And then some people, ironically, imitate the poor diction as an act of conformity to their social group.
I find that when I am too formal, especially online, I come across as insincere, or even mocking. So, I often write out exactly what I want to say, and then go back and sprinkle with informality to taste. The formal language is more genuine to myself, but the informal feels more genuine, and thus is projecting a more genuine representation of the message.
Only three weeks ago did I learn about Google Timer. What saved me from abject humility was teaching my family about Google Timer.
I do like the spam-filtering and the procedure for getting back into Gmail when one’s using an unusual IP address (like from another continent) and device. Outlook doesn’t have half as elegant and efficient procedures.
I went immediately from being nonverbal to speaking super formally. It took me a while to learn code switching after that, but it basically means that different social situations have different grammar rules.
We have 'em out here, too. There’s a bucolic village in the mountains northeast of where I grew up that prides itself on its apples and pies, and I’ve picked a few bushels there. Also had a couple apple trees in our backyard at the trailer park, though our apples weren’t nearly as good as our plums and tomatoes and bell peppers. I do love a good apple right off the tree, and I like several varietals better than Red Delicious. But still, my go-to apple is the Red D, and when I pick a good one (and I’m good at picking good ones), I’m very satisfied.
