I used Grammarly to grammar check this post, because Lord knows I can’t even remember how to spell grammar. Have you ever thought about that? If we say “grammER” then why is it spelled “grammAR”? The english language just doesn’t make much sense sometimes. Or maybe it’s just us. Yes, I think it’s us. Some people must have just gotten together and laughed their heads off when they decided “Let’s make up this language with weird rules, and THEN break all them!”
Not funny. (But I kind of wish I had been part of that meeting…)
And that’s why we have spell check and teachers and editors and websites to help us communicate clearly.
I think it’s really made us quite a bit dumber, though. The beginning of the school year always makes me start thinking about this sort of thing. Does it for you? I mean, when we’re writing on the computer, we just use spell check. Often times we write in text-speak without using real words (I try not to, though, and it really annoys me when people do in emails). We don’t understand “big” words anymore, and think a person must be some english freak nerd if they do. And a dictionary? Oh my word, do you live in the dark ages?!?!
I, for one, am thankful that I was taught (in my awesome homeschooling time) how to find a word in the dictionary (though I still don’t get how I’m supposed to look up a word if I don’t know how to spell it). It helps to be able to alphabetize something and be able to sort things that way. And big words are pretty cool. Instead of using “pretty cool”, I could have used glorious, sensational, or marvelous (and yes, I used thesaurus.com to find those). My vocabulary books were fabulous too. I still sometimes come across a word I remember learning from them.
All that to say, don’t fall prey to an elementary understanding of our language. Don’t take your ques from me, though, because I make typos all the time and need to work on my writing style. Here’s to the start of the school year and lots more learning!
Thanks to Grammarly for sponsoring this post and reminding me how much better I could be at writing!
A Drop in the Ocean 