Anyone interested in language? No? You’re not alone.
While listening to local radio in the car recently, I pointed out to my children a grammatical error that the presenter had made. A stage has been reached where I am only mildly annoyed by this because mistakes in broadcasting have become so commonplace that it is easier not to care or let one’s blood pressure rise. My eldest daughter asked me why I am always being so pernickety about the English language when I can’t really make any difference. I replied that it is important to me and that, even though it is a doomed crusade, I have pride in my language.
It is disheartening to hear so many interviews with foreign sportsmen and women being far more intelligible than those conducted with their British counterparts. If one were to examine a written transcript of Arsène Wenger’s contribution to Match of the Day next to that of Lee Dixon, only one would be in good English.
European businesses are often overlooking British graduates because, not only do so few have a foreign language to offer, most of them are inferior to foreign candidates when it comes to speaking English.
While other countries accept youth culture’s abbreviations and misspellings in the right place, they retain a sense of integrity that prevents these working their way into the media or the classroom.
As a teacher, I feel that it is my duty to set an example to the pupils and, although English is not my subject, I should neither accept their mistakes nor let them hear me make any myself. However, I am realistic enough to understand that they have fewer and fewer role models from whom to learn the correct way to speak. I do not wish to blame certain pop music, advertising, reality or trash television here, as we have all come to expect that these media strive for the lowest level of intelligence, even if they sometimes fall short of that.
I aim the criticism more at those groups of people to whom we used to be able to look reliably to set a good example, namely newsreaders, journalists and teachers.
I sit through many a staff meeting where I meet the eyes of a (very) few other colleagues for a collective silent groan when we hear that a pupil has made “less mistakes” since his last grades or that anyone wishing to discuss a point should see “David or I”. If we cannot get it right ourselves, how can I expect my pupils to do so?
After complaining to the BBC about errors in the ten o’clock news, I received a polite e-mail reply stating that scripted pieces were checked for accuracy (although they still split infinitives) but reports from outside broadcasts were susceptible to mistakes.
Without a single institution helping young people to learn their own language and an over-reliance on information technology to correct the written word automatically, English is heading towards uncertain times where those who have learned it properly will be old or foreign and the majority will prevail with a bastardised version of a formerly great language. Until then I shall continue to berate the dullards at school and curse the incompetent broadcaster on my television impotently, whistling into the gale-force wind.
