Adele Ferguson 11/10/11

Could the English Language be endangered?

SCIENTISTS have come up with another study on creatures in the inland waters of Washington and British Columbia that need protection as threatened or endangered that has doubled what we listed only three years ago.

When is someone going to do the same for the English language?

It’s grating to watch our local television news shows any more as they drop their g’s and tell us about cams and temps and aves. Sure, I know or at least assume they mean cameras and temperatures and avenues but say it, damn it!

And if that isn’t bad enough, I listened to one reporter commenting on the breakup of a movie marriage and said she’d be keeping an eye on the sitch. Unless she misread a word on her teleprompter that rhymes with sitch since she was talking about a Hollywood sexpot, I interpret that to be situation.

WHY DO THEY DO IT? I don’t know. I could say it’s because they think it makes them sound cool except that I have yet to ever use that expression in writing or speaking, even though it has become the most often used word for anything good or commendable or acceptable or admirable etc.

I called my daughter who is the computer junkie and asked her about erosion of the English language and she said it’s the result of the vast increase in texting.

“In texting, words are broken down into pieces or initials,” she said. “Like MIW for Mother Is Watching.”

Well, that’s interesting to know. Pay attention, you mothers with texting children. If MIW comes up on the screen when you sneak up on your texting offspring to see if you can catch them with something inappropriate they’re on to you.

My daughter also blamed people from New Jersey who seem to be fairly numerous on the reality shows and speak an eastern dialect that would horrify an English teacher. That’s if they teach English any more. If you ever watch Judge Judy, you’ll be convinced that the first to go when they cut the budget in the schools for the last 20 years or so were the English teachers.

THE JUDGE suffered some kind of attack while on the air not long ago and I’m convinced she just couldn’t take another “me and him” or “it don’t matter?’ from her participants. She corrects college students but she could do the same for the high school set who are about the worst despite the fact they should have had English in grade and junior high schools.

As for reality shows, I don’t watch them. Not anymore, anyway. I watched the first ever reality show years ago, every weekly chapter of it just out of curiosity but once it was over I never had the desire to watch another.

And I won’t leave you without enlightening you on what I started out with, the increase in species of creatures that are listed as endangered or threatened or are candidates for listing either in the U.S. or Canada.

There were 64 species in 2008 and there are 113 now, according to a study by the SeaDoc Society which is associated with a school of veterinary medicine in California. Among those added are the snowy owl, cackling goose, Pacific sardine and surf smelt.

You’re welcome.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)