Quote Originally Posted by OakLeaf View Post
Reviving this thread, not without trepidation, to share this thought-provoking piece.
reminds me of William Safire and his painful nit picking of bad grammar.

I make no bones about it. I gave up on it long time ago. Like LPH, I really do not have a first language. My other language is Japanese and let me telll youuuu that the grammar is worldly different that it might as well be (been) an alien language. Even Chinese have some similarities to English but not Japanese. Tis why the Chinese are able to speak more correct American or British English whereas Japanese, well , not so much.

Spoken language is alive, vibrant and full of life. It should change with generations. How else can it express each generations unique view of the world? We had the rat pack, '50s generation had theirs, hippies, yippies, yuppies, X-gen, valley talk oh my gawd!!, grunge talk. Makes it more interesting. And now with texting, even spelling is going through some major transformation. It's amusing not bemused.