Can't believe what they printHey Reader,
Would you mind telling me just WHY I spent $19,000 in student loans and FIVE years of my life in college getting an English degree when there are people out there who want to do terrible things to the language, like, oh, I don't know, simplify spelling until it no longer resembles ENGLISH?
I read this article that proposes we should spell things as they sound. Noooooooooooo. That's the WORST thing I've ever heard. If you read the article, you'll see exactly what I mean. The words don't make any sense, and you spend more time trying to figure out what they should be in regular English that it's just stupid. I can't imagine what possessed these people to think "You know, we should change the way the language is spelled so it looks like a five year old wrote it down in a card!"
I suggest that all of the people who propose this idiotic switch over to uninttelligible "English" sit down and read, cover to cover, the novel by Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting. It's a good novel, yes, but it is 95% in Scottish dialect, spelled exactly how it sounds. Here's a taste:
"Ah tap the cash and meet Mitch in the Hebs. Mitch is still seein that lassie Gail. It's obvious that he's no gittin his leg ower. Listenin tae um fir ten minutes, ye kin pure read between the lines. He's in pure bevvying mood, so ah tap some cash off ay um."
Just think, kiddies, the WHOLE book is like that. I have read it, cover to cover, in three days, all 344 pages of it. It is well written, a good novel, but can you imagine spelling your every day corrospondences like that? I think I would rather learn math than have to relearn everything I know about my own language. Honestly, I dare these people, convinced that life would be so much easier spelling like that, to actually pick Trainspotting up and tell me what it's about. I know that book, I wrote a paper on that book, I saw the movie, I discussed it. Try me.
I must expunge the awful text from that article from my mind. It's terrible. I shudder to think of my language becoming THAT on a daily basis. Oi.
While I'm in a ranting mood, I did go applying today. I applied at all the places I said I would, only when I tried, three of them looked at me like I had grown an alien head or dog ears(I had to, just for Inuyasha) when I asked for a paper application. I feel like I dropped into this world from a different age, as if people totally forgot what paper was. On top of it, I wanted to apply to that local restaurant. They want a RESUME. No applications are there for you to fill out, they want an actual RESUME as if you were applying for some high end job. I couldn't believe it! I retooled the one I have, fitting it to their demands, and I will drop it off tomorow, but boy do I feel silly. Is it just me, or are we too afraid fo paper these days? I guess I just don't understand.
Just so you know, I am making headway on the story. I spent most of the evening and late into the night working on the story. I am so close to 3000 words, and I have not finished typing what I have written by hand two nights ago, so I know I have something to work with. I also had another great chat with my beta, and she liked the ideas I was putting into the chapter, so it is coming along well. I shall spend tonight working some more on it, too.
Until next time,
Far Away Eyes
I don't have anything against learning another language, I just think that if someone is going ot live here an be a citizen, they should learn English. There are some areas of town if you can't speak Spanish, you might as well not go there. There is one town in south Texas the made Spanish their official language.
I once taught with someone who had been a refugee from Cuba - and he had learned English by immersion - dropped into the classroom and expected to learn it, and he did. Even though he was teaching ESL, he still thought that was the best way. One of the problems in our school system (I taught for 13 years) was that we had some teachers that were so fluent that they just taught the kids in Spanish rather than making them learn English. I had some in sixth grade that I thought had just come here, and it turned out they had been there since 1st grade, but hadn't learned any more English than they were forced to. As long as the had a teacher fluent in their language, there was no real need.
Sorry, will get off of my soapbox now.
I think that if we are to really FIX the school system, we must quit taking the easy route. I think we are a melting pot, and having one unifying language helps with that, but we could be more worldly, too. We could learn a lot of different things simply by learning another language. Hell, the big entertainment we all enjoy comes from Japan, in subtitles a lot of the time! I think the more we know, the better we will all become, both immigrant and American-born both.
EX. Your home and You're home. Both correct but meaning two different things. How would you know what someone was talking about if they wrote. 'Yor Hom'
I may not be the best at spelling. In fact I'm pretty abysmal, but that doesn't mean it would be any easier to spell things the way they sound, especially since not everyone has the same accent or pronounces things the same. Ridiculous! I could barely read their 'easier' spellings.
And I know what you mean about the application thing. I would rather write one out than spend an hour on their stupid computer apps that take forever. Oh well, what can you do.
And I'm so glad I'm not the ONLY one who felt that those "easy" spellings were impossible to read.
I don't always spell the best, either, but that's why God invented someone who created the DICTIONARY. You can then LOOK UP the word you want and then spell it. Jeez.
As for the computer applications, I filled one out for ShopKO. It took me over an hour to complete. What pissed me off the most about it was I had a 20 page questionaire where the questions repeated themselves in re-wordings like "Do you dislike people who talk alot" and "Do you find that talky people are annoying?" NO. I find YOUR question annoying! ARRGH.
It is funny (and I don't know what this has to do with anything), I took Latin in high school. I remember there was a single word that could mean "do, drive, discuss, live, or spend" depending upon the context it was used in. For the life of me, I don't remember what the word was...
I am always growing and changing, and if someone points out a language mistake, I will take it into account and go back and fix it and keep it in mind. I'm not perfect, and I am always learning, just as any writer is. I just don't understand why anyone would want to write a story where the words on the page look like someone from Mars wrote it.
Anyway, the whole point is that I'm still learning, and still correcting mistakes. But, at least I try.
I actually still look things up in both a dictionary and a thesaurus. I've used both so long that they actually smell like OLD books and they're only a couple years old. I also use the spell checks on the word processor and online dictionaries. It's just the way I write.
You'd be surprised though, in academia, there are so many things that would be considered still unacceptable grammatically. They have changed a couple rules here and there, but for the most part, they are still pretty strict on what is allowed, at least when I took any of my academic writing courses. Fiction workshops always had their freedoms, but we still had to pretty much adhere to standardized English for the most part.
I do not think that dialogue is taught in school. You have to go off to college to take Creative Writing clases to learn the secrets of that, or at least what they supposedly can teach you about it. I had a professor who told me that creative writing is impossible to teach. Either you are a writer and will struggle to improve, or you are not. There is no "teaching" it. It just is. But, if you are ever seriously intrested in some ideas on crafting fiction, I would look up any of Janet Burroway's books. She has some good ideas and pointers, but you don't have to take all of her advice. I take what works for me, and ignore whatever I disagree with. Creative writing is so precise, yet so subjective sometimes.
Believe it or not, when I was in school, dialogue was one of the things they tried to teach us - I just never really got it (probaly because I hated that part of English so much). The only time I ever enjoyed memorizing theorems was in geometry - and that was only because it was math. I hated all of that stuff you were supposed to remember for English and History. I did enjoy literature though (well, except for Mississippi literature. I did get to where I understood Faulkner and enjoyed him; but have you ever had to read Eudora Welty? Ick!)
And now it is my bedtime since I have to be at work at 8 in the morning. Good luck on your continued job search.
So they taught dialogue? That's wild. You can't teach dialogue. You can only learn it by trial and error and feeling for what is natural in the conversation. That is totally bizarre.
I absolutely hated math. I am not very good at it, and I cannot do it in my head for the life of me. I have tried very hard to understand it, but I just cannot get it. I was always thrilled to get my C or C- in any math class, simply because then I knew I passed without getting a D. I love History almost as much as I do literature. My mother has a BA in History and would always tell me of medieval history and kings and queens when I was a kid. We also watched a lot of history channel about the medieval English royalty. I came so close to doubling in history. The good history classes I took did not force us to memorize dates and peoples names and the like. They taught us about the times, the events, why they were significant, and made it fun. You remembered all those silly details when it was presented in a fun manner.
Faulkner? Yes, I've read him a few times. I vaguely remember the name Eudora Welty, but have never had the pleasure of reading anything. Did she write a memoir? I remember hearing that name connected to that. I will say the mots boring author I have read, next to Dickens(How I loathe his works save Christmas Carol), has to be Edith Wharton. I wanted to strangle every character that graced the pages of her novel House of Mirth. ARGH. Rich, stuck up, snobby, full of themselves people who backstab and LIE to get a better societal placement. Nothing is worse.
The funny thing is, when it comes to language, my beta is constantly telling me when I'm writing that I write way too formally sometimes. I write out do not (I also speak without contractions a lot). It works well for Sesshomaru POVs, because that's who he is, but she's always yelling at me when I do the same thing in an Inuyasha POV. I tend to be more formal without realizing it, or so she says. It's just kinda weird.
And thanks for the luck. I am hoping that at least one of the places I applied to will hire me. Please?
I also 'no' (oh wait are we still spelling things the right way? Then make that 'know') that my writing has improved dramatically from my fist attempt.
I do hope that I have improved as time has gone by. Otherwise it's all for naught(or is that not? Silly spelling peoples).
I never really enjoyed or appreciated history until I got to college and had to take World History. I had a professor that wove everything that was going on in a particular time together. Not just what wars were going on, but included the art and music that developed during the same era. That perspective suddenly allowed me to see the big picture that I never had before because everything had been taught as individual elements. American history was taught so separately from the history of the rest of the world, that it was difficult to see how they related to one another. With the way he taught it, everything suddenly made sense and I did very well. He also gave you tests that made you think and plan in advance. He would give us the question ahead of time (there was usually only one or two), and you were allowed to bring in an outline with you to write your answer. I will never forget his first test: "Tell me about Christianity from the beginning through the 18th century." And he didn't mean just religion, but how it affected world events. I think I filled up nearly three blue books on that one.
And now, back to work.
I'm actually partial to some Southern fiction, mainly because my Creative Writing Director came from Mississippi and would tell us about some of the really good stuff. Contempory stuff, not the classics so much, mind you. I didn't always like it, but I did enjoy it for the most part.
Sounds like you had a professor much like my history professor. He would give the most exciting lectures. I always loved it when he would call some world ruler from centuries ago a "complete and utter dunder head" or a "yahoo." He was always so funny and you always remembered what he said because it was entertaining. And when it came to test taking, he would give us about five questions that we had to prepare answers for, but would only require us to answer two of those drawn by lot. There was always a wild card and those were always interesting. I wasn't in the class that had the funniest, but I heard about it. He had Michael Jackson serve as the wild card for people to pick what ever question they liked. It was fun. If I had more money and could have done it, I would have doubled in History, but by the time I started taking his courses I was a junior. I'll never forget his lectures on Dante's Inferno, though. He seemed to enjoy the tortures a little too much. . .