Notes & asides.

* Dear Mr. Buckley: The English language is not well. Our English has a sickness, caught not just overnight. It has taken many years; it now is an awful fright! Our mother tongue, most elegant, with meaning and melody both, is battered and twisted to pieces and degenerates in sloth. Discrimination, now forbidden, has disappeared in speech. Distinctions that were once quite clear are now quite out of reach. A sharp distinction marks two words: one word is well, the other, good. I'm feeling well and that is good. Too bad that's seldom understood. We disavow what's healthful, and say that it is healthy. Thus sloppy thought beguiles, insidious and stealthy. While no one looked upon it, it snuck with cautious stride, another insidious action that sneaked unseen inside. 'Twas once we strived with hope our work to expedite, but now we do a job to hopefully make it right. Personal pronouns give much grief; old rules are now unknown. 'Tis lost that myself is reflexive, where meis the proper pronoun. And there is common confusion whether to say meor I, as in give it "to him and me" rather than "to him and I." Between(betwain) the two of us, perhaps among a few, Mark Twain sure had it right when he measured fathoms two. Then there's the cause of only, quite commonly placed astray, the lonely only sitting far from where it's meant to stay. We didn't tell our teacher we missed what she had said, and we never, ever, told her we felt we'd been misled. We felt like we couldn't do it, ignoring the fact that we could, as if to tell all around us our grammar was really not good.

My head lay on my pillow as I was lying in bed, hoping that sleep could rid me of terrible speech in my head: Over and over, " You-know, I'm like, ah--well, um, ah--you-know, I mean, well, ah, you-know, I'm like, ah, um"--PLEASE NO!

Sincerely,

Daniel R. Shawe

Lakewood, Colo.

Dear Mr. Shawe: You are in terrible pain! Maybe you should move?

Anxious, WFB 

* Dear Mr. Buckley: What in the world has happened to the short e sound in the English language?

Have you listened to the women on CNN lately? They have abandoned the short e sound and replaced it with a sound somewhat like the a sound in the word add. As a result some words are pronounced like other words and some just sound like unintelligible noise. For example, bed sounds like bad, dead sounds like dad, head is had, Texas is taxes, better is batter, and so on. One of the most irritating sounds is the one they make when they try to pronounce the word west. The w followed by their mystery sound is weird beyond description. Listening to a broadcast in this strange language is like listening to somebody singing off-key.

Do you think that they have come to believe that the short e sound is peculiar to southern pronunciation and therefore is to be avoided at all cost? I have heard that there is a "school" in Tennessee whose mission is "to help people get rid of their southern accent."

Please assure me that the whole world is not going insane.

Bast wishes,

J. Walter Lynch

Athens, Ga.

Dear Mr. Lynch: How can you ask for any such reassurance!

Cordially,

--WFB