English Teachers: Please Help Me!!

[onlygo 0]

HEE HEE i really am from Texas and can turn up the southern draw at will .

[Carlene 12]

My wife wants to know who this girl-friend is that is making love to me. :help:

"I am loving him" sounds like a euphemism for what someone might say while enjoying a night (or afternoon) of pleasure. :faint:

I don't know if she's got anything to worry about or not. As you guys get older, however, size really does matter. How big is your.......

401 K? What??? Did you think I was going to say something else? You aren't a tired old man...you are a DIRTY old man.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

I don't know if she's got anything to worry about or not. As you guys get older, however, size really does matter. How big is your.......

401 K? What??? Did you think I was going to say something else? You aren't a tired old man...you are a DIRTY old man.

Both are shrinking rapidly!!

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

I approached a store one day which had two glass side by side doors. The door on the right had a sign that said, “USE OTHER DOOR” with an arrow below the words which pointed to the left. I used the left door and walked to the counter and said to the store-clerk (who knew me for years), “you know Jeff, your sign is wrong”.

“Why?”

“That sign says to use the right door”, I replied to Jeff's amazement.

I explained that the arrow pointed to the left door and then instructed the reader to use the other door. Since the only door designated was the left door (by the arrow), the other door would be the right door.

“No! No!” Jeff insisted. “The arrow means use the left door.”

“But the words say differently” I insisted. I explained it a few more time, but could not get agreement, so I asked a question to pin Jeff down.

“If the words above the arrow had said, 'USE THAT DOOR', which door would you have used?”

“The left door.”

“So in your mind, 'USE THAT DOOR' and 'USE OTHER DOOR' both mean the same thing. Since 'USE' and 'DOOR' are in both sentences and are equal, then 'THAT' must also equal 'OTHER' for 'USE THAT DOOR' to equal 'USE OTHER DOOR'. But since 'THAT' does not equal 'OTHER', then 'USE THAT DOOR' and 'USE OTHER DOOR' are not equal. If 'USE THAT DOOR' above the left-pointing arrow means use the left door, then 'USE OTHER DOOR' above the same arrow can not mean use the left door.”

[Carlene 12]

I think you need to stop harassing poor Jeff. Most people would understand, just as you did, that "Use Other Door" meant use the left one.

[Wheetsin 714]

I approached a store one day

And did you use the "12 items or less" lane, or did you insist that they open a new "12 items or fewer" one?

[Wheetsin 714]

My language tends to be on the formal side. For the most part. Sometimes I slip into my "California Casual" - like - you know? It's so not funny. People pick on me for this as much as they would pick on someone for using extremely informal English. I use too many "big" or "fancy" words. I've been told numerous times, "I didn't think anyone actually used words like that." So like anything, I do my best to assess the situation and use whatever is most correct, within reason. I don't really understand what "Fushiznit in thay hay-ouse, boo, got my biznit" means, and some others don't really understand what, "juxtaposition of divergent forces" means. Is one more "right" than the other? If your target audience doesn't get the message, can it be "right"? Some people think language like the former is a sign of ignorance, and some people think language like I tend to use is hoity-toity... but in both cases we're probably in the same boat - we've somehow been trained to talk the way we do, or adapted our way, and it's what we know.

I don't teach English, but I have an English degree (emphasis in Literature, not grammar). I've taught college English - 101 level. I don't know if this was the case in previous generations, but the rule now is definitely "write like you speak, speak like you write".

In courses I took on the evolution of langauge there were countless debates around:

Should we accept Ebonics as a language, because it's a showing of people's pride in their heritage, and a testament to the strength of a population

or

Is Ebonics just a way to butcher the English language? Is it anything other than a lazy, ignorant, uneducated attempt at English?

Of course, you can replace <Ebonics> with the vernacular of your choice.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

I think you need to stop harassing poor Jeff. Most people would understand, just as you did, that "Use Other Door" meant use the left one.

Of course I understood the meaning because it was the arrow that gave it away visually, but if he had left the arrow off, we would have know to use the left door. So the arrow could be considered as making it a double negative. But when we all understand the meaning, but the words are wrong, then how will we know when the words are right?

At an open seating event, like a concert, a husband and wife are sitting down waiting for the show to start. The woman decides to make a restroom run before the show starts. While she is gone, a man walks up to the husband and asks, "Do you mind if I sit here?"

The husband answers, "Yes." and the man sits down. "Excuse me sir, why are you sitting in my wife's seat?"

"You said, 'YES'."

I have seen this happen over and over again, except usually the "YES" meant it was ok to sit.

WHY?

Because people try to be overly polite, do not want to ask a begging question or maybe a question which gives the person sitting down too much control or power, so they do not ask, "can I sit her?"

Many times I have asked, "Do you mind if I sit here?" and when the person answered "Yes", I walked away only to be called back to say it was ok to sit there, or I have asked, "Is it ok for me to sit here?" and was told "no", then left and then called back, or "Is anyone sitting here?" and when told "Yes" and then left, I was called back. When I would strike up a conversation about what had happened (and you knew that I would), I am usually told, "you knew what I meant" or "I knew what you meant".

Apparently they were wrong, because I went by the words not what I could have assumed that they meant.

When people hear, "No toothpaste has been proven to be better than Crest at fighting cavities", most people think that Crest fights cavities better than Colgate. That is not what "No toothpaste has been proven to be better than Crest at fighting cavities" means. It means either "there may be other toothpastes just as good as Crest" or "no studies have been done to prove which toothpaste fights cavities best".

Gracie Allen was told by her husband George Burns, “Harry went to Pete's house, but he was not home.”

Gracie replied, “Of course Harry was not home, he was at Pete's house.”

Everybody laughed, but Gracie was correct.

[Carlene 12]

I think there are groups, or drugs, or something for what ails you.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

I think there are groups, or drugs, or something for what ails you.

I'll settle for a suitcase full of $100 bills.

[Devana 0]

People not using language to even attempt to say what they mean drives me insane. For example, two other parents and I were sitting at the back of the school hall waiting for the first day of school assembly. Two teachers were up at the front getting the music ready and setting up the harp that one of them plays. The piano player came over to us and said "The assembly doesn't start for 10 minutes". I thought she was just giving information and I thanked her. She became really agitated and I eventually and asked her if she wanted us to leave. She said yes, the harpist wants the hall empty to tune her harp. I told her that if that's what she wanted she should have said so from the start. I don't understand "hints". It frustrates me to no end when people don't just come out and say it. And I especially hate it when our children's teachers do that.

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

People not using language to even attempt to say what they mean drives me insane. For example, two other parents and I were sitting at the back of the school hall waiting for the first day of school assembly. Two teachers were up at the front getting the music ready and setting up the harp that one of them plays. The piano player came over to us and said "The assembly doesn't start for 10 minutes". I thought she was just giving information and I thanked her. She became really agitated and I eventually and asked her if she wanted us to leave. She said yes, the harpist wants the hall empty to tune her harp. I told her that if that's what she wanted she should have said so from the start. I don't understand "hints". It frustrates me to no end when people don't just come out and say it. And I especially hate it when our children's teachers do that.

Teaching sarcasm as normal discourse is very dangerous. It distorts the language and as has been proven in many studies, people tend to live down to the level of the expectations of the discourse.

When I was a child, I thought that the word "bright" meant stupid. For 4 years, I had a teacher who used bright as an insult, an assessment of stupidity and as a reproach. Make any mistake and she would say, "That's bright" or "Your are really bright". The more hideous the mistake was the more the rebuke was drawn out. "Your are really bright" became "Your are really, really bright" and then finally "Your are really, really bright" with really and bright each taking about 3 seconds to be pronounced.

When someone mentioned to me that the Sun was bright, I asked. "why do you think the Sun is stupid?" When another person told me that I was bright, I apologized in fear.

My teacher had a friend who was the teacher in the next room over and they would often get together within earshot of the students and argue over who had the "brighter" students. We knew by their expressions and by which students they would single out, that they were not bragging.

Another problem that I continually see is parents saying, "Keep it up" when they mean "stop it". A child is trying to learn boundaries and does not need confusing statements.

I told a child that I was minding to "Keep it up" as an encouragement to what I was teaching him to do and he stopped and flinched. It was obvious to me that "Keep it up" was usually followed by a slap or some other form of corporal punishment.

[Carlene 12]

Sometimes what people say and what other people hear just aren't the same thing.

A guy goes to the supermarket and notices a beautiful blond woman wave at him and say hello.

He's rather taken aback, because he can't place where he knows her from.

So he says, "Do you know me?" To which she replies, "I think you're the father of one of my kids."

Now his mind travels back to the only time he has ever been unfaithful to his wife and says, "My God, are you the stripper from my bachelor party that I laid on the pool table with all my buddies watching, while your partner whipped me with wet celery???"

She looks into his eyes and calmly says, "No, I'm your son's math teacher."

[Tired_Old_Man 1]

Sometimes what people say and what other people hear just aren't the same thing.

A guy goes to the supermarket and notices a beautiful blond woman wave at him and say hello.

He's rather taken aback, because he can't place where he knows her from.

So he says, "Do you know me?" To which she replies, "I think you're the father of one of my kids."

Now his mind travels back to the only time he has ever been unfaithful to his wife and says, "My God, are you the stripper from my bachelor party that I laid on the pool table with all my buddies watching, while your partner whipped me with wet celery???"

She looks into his eyes and calmly says, "No, I'm your son's math teacher."

He heard her correctly. She spoke incorrectly. The proper response should have been her final response. "I am you son's math teacher."

What she said was incorrect because it was ambiguous (at best) and more than misleading. Her students are not her kids. They are students in her math class. The least ambiguous statement she could have made was: "I believe you are the father of one of the students in the math class that I teach at (name of) school."

Of course, I do not expect people to speak so formally in everyday life, but "I am you son's math teacher" would have been more accurate and sufficient in the surrounds where they crossed paths.

TOM

PS: I also don't expect a man to be so honest about his prior dalliances.

Only I would be that honest and talkative.

[BJean 16]

Shouldn't it be... "we" old people... instead of "us'?