OT: Where did our language go?

Sep 18, 2024 Last reply: 1 year ago 282 Replies

I'm happy to let a bit of incorrect grammar go unnoticed - I'm not perfect myself. But I draw the line at something which is completely incomprehensible drivel.

When I was a student, a lad who lived a few doors away from me in my hall of residence asked me to sanity-check a report that he was writing so make sure the science/engineering in it made sense.

Sadly I have no idea what he was trying to say. I knew I was going to have fun, when I saw the report title "Huh! Interactive Languages Are Really Yuk!", though I did spot that this spelled HILARY.

He wrote in half-sentences, changed his mind half-way through sentences, used random capital letters on (and even within) words - I began looking for a hidden message, as for the HILARY. It was quite a shock to read text written by someone who a) was English, b) had been accepted onto a university course, which was so impenetrable.

I was itching to correct some of his more heinous errors, assuming I would actually work out what he was getting at so I could rewrite his sentences in comprehensible English. But I resisted the temptation!

I made some bland comment "Seems fine" - if his tutor wanted to rip him to shreds for writing incomprehensible text (as opposed to a few mis-spellings and grammatical errors that didn't affect comprehension) then that was up to him.

I did ask him about the significance of HILARY. He said that this was the name of his (female) tutor. He fancied her and thought that if he worked her name into the report she'd give him extra favours. Presumably he was after a date rather than just a higher grade!

Impossible to parse, was it?

:-)

Reminds me of a fellow student who, on receipt of an essay after marking, was miffed by the low mark given.

On reading it (in his presence), I was struck by the fact that the tutor marking it had written:

"PS: Your spelling is abyssmal" [sic].

He (the tutor) wasn't too pleased when I pointed the correct spelling of "abysmal".

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