I've encountered a surprising amount of seemingly intelligent, successful, people recently who of their own admission don't read books. They just watch short videos, maybe a movie, and read social media.
I'm not a researcher but I expect that their vocabulary is stunted as a result.
But they're so weirdly proud about it. Like a defiant 12 year old who doesn't want to do his homework.
I've had a respiratory specialist with over a decade of experience tell me he doesn't like reading and now doesn't even like putting time into movies. He says there's no need when you can see the highlights on TikTok and they shows you the best parts of the movie in a couple of minutes without having to sit through boring parts. All of this was unironic with him excitedly showing me how great his TikTok feed is.
I (a man in his 40s) pronounced Lathe wrong the other day in a meeting when referencing the le Guin story "the lathe of heaven". Someone privately messaged me after to say "great book. BTW, it's pronounced..."
It’s never going to happen as modern English is six small children in a trench coat but it’d be lovely if there was a spelling reform like German went through. While there are one or two quirks (long/short unspelled vowels, no one pronounces -ig properly, Berliners insist on being weirdos), you can generally know exactly how a written word is pronounced in (standard) German.
Fun fact, the current pronunciation of "lose" likely comes from people in the past confusing it with "loose"! Quoting the OED:
The regular modern English pronunciation representing Old English losian would be /ləʊz/; the standard English pronunciation /luːz/ seems to be due to association with LOOSE v., which in some contexts (e.g. to loose hold) closely approaches this verb in meaning.
Otherwise it would probably be pronounced as /ləʊz/ (similar to nose, pose, close, etc.).
So people in the past doing the conflation - totally fine, accepted, and normal. Because that's what you learned from the start. But people now doing the same kind of conflation - unacceptable, illiterate, stupid. Because that's new and different.
This will literally be the new literally, I guess.
Spelling conventions have taken quite a hit in the age of automated subtitles. We're devolving to the 1600s where this was more vibe based. I think there is also an element of wanting to show human frailty in content so no one suspects you of pushing slop.
Nothing has recently changed about the way people use the word literally. The figurative use of literally has been used in famous works by the likes of Dickins, Twain and at least one of the Bronte sisters, and was first noted in an English dictionary in 1769 - people have literally been using it that way for at least 250 years.
I've been following this English teacher on Instagram, who has had every attempt at getting kids to read thwarted by the school admins, who don't want anything 'woke' or 'political' or too challenging in any way. Which left this teacher with an empty library by the time the admin was done.
So it's not the kids' fault, it's not social media's fault, it's not even the teacher's fault. It's pearl clutching, conservative, anti 'woke', horse dewormer enjoying, piss drinkers that want these kids to stay stupid and unquestioning, and to have the reading ability of 5th graders.
I guess that if you put a bunch of religious fruitcakes that think science and education are woke devil magic in charge of things, you're going to end up with poorly educated children. Who would've thought?
Come on, it's a little social media's fault, too. They also benefit from these kids staying stupid and unquestioning. I agree with everything else you said, though.
A similar one I see quite often is "and" when it should be "an". Not sure if it's an auto-complete thing or they genuinely don't know the difference, maybe due to their accent/dialect. Either way it's like getting tripped while walking when stumbling over it in a sentence.
The then/than problem is also getting out of hand these days. Again, not sure if it's an auto-correct thing or not, but either way it pisses me off much more than it probably should.
When I was learning english I used to confuse the spelling though, cause the word lose to me sounds like the same sound as the double o in other words :3. Though once I got used to the weird english spelling rules I fixed that problem. Now if only I could remember which way round desert and dessert are..
I am definitely one of those who makes typos and gets mad about this but - the internet needs to get more pedantic about spelling and grammar mistakes again.
Wouldn't it be great if the internet automatically rejects any post that contains a lie or grammar/spelling error? The internet would get cleaned up SO DAMN QUICKLY! 😄
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