Happy New Year!

Unholy crispy critters! Been too long since I posted to this thing. Anyway, have a good new year, all.

I wish things could be better on my end, truthfully. Girlfriend's parents want to make life unbearable for both of us, and I am getting WHOLLY FUCKING TIRED OF IT!!!

If I knew how to chill out, I would. Good thing tomorrow is our anniversary. What a fun time that will be! (Insert sarcastic, smart-ass remark as you please).

Good grief, life sucks. I will be glad to be back to school, buried under my massive course load, where there is no time to make sense of anything, and I can blissfully surrender to the coma of academia

Reflections

This has been an interesting semester, to be sure. I began this class with a hatred of what I perceived to be grammar. I was taking this class to better my understanding of the English language, and I am positive that this class has helped me in this pursuit. I learned how to diagram a sentence (though I still have a long path ahead of me), what an appositive and a relative clause were, and the various patterns of sentences, like NP1 verb Adjective, for example. The things I have picked up over these last few months may not be at the fore of my brain in the coming years, but I am sure that somewhere, buried in the rat's nest that is my mind, I will still be able to access it when the situation calls for it.

Mulroy questions

The decline of Grammar

1. Why were only religious texts preserved at first?
2. In your opinion, were the advances of learning beneficial to those of us living today, or harmful?

Mulroy & the Greeks

In response to the question about Mulroy and the Greeks, I read that Mulroy says that the Greeks came up with a revolutionary method of writing, that shaped the way we think about writing and our present-day writing styles. The idea for the Greek alphabet apparently originated with the Phoenicians, who were the inhabitants of what is now Lebanon, and were at the fore of international trade and navigation during the dark ages. Because of the early Greek alphabet, we are blessed with the Latin alphabet, which we use, and the Cyrillic alphabet, used more commonly by the Slavic peoples, like Russia and the Czech Republic. Some of his contemporaries would say that the Greeks mostly communicated orally, and really had no need for a written language. However, Mulroy says that the written language served as a 'tipping point,' and led to the great advances we now have. I agree with Mulroy, and do not think that the world would be what it is today without the Greeks, and their strides in advancing language and knowledge.

Steve Martin in one of his best roles

SWE: Do we need it?

Well, if it were not for the institute of Standard Written English, I do not think many people would know how to communicate the way we need to in this modern world. I mean, how silly would it seem if a sentence were phrased like, "I seen them walking, and I ain't sure, but thinks I seen him murderize her life." Some of the preceding sentence is used in common lingo, either to just be playful and silly, or because we do not always talk as we write, and we cannot be anal with our word-usage at all times. Then we would be teachers. Oops! I kid, I kid, because even teachers do not necessarily talk as they would have us write.

The question now is: if SWE is a good idea, then how do we go about teaching it? I say that there should be an equal mix of theory and practice, live and let learn. Perhaps the instruction would begin at a young age, and the pupil would be guided firmly yet kindly, not dashing the hopes of the child, nor coddling them, because both of those alternatives do not lead to anything fruitful. As the instruction progressed, and the child got older and more learned in the ways of SWE, they would be guided to put their knowledge to practical use, such as tutoring the younger ages in the ways. Kinda like Jedis and their Padawans.

Mulroy on Pinker

The passage starts out talking about how "the study of grammar helps us to understand the great literature of the past and to speak and write eloquently." Mulroy moves on to give us the reader a look at how he gathers his information, or the sources he uses on the internet, rather, and how such wide distances for intelligible information would not have been commonplace in Medieval Europe. Later, when we get to the real meat of the passage, his take on Pinker, he begins by saying that Pinker is "generally unimpressed by the phenomenon of standardized languages." Uh-oh, I smell a debate a-brewing!

After this, Mulroy says where he disagrees with Pinker, and utilizes other thinkers like Lowth to back him up in his assertions. Overall, I finally am beginning to see how wide the schism truly is between all the great minds when it comes to an issue like this.