World of Weird Al Yankovic

In Madison, WI.

TMBJon wrote:"Could of" is obviously wrong. Give up, other side of the argument!

Absolutely! I don't like this loosely-goosey "It's not wrong if everybody says it" stance. If it's wrong, it's wrong.

weird_el wrote:In Madison, WI.

Well, there had to be a catch. (No offense, but I'm a Buckeye fan. I've heard good things about Madison, actually.)

I can so relate to these Word Crimes! I have the same in my language--which is Dutch. If I had any talent, I could make a Dutch version of Word Crimes ...

E.g. your example of 'could of' which sounds like 'could've'. In Dutch the words 'eens' (once) sounds like 'is' (is!) when spoken. But then people start writing 'is' instead of 'once'. Yes, they use a verb in an odd, nonsense place: if 'once' proceeds or succeeds a verb, you effectively get two verbs in a row. Ugh!

Another one, also a bit like the English 'you and I / you and me'. In English this happens in the first person, in Dutch the third person plural personal pronoun in the subjective case is shifting to the plural personal pronoun in the objective case: 'they' becomes 'them'! And to make matters worse, unlike English where they and them sound a bit similar, in Dutch it's a completely different word which makes it even more obvious to me (they = zij / them = hun). ARGHH!

(sometimes if a co-worker is telling a story to another co-worker using the objective case, I would shout out the subjective case, without taking part in the conversation. Really annoying and it makes me so appreciated and loved! (NOT))

But in English, the number of times I see things like 'Your stupid' also makes me cringe.

This topic is the best.

Was at Rocky Horror last night, and the theater played Word Crimes as part of the pre-show mix.

While I understand correct grammar in papers and writings, I get really irked when people 'correct' grammar in colloquial conversation.

It's unofficial and informal. Grammar Nazis can come across as really holier-than-thou and I'm-better-than-you because of it. And that can be kinda rude.

That's how I feel in the discriptivist v. perscriptivist debate. By all means, correct grammar in writings, paper, and published works, but don't do it to people who are just talking about the weather, or a new movie, or their day at work. Saying it's "wrong" is actually wrong (language does change) and simplifying the situation.

Remember those friends I told you about with poor grammar? One of them is a member of a Mom's groups that I am in, too. Every month, she'll make a list of things to do or questions to answer for each day. I found 6 grammar errors in the list for August. This is a grown woman!!
1. How old was you when you had your first job?
7. How old was you when you went on your first date?
14. How old was you when you first moved out?
21. If you seen someone fall would you stop to help them?
26. True or false: is Crocs the shoes made of plastic?
30. What is the strangest food you ate when you was a kid, and would you eat it again?

Here are my corrections. Hopefully, she will change those sentences so I don't feel stabby whenever I see them.
1. How old were you when you had your first job?
7. How old were you when you went on your first date?
14. How old were you when you first moved out?
21. If you saw someone fall, would you stop to help them?
26. True or false: Are Crocs (the shoes) made of plastic?
30. What is the strangest food you ate when you were a kid, and would you eat it again?

When I posted my answer for question #1, I threatened to post the "Word Crimes" video. I added the correct way to write that sentence. Underneath her answer to the first question, I asked her again to correct it, because I couldn't look at it anymore without feeling grammar rage. After I did that, I looked at the list, and saw the other sentences. I added them to a new post and told her to please correct them. I have a feeling she won't. Btw, using "seen" instead of "saw" is the worst.

algonacchick wrote: 26. True or false: Are Crocs (the shoes) made of plastic?

A further correction: this isn't how True/False questions work. It should be

26. True or False: Crocs (the shoes) are made of plastic.

Or, more simply

26. Are Crocs (the shoes) made of plastic?

Not sure if anyone has posted this article on Al yet from Tablet, but it's worth a read: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-an ... 5/weird-al" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I particularly liked the writer's take on "Word Crimes":

Attempting spoofs, other comedians were rewarded with many millions of views for takes that did nothing but make the utterly obvious observations that Thicke was creepy and his hit a step shy of an ode to rape. Weird Al took the same musical gruel and turned it into “Word Crimes,” an anthem of good grammar deriding those who cannot abide the simple rules of syntax.

This is not a random choice. In his short and evocative collection of lectures from 1974, unimprovably named Nostalgia for the Absolute, the critic George Steiner, reading Claude Lévi-Strauss, muses about the moral meaning of grammar. “Not until you have a sufficiently rich sentence structure and enough words to define the third cousin four times removed of the mother’s uncle can you have incest and kinship rules,” Steiner writes. “So that grammar, in a way, is a necessary condition for basic moral law.” That’s the line, not at all blurred, that ties Robin Thicke to correct conjugation: Lose the ability to speak properly, and whatever ensues is guaranteed to be beastly. This is what makes Weird Al’s parody so powerful.

Whether that was all really Al's intent or not is debatable, of course. Still, I didn't expect to read such an astute analysis of "Words Crimes" in a random online article.