It's getting smaller all the time, but does it matter?

[NotHardUp1]

Then it impacted upon you.
Hopefully it didn't impact you, that would be a physically painful event.

I'll keep settin' 'em up, and you keep knockin' 'em down.

 

[pat grimshaw]

I heard 21% of adult USAsians are illiterate.

It may be the same for my country. We have compulsory voting and I encountered a voter who couldn't read any of the ballot papers.

I wholeheartedly agree with this—

The Human Attention Span [INFOGRAPHIC] | Wyzowl

Do you ever feel like our attention spans are getting shorter? New research has revealed that human beings are, indeed, flakier than ever before!

www.wyzowl.com

 

[unloadonme]

I heard 21% of adult USAsians are illiterate.

It may be the same for my country. We have compulsory voting and I encountered a voter who couldn't read any of the ballot papers.

I thought you were about to say that you encountered a voter who couldn't spell X.

 

[pat grimshaw]

The bottom half of this highlighted quote from 28 years ago certainly rings true—

https://twitter.com/x/status/1665815355657207809

 

[johaninsc]

I can't stand to get into a conversation with people who do this.
I quickly end it by walking away.

 

[NotHardUp1]

I guess I feel like that's not a good option. Maybe it was being raised by a grandmother who was both intellectual and a natural teacher. She led people to be curious and to want to learn. My thought is that we have to be the proponents of good language, or more accurate and precise communication, and the insights provided by them.

I've been surrounded by a great host of anti-intellectuals, whose only care was for sports, more leisure, money, and the mundane. However, I've also been fortunate to have known many who never stopped learning, who welcomed every new term of vocabulary as an interesting tool, and who explore ideas and form their own.

And, deep down, I believe folly is self-evident. A fool who speaks up and is supposedly a professional but is anti-intellect, anti-language, is overtly arguing for chosen ignorance. It comes across as the equal of the Home Improvements grunt that Tim Allen made famous. Episodes often mark the dividing line between long-in-the-tooth jocks who became business majors and still have the drive to try to shame nerds whom they cannot relate to and still want to ostracize, and the learners.

 

[unloadonme]

I was listening to a report about the cricket on the radio earlier. Since when did "batsman" become "batter"? That's what I have on my fish and chips! Is this more gender-neutral nonsense to accommodate the women who now purport to play the game? What's wrong in that case with "batswoman"?

 

[NotHardUp1]

Where does that leave yeoman?

Or journeyman?

Or cowboy?

 

[Kahaih]

Oh person, here we go again . . .

 

[Kahaih]

It's somewhat ironic, isn't it, seeing this topic on this forum?

Where we needn't get any more involved than to poke a little emoticon from the convenience menu at the bottom of every post.

 

[frankfrank]

But that's a French word, isn't it?

Without an equivalent in English. There are a LOT of foods like that - even taco and pho (among thousands) that are now considered part of English.

 

[frankfrank]

But we all attend the same North American professional conventions and it is like spreading lice in daycare...they all eat from the same breakfast buffet and chow down on the same bad notions.

I will never understand, if I live into the next century, why a handful of people who sucked at grammar, somehow got control of the English language curriculum and decided that they had a 'better' way of inculcating an appreciation for the foundational and technical aspects of the English language to impressionable minds...because they didn't want to stifle 'creativity'. It is why we now have adults who don't read but think that 'gunna' is still a real replacement for 'going to'.

I am all for the evolution of language...but heaven's to Betsy folks. I endowed a bursary in memory of one HS English teacher who I credit with making me the man I am and I swear I am coming for all those who dishonour his legacy. (Although seriously, I think he would overlook verbiage and construction in favour of originality any time).

I was taught by the use of phonemes, which of course was of immense help, exceptions (think -ough) notwithstanding.

I'll actually put ain't, gonna, wanna, etc. into writing sometimes. I'll even put Um, uh... in, even though in my actual speaking I never use those. (RESULT: pauses which sometimes make people uneasy...)

And don't call me Betsy! LOL.

I've always wondered who in the hell Betsy was, in that saying. Extremely old-fashioned name. I actually know a Betsy. That was also the name that, decades earlier, I gave to my first manual typewriter.

 

[pigface]

I've always wondered who in the hell Betsy was, in that saying. Extremely old-fashioned name.

 

[frankfrank]

I'm old enough to remember the phrase being around before the Davy Crockett fad hit and, yes, there actually WAS a fad. I was one of the millions of children who had one of the coonskin hats.

 

[pigface]

I'm old enough to remember the phrase being around before the Davy Crockett fad hit and, yes, there actually WAS a fad. I was one of the millions of children who had one of the coonskin hats.

There was no such fad here, I doubt many children here had even heard of davey crockett. And no TV to promote Disney drivel, a good thing.
What year was that?

 

[frankfrank]

That was 1955...the Disney TV series started in 1954 but the fad didn't happen immediately. I think it was the movie that put the mania over the top...I believe that movie, in fact, helped kick off the huge fascination with westerns (TV and movies with a western USA setting). It wasn't a pure western because it was also a war movie, but I think it helped spawn their popularity.

Disney just knew how to market things better. Westerns weren't new...for example the box office smash movie HIGH NOON in 1952, and there were some half-hour westerns both on weekends (for children) and weeknight "prime time" on TV. Looking at TV from fall 1950 to spring 1952, there were only "a couple" westerns sprinkled in the Top 30, but not very high - The Lone Ranger #7 and Hopalong Cassidy #9 in 1950-51 and nothing else, and in 1951-52 The Lone Ranger at #18 was the highest. Following that was only The Lone Ranger at #28 in 1952-53 and NONE in 1953-54.

It was only after the Disney stuff (and go forward maybe two years) that westerns became HUGE and often dominated the Top Ten TV shows. I'm checking Wikipedia right now...

top tv shows by season

In the 1954-1955 season, no Westerns in the Top 20, and only two in 21-to-30 (The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin; The Roy Rogers Show).
In 1955-56, "Disneyland" (what the telly series was called at the time) was at #4, probably BECAUSE of their Davy Crockett. No westerns made the Top 30 otherwise.
In 1956-57, Gunsmoke suddenly appears at #7, and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp at #18.
In 1957-1958, five westerns were in the Top Ten, including Gunsmoke at #1 (where it stayed for a few years!), and Tales of Wells Fargo #3, Have Gun - Will Travel #4.
By the 1958-59 season, westerns were absolutely dominant - EIGHT of the Top Ten, including The Real McCoys (set in Appalachia, though similar to westerns in many ways, and the first sitcom - "situation comedy" - in that genre):

1	Gunsmoke	CBS	39.6
2	Wagon Train	NBC	36.1
3	Have Gun – Will Travel	CBS	34.3
4	The Rifleman	ABC	33.1

In 1958-59, there were SIXTEEN westerns in the Top 30 for the season. There were "only" 12 the following season (or 11 if Lassie isn't counted, which I've heard some people regard as a western). It wasn't until 1972 that the Top Five of a season didn't include a western, and by the 1976-77 season there were none in the Top 30 anymore. Little House On the Prairie was the last one to go.

That's my story and my take on it, and I'm stickin' to my guns, lol.

I can see Davy Crockett not being shown in RSA. The Disney stuff was based on a real person who fought for Texas when they seceded from Mexico, and he's probably not even all that well-known in Canada. I'm not even sure Davy Crockett was well known by USAns before Disney had-at-it. The battle, after all, was a losing battle, and rather obscure because the massive battles of the U. S. Civil War only a generation later overshadowed this short war in the history books, not to mention subsequent wars with huge casualties. I'm sure he was probably well-known in Texas before 1954, but probably only in that region. He wasn't "JUST another soldier" (as he had served in Congress earlier, etc.) but it was a war that wasn't as well-known because, after all, it did not involve USA territory in any way. That was to happen about a decade later...in what "we" call the "Mexican War", which was also short-lived, and the USA took Texas along with some parts of northern Mexico.

That battle (at the Alamo in San Antonio) was a complete loss of all of the Texas troops ("only" about 200 soldiers), but very soon after that Texas defeated Santa Anna in another battle of that short war, becoming a new independent nation (for a few years, until taken over by the USA).

This was actually fun, because I learned a few things about TV history (though in general it's close to how I thought I remembered it), and it was only due to my earlier question about "Heavens to Betsy"! I even learned some things about Davy Crockett and Texas in the process. Wow.

 

[NotHardUp1]

There was no such fad here, I doubt many children here had even heard of davey crockett. And no TV to promote Disney drivel, a good thing.
What year was that?

Hold on.

Disney's rise resulted from the baby boom.

America's soldiers returned from Europe, the Far East, and wherever, in order to resume their interrupted lives.

Unlike the embittered WWI survivors who brought in the roaring 20's and the dissipation of a generation, they set about finishing school on the G.I. Bill, having humble but new homes like in Levittown, and starting families in an incredible faith gestur that the world should go on, that the millions killed should not have died for nothing.

In that surge of domesticity, children were suddenly more important, and more empowered than at any time before in our history. "Seen and not heard" was finally rejected with a lot of other Victorian bullshit. Children's movies, television, toys, and amusement parks were all just a consequence of that sea change.

We witnessed a very similar rise of children's value in Japan in the 1980's as Japan's wealth was suddenly growing from electronics and autos while their birth rate continued to shrink.

So, drivel perhaps, but drivel because a war-weary people were determined to create a life with an intentional amount of frivolity, of saccharine sweetness and contrived naivete because they had already been forced to live through the unspeakable.

 

[pat grimshaw]

My thought is that we have to be the proponents of good language, or more accurate and precise communication,

Kamala says we need good language to express the Joy… because, you know, Joy come in the morning!.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1676991967916355584