Where or were?

Hope this link works. The ultimate in poor pronunciation. From Shooting Stars.

Take a look at this video, 'vic reeves in the club style' share.google/89rJtKr1tHyt4ENoU

WithNobsOnIt

It is sad to hear that Teachers are still trotting this excuse out for poor spelling and comprehension.

This creativity thing has been going since the Sixties.

I remember English Grammar being taken off the Syllabus at the school l attended in 1966.

Yes, and this was a Grammar School

A lot of younger people think it is cool to sound thick and ignorant.
Plus, there is a lot of inverted snobbery and class tourism mixed in with this.

As a matter of interest. I have just Googled the following about the BBC.

Yes, the BBC still maintains a specialized Pronunciation Unit (or Pronunciation Research Unit) staffed by linguists. They advise BBC broadcasters and independent production companies on the correct pronunciation of names, words, and places in any language to ensure accuracy, particularly for newsreaders.

YOU COULD HAVE FOOLED ME.
GOD HELP US!

The National Literacy Strategy was launched in 1997 and through the development of the National Curriculum has completely changed English teaching from the previous decades.
Did anyone bother to look at the Key Stage 2 grammar test that I posted at 14:56?
Did everyone get all 50 questions right?

My mother always dinned into me to pronounce the 'h' in words like 'where', 'when' etc. - so never any confusion.

Doodledog - very interesting. I suppose it is the same with any patois version of a language.

I have noticed on our village facebook the many grammatical errors. ‘ I done it’, ‘she gived it me ’ are examples seen this week.
I am the oldest (ancient!) member of our book group and we take it in turns to choose a book. My choice is often a book written decades ago and the group have found it a difficult read as there were too many new or long words. They are not by any means an under educated lot, just decades younger than me! I have read that the breadth of vocabulary in modern books is much diminished. I must try to find the statistics on ithis.

Kircubbin2000 - the thing that makes me shudder is "should of" rather than "should have". So many write it but even worse is when someone on TV pronounces it that way.

If you come to Wales, hear, ear, here and year are all pronounced the same . Yer

It is sad to hear that Teachers are still trotting this excuse out for poor spelling and comprehension.

This creativity thing has been going since the Sixties.

I remember English Grammar being taken off the Syllabus at the school l attended in 1966.

Yes, and this was a Grammar School

A lot of younger people think it is cool to sound thick and ignorant.
Plus, there is a lot of inverted snobbery and class tourism mixed in with this.

As a matter of interest. I have just Googled the following about the BBC.

Yes, the BBC still maintains a specialized Pronunciation Unit (or Pronunciation Research Unit) staffed by linguists. They advise BBC broadcasters and independent production companies on the correct pronunciation of names, words, and places in any language to ensure accuracy, particularly for newsreaders.

YOU COULD HAVE FOOLED ME.
GOD HELP US!

We were taught that where was a ‘blow’ sound and that differentiated it from were. More like fware.

Caleo

RosiesMawagain

Well it’s obvious, they’re totally different words.
Were is the past tense of are and where indicates place eg «where are my glasses? They are not where they were» 🤣

Like Wales and whales 🤣🤣🤣

My anglicised sons laugh at my Scottish pronunciation that aspirates whales but not Wales.

I aspirate the h in where, when and why, and I tell 'my' y4s if they say it correctly they will spell it correctly too.

We're and they're seems to go unnoticed too. Is that because the ' is on the special character's screen on phones?

The common one I see all the time is there for their.

.

Petra

You don't use apostrophes either!!

(Now THAT makes ME shout!)
.
.

JamesandJon33

Do school children learn grammar any more? Parsing, précis, clauses etc.

Yes they do. Have a look at the National Curriculum for English.
They even learn about fronted adverbials at Key Stage 2.
Try the test for 10/11 year olds.
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/682dbbc6baff3dab99775152/2025_KS2_English_GPS_Paper1_questions.pdf

JamesandJon33

Do school children learn grammar any more? Parsing, précis, clauses etc.

If only! I loved doing the underlining. Verbs red, nouns green and curly upside-down ss for conjunctions. Then breaking a para down into clauses. A whole generation didn't do it and so today's teachers have piled into it with a while lot of totally unnecessary and confusing jargon, making it seem far more difficult than it actually is. Poor kids.

Modern children are taught grammar, with concepts such as fronted adverbials and the like. My children were taught parts of speech, clauses and sentence structure 25-30 years ago, and I had lessons in parsing sentences in the 70s.

My own contributions on this thread are about rejecting the idea that younger people are somehow 'inferior' (for want of a better term) to older ones when it comes to English Language, as in my experience there are plenty of examples of older people whose grasp of relatively basic English is lacking. It's not a generation thing, or an intelligence thing*, it comes down to education, and modern children are in education for far longer than many older ones were. I think it is a mistake to assume that young people's English is not as good as that of older generations.

*As far back as the 60s, Labov (a sociolinguist) studied speech patterns of children in disadvantaged areas (specifically Harlem and areas with high concentrations of Puerto Rican Americans), and found that their speech patterns, whilst noticeably different from 'Standard American' were equally rules-bound and complex - not 'inferior' at all. Subsequent studies have reinforced his findings with different social groups. Standard speech patterns are perceived as having higher status, but that is arbitrary and nothing to do with being intrinsically 'better' or more complex than other ones.

JamesandJon33

Which was my question. At ‘O’ level we did English Literature and separately English Language. I just wondered if it was the same these days, as younger people’s speech is often very ungrammatical.

Communications can be "ungrammatical" and still be explicit or creative.

I think schools teach creative writing, and creative speech and drama separately from explicit language. Each language register has it uses, and children need to be able to use both explicit language (i.e. "grammatical" language) and creative or everyday language.

Which was my question. At ‘O’ level we did English Literature and separately English Language. I just wondered if it was the same these days, as younger people’s speech is often very ungrammatical.

I didn't suggest for a minute that they should be at a high academic level .

They are local groups - called things like 'Hometown Past and Present'. Some members write long posts about historical events in the area, and others ask if anyone remembers Ethel and Bob who lived in Acacia Avenue in the 40s.

My comment was not about the level of historical knowledge, but about the standard of English Language, in response to a post asking about schools not teaching parsing and grammar these days.

Doodledog

It’s fine by me😀. I just wondered at the idea of a searching questionnaire. As I say, I think a lot of it is about reminiscing - these are not academic groups and membership is not limited at all.

"These are not academic groups". But groups don;t have to be professional academics to have a highish level of intellectual curiosity or expertise. I find one of the problems about engaging with online groups is the organiser does not say what level the discussions are at.

I used to visit online philosophy groups regularly until the groups folded. This was largely for social reasons as the general level was low. and I learned almost nothing from them.

It’s fine by me😀. I just wondered at the idea of a searching questionnaire. As I say, I think a lot of it is about reminiscing - these are not academic groups and membership is not limited at all.

Apologies for straying from the topic.I'll stop it now.

Caleo

Doodledog

Yes, they are possible reasons, but why does it matter? They are online groups for all comers. Anyone can post about the things that interest them.

Sure!

It's simply that I am curious about what motivates human behaviours. I am not an anthropologist but I have vague leanings that way.

Also, Doodledog, I myself am interested in what I think of as 'local history ', and I would enjoy meeting others with the same sort of interest -- historical land usage mostly, whereas castles and stately homes don't interest me except as signs of how people in former times lived and believed.

Doodledog

Yes, they are possible reasons, but why does it matter? They are online groups for all comers. Anyone can post about the things that interest them.

Sure!

It's simply that I am curious about what motivates human behaviours. I am not an anthropologist but I have vague leanings that way.

Yes, they are possible reasons, but why does it matter? They are online groups for all comers. Anyone can post about the things that interest them.

Doodledog

*I wonder why the members joined online local history groups. have the groups in question ever sent out a searching questionnaire as to why they joined?*
I doubt it - why would they care? All members are welcome whyever they want to join.

I assume they joined for the same reasons as me - an interest in local history 😀. There is also an element of remembering the area as it was (lots of rose coloured glasses) and thinking about life in their youth. Why do you think their reasons for joining matter enough for a searching questionnaire?

* special interest e.g. cup and ring markings, e.g. historical land use

*any port in a storm socialising

* Friend , relative , employer etc .was attending

* 'local history ' means no further ago than e.g. 1930s or wartime.

* local history is limited to castle, stately home , abbey, or parish church i.e. notable buildings

* curiosity about historical land use in local area ---maybe where their house is built

*whose

keepingquiet

kircubbin2000

What's the quiz?

It's called Twenty Questions on Spotify. He did it again today- saying the word 'navigation' with a soft g, as a j sound. He isn't a child either, over 40 years old. Now I listen just to see which words he gets wrong!

That's interesting, I learnt a lot of words by reading them first (partly because of my hearing & partly quite an isolated childhood). It does mean you pronounce things strangely because you don't hear it first.
I imagine this is true also of people who's first language isn't english & have picked up a lot of their vocabulary by reading.
Makes me wonder if the producer is in either of these categories.