Oh dear, I saw this quote and thought – shouldn’t it be “the decline of speaking as though you are intelligent and sincerely care” ;)

I appreciate proper grammar, punctuation, and diction and agree with the sentiments in this post. I sincerely believe that anyone who wishes to do so can learn to speak properly. Nothing prevents a person from modifying their speech, except for cultural bias. From my personal observation, there is often a reverse bias favoring the slang speech over proper speech, and most young people choose to speak in a colloquial way in order to fit in with their peers.

Good post.

“I bet that Meredith DOES pop herself with rubber bands, just as I might stomp my right foot following the occasional failure to pronounce the first R in February.”

…except not pronouncing the first R in February is not incorrect. Any and all dictionaries I’ve encountered say that both pronunciations are acceptable, and there’s no scholarly basis out there for preferring one over the other.

Do you also pronounce the first D in Wednesday?

No, in addition to “dude” and “omgeez”, I’m guilty of “y’all” and “ain’t” on a regular basis. I was once at a party (now that I think about it, oddly enough, it was a Big Lebowski-themed party) where the average age of the party-goers was in the mid-30′s, and we were celebrating the engagements of 2 amazing international lawyers, who were marrying a pair of brothers.

The more I drank, the more self-conscious I became of my awful, teenage-y speech…to the point where I began to feel the need to apologize to everyone I met.

I’ll be yoinking this video and using it for my own purposes. Thanks for posting it.

Yep, that’s basically all I was trying to say, too. Ah well! :) Guess I tried too hard. But, in my book (as in my speech), better to be accused of “trying too hard” than not hard enough.

My own two cents? I am, like, TOTALLY guilty of talking like a stoner idiot, all too often. It’s a verbal reflex that I loathe, but also harbor a strange amused affection for (re: saying DUDE, semi-unironically). I also unconsciously do the accent/dialect/cadence mirroring, though I wish I could stop.

I think the thing that disturbs me most is the realization that it’s just not cool to sound like you know what you’re talking about. It’s horrifying to think that anyone intelligent would intentionally try and sound like a dumb-ass, because sounding smart or like “a nerd” is lame. Sadly, I see people do it every day. I think it has something to do with the hipster youth concept of “trying too hard”. There’s a weird allure for a lot of people to make their grey t-shirts appear perfectly untucked, their hair groomed into apparently haphazard coifs. It’s the affected apathy that gets me down, or as Nadya put it so succinctly: “It’s about the apathetic sentiment of an entire younger generation, manifested in our speech patterns, independent of class. That was my interpretation, at least.” I’m with you, girl.