Sometimes people depress me, they really do.

[conuly]

I had gotten a book for the niecelings, a sweet story about a little girl who wants to be just like her sister. This is so true to their life right now, Evangeline copying Angelique, I knew I had to get it.

And out of two comments on Amazon, one is about "bad grammar".

This book was given to my son as a text book and I had to correct the grammar and incomplete sentences before I could let him read it. The title shoud be "Copy Kyla". The page that starts "Got me some..." should read "I have..." The pages are not numbered. Only two pages are free of grammatical errors. I gave one star for good illustrations and one star for the positive family life and small town atmosphere of the book.

*eyeroll*

Instead of noticing that the little girl talks like, well, a little girl (cheers for accuracy), we get "Gee, nothing matters but the form", missing the point entirely, of course.

I just don't get it, I really don't.

Comments

[leora.livejournal.com]

It's important to portray all characters as speaking properly so that children with speech difficulties will have no role models and will know that they are wrong and not like the rest of us and the other children will know it's okay to make them feel inferior.

[conuly]

Something like that. Because, you know, half an hour of TV will *totally* undermine a whole lifetime of living with ones parents (who, presumably, set a good example all the time).

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Yes, because it's OMG so much better for kids to speak however they damn well please and mock the kids who DO speak properly for not being like the rest.

...sorry, sore spot there. I was an only child who learned language from books, not from ungrammatical peers, and hoo boy, did I catch hell for it in elementary school. I'm still a prescriptivist because (all together now) I DID NOTHING WRONG. While I could probably have been more tactful when I corrected the spelling of my first-grade teacher....most six-year-olds aren't big on tact, whether they're telling you what they think of dinner or about the spot on your shirt.

[conuly]

You're reading things into it. I don't think anybody should mock anyone on how they speak, whether they "speak properly" or not. And if that's your only reason for prescriptivism, I have to say, it's kinda a bad one. I mean, it's not something I tend to agree with anyway, so I'm not the best judge here, but all the same.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Not my only reason, I wrote hastily. But it's still one of the reasons.

[conuly]

Well, we're all entitled to our views. So long as it's not the only reason :)

[conuly]

Well, I guess you might not be reading into it, but it seems unlikely that that's what leora meant.