I am English born and bred but left there at 26 in 1980 and rarely looked back, although I severely miss little things like proper pavements, iced buns and Marmite, and I have been fortunate to have lived in and visited some great places. I am currently in Brasil.Browsing these forums this morning I was reminded of some "new" English that has been severely irritating me for some time: for example, "My friend and myself ....... ".When I was a kid we were taught to say "My friend and I ....", and that "myself" was something to do with "reflexive" or something like that: "I did it myself" or "I can only blame myself". Even though I understand that language in general is a dynamic thing and moves and changes with the times, this particular "mistake" really gets my goat and I cringe every time I hear it, and to have heard it recently on the BBC World News was an even greater affront, because in the past the BBC could always be relied upon to speak "proper" English.The other thing that really annoys me (apart from all the BBC presenters now saying "Join me, Bert Smith" as if the personality was somehow more relevant than the program) is what I call "Diana-Speak", invented by The People´s Princess and debuted on that dirt-dishing, tear-smearing tv interview she gave, during which she emphasized all the WRONG words, leading to the whole POPULATION giving us the WRONG idea about WHAT they were talking about. If you GET my meaning.And since when did "Senior", as in "Senior Army officers" become "top", and "Explosion" become "blast"?You know what it is - I´m getting old!

No, you aren't getting too old.It's just our once civilized and disciplined society giving way to a selfish, entitled, barbaric, un-disciplined, self-indulgent and adolescent culture that cares nothing for what's proper.Other than that, I have no strong feelings on this subject...

Somewhere along the line, the King's English became the Fool's English.In a way, we should mourn the loss of proper grammar, proper usage of pronouns, spelling, complete sentences and the like. But in another sense, we should be happy that English has become the true "world" language, thanks to its widespread distribution dating back to the British Empire, and its dominance as the language of the Internet. Or, as a member of another forum tags his posts, "Be glad you don't have to press 2 for English."It will get worse. My daughter is now in college, and I'm happy to say that she speaks and writes correctly, and I don't get e-mails that read "M coming home 2nite" or other such dastardly shorthand. But, in watching her through high school, I realized that all of her assignments were computerized. She turned in all papers, regardless of subject, as machine-readable copy on electronic media, or simply as a bit stream to a server at the school. So, she and her classmates had the opportunity to spell-check and grammar-check every page. For many students, the only "skills" of English composition that they come away with is how to use the toolset that Microsoft provides. Handy, yes, but it's hardly learning the nuances of the language.

I notice a worrying tendency for some native English speakers to use such abominations as 'I could care less' when in fact they mean to say 'I couldn't care less' or, the completely unforgivable, 'I would of' instead of 'I would have' :( Conversely it's a pleasure to see how well, mostly, non-natives here are able to communicate in our difficult and demanding language.I must add though that I do admit to full 'grumpy old fart' status :(

Improper use of pronouns, as well as their frequent misplacement is my "pet peeve."When I was in third grade I was taught two simple "rules of thumb" to guarantee both conditions were handled properly:

1. Simple courtesy will always place reference to one's self last.2. Leave everyone else out of the sentence, and speak the sentence silently. If it sounds stupid, then it is wrong! No self-respecting person would ever say "Me went to the cinema!"

Nevermind the "talking heads," the true tragedy is that even ostensibly well-educated people frequently make this egregious error!I literally cringed when I listened to a speech given by the recipient of the annual "English Teacher of the Year Award" for the City of Chicago's Public Schools several years ago......"On behalf of I and my fellow English teachers..." :(

And then there was Winston Churchill who famously said- "Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put!"------------Winston would never have sunk to the level of the Internet! As he might have penned a response on such a net message-"Pray explain- this day!"AR

Not sure why, but I just remembered the two old geezers, Statler and Waldorf, from the Muppets Show :-)Cheers,- jahman.

And then there was Winston Churchill who famously said- "Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put!"------------Winston would never have sunk to the level of the Internet! As he might have penned a response on such a net message-"Pray explain- this day!"AR

Churchill's comment was in response to an editor who objected to his ending a sentence with a preposition. In other words, he was sarcastically mocking some of the more rigid rules of English grammar, not supporting them.And (sorry, shouldn't do that either) let's not forget that we're all here because of our interest in an industry which uses phrases like, "Speed Bird 123, cleared to land runway 9 right". I can't see a main verb in that so-called sentence: it should be "you are cleared" or "I clear you", and it also needs something like "on runway 9 right". RT has been breaking grammatical rules since long before the Internet was thought of (sorry Winston).

No, you aren't getting too old.It's just our once civilized and disciplined society giving way to a selfish, entitled, barbaric, un-disciplined, self-indulgent and adolescent culture that cares nothing for what's proper.

I agree 100% with that comment!!!I often think the same thing when I read posts on the internet, not only here, but in many other forums having nothing to do with flight simulations. Actually, I should say not only on the internet, but in todays society as well.There is no doubt that the younger generation has become much lazier and undisiplined that what I grew up with only 10 to 20 years ago. When I was growing up in the 70's and 80's it was very common for kids to be spanked, punsihed, grounded or disciplined by whatever means necessary to teach kids a lesson. These days, I have heard of parents getting arrested for spanking their kids! How this has happened is beyond me. Frankly, I don't even know how some kids are even graduating from high school. Not to say that all kids/teens that graduate are idiots, but they don't seem nearly as eduacated as the generation I graduated with. Where I live in Texas, I have watched reports on the local news where parents have complained to school districts that the curriculum is too difficult and that it stresses the kids more than it should. What? You have got to be kidding me. When I was a kid, my parents wanted me to be pushed to the limit and learn as much as possible. Not these days though. Seems that parents want the kids to be coddled and not put under any pressure to succeed. God forbid any of these kids are put under pressure or have their feelings hurt because they didn't do what they were expected to do. :( If it's this bad now, I can only imagine what the next 10 to 20 years is going to bring. It kind of reminds me of a really bad movie I saw years ago called Idiocracy. While our society hasn't gotten as bad as what that movie portrays, it seems like we are headed in that direction.I read a funny comment by a commedian the other day in regards to the younger generation. He said something to the effect that they want to act like thugs (until the police come), girls act or want to be like guys, no one wants to work, be everyone wants to get paid. That seems to be a fairly accurate observation of what I see in public at times. :(

My wife is a copy editor. You should hear some of the things she reads to me that so called "intelligent" folks write. What is worse, many publishers (to cut costs) don't even have copy editors. All kinds of poor English gets by. Or (again to save money) manuscripts are sent to India to be edited. I realize those folks need jobs,also, but to have people whose second language is English, work with English, is a little odd to me. Don't get me wrong, many of them speak far better than I do. Many do not. I have seen their work.Fortunately myself is a good english speaker. I hates it when persons dont do there talking right.Bob

And (sorry, shouldn't do that either) let's not forget that we're all here because of our interest in an industry which uses phrases like, "Speed Bird 123, cleared to land runway 9 right". I can't see a main verb in that so-called sentence: it should be "you are cleared" or "I clear you", and it also needs something like "on runway 9 right".

I'd give them a pass on this one. Even in the light-traffic simming world, there isn't a lot of dead air time on any given channel around a major airport. The "correctness" of complete sentences is less important that getting accurate, easy-to-understand information between the controllers and the flight crews.

I dip into a football [ soccer ] forum from time to time here in the UK, and the standard of English really does beggar belief.There is a TV programme currently running over here called 'Dream School'. The programme records the efforts of a few very well known experts in their fields who try and engage a class of kids who failed miserably in mainstream school.When you see how they behave in the classroom you quickly discover why they failed their exams.One of the 'teachers' is conversing with one of the kids and is asked what his career path had been. He tells her that amongst other qualifications he was a Doctor of Medicine, her reply was ‘Is it?’.Eh ???

'When I was a kid we were taught to say "My friend and I ....", and that "myself" was something to do with "reflexive" or something like that: "I did it myself" or "I can only blame myself".'I think this 'myself' thing comes about because of uncertainty about subject/object usage in a sentence. "My friend and I.. " is correct, as the subject of a sentence, but "my friend and me.." would be correct as the object. E.g; "My friend and I were arrested by the police" is right, and "The police arrested my friend and me" is also right, but can sound wrong to some people. So the tendency is to use "My friend and myself.." to cover this uneasiness in either instance.I agree that there's a lot of sloppy use of the language around though. Strangely enough I generally find that Americans (and Europeans) tend to express themselves with better literacy than the British do in internet forums (I should mention that I regard "fora" as excessively, if not prissily, pedantic, since we're talking correct usage of the language right now ).

" For many students, the only "skills" of English composition that they come away with is how to use the toolset that Microsoft provides."Heh. Microsoft's toolset wouldn't catch, "Sniffer dogs were sent in to check all pubic areas for explosive devices" though.

>> Conversely it's a pleasure to see how well, mostly, non-natives here are able to communicate in our difficult and demanding language. <<I agree with that. I never fail to be amazed at how many people on this forum, and also 'out there', where english (note the lower-case first letter) is not their first language, succeed in what, to me, must be a very difficult task in communicating.It is one fact that I admire - and it make me feel so humble. I admit to being 'lazy' with other languages, like many english speakers, I suspect.RegardsBill