Comments on: “Heed The Wisdom Of The Swedish Chef, You Grammar Muppets,” by Uffington Westin-Smythe

By: Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Guy LeCharles Gonzalez — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:22:04 +0000

Great post! Now that “tweet” is acceptable and I’m on the verge of having to accept “tweeple”, too, I feel a bit better after reading this.

@Julie: My wife’s a teacher and when she first told me about the phonetic approach, we both flipped out. Reedikuluss!

By: Gloria Oliver

Gloria Oliver — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 22:38:02 +0000

Awesome post!

As to Julie’s comment on phonetics (sp?) my husband was raised that way and he can’t spell for shit. But then again he is a self declared lazy dude so never did try to rectify himself. (I pick on him about this ALL the time! Bwahahahaha)

And yes, The Last Starfighter rules! Heh heh.

By: Josh

Josh — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:25:52 +0000

Dude, The Last Starfighter was great. I grew up with movies like that. That probably says a lot about me, but come on, kid from nowhere excels at nothing but video games and gets taken away to essentially keep playing to save the galaxy? Sign me up!

By: Scionical

Scionical — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:18:46 +0000

The Last Starfighter kicks ass.

Death Blossom.

That is all.

By: John the Great

John the Great — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 17:44:05 +0000

Nice! I cringed myself when you mentioned how your students often don’t know the difference between their/they’re or you’re/your. I cringe because one of my biggest (and yes, very shameful) flaws as a writer is when to use apostrophes correctly.

…I mean, we can all mention their flaws, right? Or did I just make a shameful admission on Chuck’s blog like the time I declared my love for The Last Starfighter?

By: Josh

Josh — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 14:42:02 +0000

Jersey Shire should be on right after Doctor Who. Take some of that time-traveling audience with it.

This is a fantastic piece of work. My hat is off to you. If you like, you can send the bucket of turkey sandwiches my way. I don’t own a weed whacker, though. I’d have to take a more old-school approach. Knives or swords or big rocks or something.

By: Julie

Julie — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 14:40:57 +0000

Ok, please give me your opinion on this business of teaching the small ones phonetic spelling in first grade before they teach them the real deal. Is my knee-jerk reaction to decide to home school my kids so they don’t end up thinking “Linkin Park” is correct the right one?

I was literally twitching.

Still twitching.

By: Scionical

Scionical — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 13:54:27 +0000

Bravo. Bravo.

I am going to checking my Fox listings for Jersey Shire, it sounds amazing. I also feel like now I need to go watch Dr. Who, so I can get these references.

About ten years or so ago, I got really worried about language when I found out that California and Florida were going to replace English Lit with Ebonics in High School. I did my little simpering rage thing on my livejournal, complaining about how English was dead and the days of proper communication were over. My mom happened to trip and fall into the internet, and pointed out something in my post – she pointed out the thirty(+) typos, the ten or so obvious misspellings, ever grammatically incorrect sentence, and reminded me that in this language I was defending that prepositions prefer not being tacked on at the end of a sentence. It was, of course, humiliating. It also put me in my place.

I don’t bemoan language anymore, but mainly because I’ve lived in a lot places where English is a second language: near the Mexico border, tribal villages, and even here in Newfoundland (there are a lot of Pakistani and a few from Jerusalem here). The coolest things about English is it’s mutability.

By the way, the only reason I knew about the old form “s” character (that I can’t figure out how to reproduce at the moment”, is because I used to smoke Three Caftlef Tobacco (It’f the beft!). I never knew that I would see that character again.

I absolutely loved this post. Thanks for entertaining and educating. jk lol <3