I have been responding to the emails coming in on a college department public email inbox. Pretty much answering general questions regarding our programs for the public or prospective students. I am absolutely appalled at the huge proportion of the emails we receive being absolutely illiterate. Many from post-baccs, but at least high school, graduates. This is not a text shorthand issue, or even an ESL issue. They are so bad that I am (more or less) politely having to ask “what the hell are you asking?”

The state of un-education in America. Not shocked. Not surprised.

They's all gonna mambo dogface to the banana patch. But, I should be dead by then, so, not my problem.

Speaking of literacy, what's "baccs?" Bachelors of Accounting Science? The other term that came up in Google, Battlefield Automated Command and Control System seems not applicable.

Accountants are more about numbers and as long as they enter the numbers in the correct ledger, then I guess they get a pass for their English grammar skills.

But it has been a downward trend as far as literacy goes and grade inflation has been going up. Standardized tests such as the SAT and military entrance exam (SBAP?) used to be acceptable documents to allow entry into Mensa, the high IQ society. They stopped accepting those dated from mid-80s and later.

quote:

Speaking of literacy, what's "baccs?" Bachelors of Accounting Science? The other term that came up in Google, Battlefield Automated Command and Control System seems not applicable.

Post-baccalaureate. Someone who already has a bachelor’s degree. If they decide they want a career change it is often getting a second bachelor’s degree instead of doing master’s level work in the first field. If the second is in a related major it only takes about two years.

Back when I used to read the news online I’d click on an article’s headline link just to try to figure out what it actually meant. My main reactions were “who writes this garbage?” or “how’d this person graduate?”

I commend your patience in the matter. The dumbing down of America, especially the new slang, is absolutely appalling. There is currently some advert running on various media outlets that instruct Americans on how to understand the current vernacular used by the youth of today. “I’m so jelly”. This translates to “I’m jealous”. Why do we have to know or understand this? What’s next? Kids wearing their pants below their asses? Oh yeah. They already do this.

Wat RU say 2 me?

quote:

Originally posted by CQB60:
There is currently some advert running on various media outlets that instruct Americans on how to understand the current vernacular used by the youth of today. “I’m so jelly”. This translates to “I’m jealous”. Why do we have to know or understand this?

... Jelly/Jealous has been a thing for well over 20 years now. Maybe longer. I can remember that from when I was in high school in the late 1990s. Not exactly cutting-edge slang.

And I guarantee that you used slang terms as a teenager and young adult that people in your parents' and grandparents' generations found confusing and ridiculous.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:

quote:

Originally posted by CQB60:
There is currently some advert running on various media outlets that instruct Americans on how to understand the current vernacular used by the youth of today. “I’m so jelly”. This translates to “I’m jealous”. Why do we have to know or understand this?

... Jelly/Jealous has been a thing for well over 20 years now. Maybe longer. I can remember that from when I was in high school in the late 1990s. Not exactly cutting-edge slang.

Lettuce be cereal for a minute

Look at the country’s leadership. The top two “leaders” can barely speak coherently. I’d be amazed if they could write at all.

Texting with the young is a great adventure in interpretation. For decades, they have embraced instant acronyms (hoping you can figure it out) as well as established ones (LOL, AFAIK, etc.) in a quest for less characters to type. Twitter made this worse.

In the last few years, I have noticed other methods to achieve this goal. The main one is the embracing of urban slang and ebonics-like speech. Very few if any helping verbs. "they mad" "You crazy" and mixes "i B rich"

I feel like an anthropologist today. Para's old signature '...Then nobody will be able to brain' is coming true.

It was nearly 20 years ago that I encountered a hand-written letter from a pro se litigant which was so poorly composed that, if I recall correctly, I had trouble identifying a coherent sentence.

Frequently, pro se litigants are on the less educated side of the continuum. In this case, however, the litigant in question was a high school English teacher. No kidding. A freaking high school English teacher.

Given the school system she worked in, that should not have surprised me as much as it did, but it was still a little shocking.

-Rob

I have a very good friend that teaches 8th grade. She told me that the students are so far behind then what we learned. These students do not know how to spell or to write proper sentences, etc. What we learned back in elementary school, they are now just learning. She told me they are not being taught but showed how to prepare and pass the SOL tests. They spend most of the year doing that. God Bless

quote:

Originally posted by MelissaDallas:

quote:

Speaking of literacy, what's "baccs?" Bachelors of Accounting Science? The other term that came up in Google, Battlefield Automated Command and Control System seems not applicable.

Post-baccalaureate. Someone who already has a bachelor’s degree. If they decide they want a career change it is often getting a second bachelor’s degree instead of doing master’s level work in the first field. If the second is in a related major it only takes about two years.

Ize finna tellz him wut dat. Thx

When I sign in to watch Youtube I get recommended videos to watch broken up into categories. One of the categories was labeled, "Aircrafts".

About a week ago I was listening to the radio and an advertisement for something aviation related came on and the girl mentioned all of the of the different types of "aircrafts" that would be on display.

The plural form of the word aircraft is.........aircraft.

The people in charge these days who should know, don't know, and fewer and fewer people in our society care, or are educated enough to even catch things like this in the first place.

I am appalled as to how dumbed down our society is becoming. There is no excuse for it.

It starts with (the lack of proper) education, but it is continually bolstered by the media. I am not a huge "consumer" of the MSM, but when I am exposed to it, I find the blatant attempts to be "hip" and "relevant" to be so off what is considered standard English to be offensive. But what do I know, my panties get bunched when I see two, too, and to misused, don't even get me started on speling errers.

If we don't agree on a common language, how can we aspire to understanding? Yes, I am aware that language changes over time, we're not still speaking Old English or Vulgar Latin, but naybe us old fogies would like it to go a little slower. And as for "jelly" == "jealous," first i ever heard of this abomination, sounds like typical Ghettoese. I've felt jelly before (and peanut butter too), but it certainly didn't arouse any emotion, except a desire to wash my hands. Like "post-baccs," a construction that isn't hard to figure out, but is definitely not standard English.

Perhaps I should have perfaced the above with an "OWG trigger warning?"

quote:

Originally posted by VBVAGUY:
She told me that the students are so far behind then what we learned.

Than.

quote:

Originally posted by 83v45magna:
in a quest for less characters to type.

Fewer