Learning to Love Language

When I first started reading the story “A Rarity: Grammar Lessons from Dad” I believed that my mother might have actually written this story and just used a penname. My mother has always been the first one to tell me when I was speaking incorrectly. She is one of the types of people that believe if you are not speaking correctly then you sound unintelligent. My mother was faced with an especially large challenge seeing that I spent the majority of my early childhood in Texas surrounded by people speaking like most Texans do. Her belief in correct usage of Language is something that I agree with to an extent. Then I also believe that informal language can and should be used between family and friends. It came as a shock to me that Robert Klose claimed that most parents did not correct the poor use of language by their children. It may be that this is a rarity but this practice is still alive and well at my house. While I do appreciate my mother’s belief in proper English sometimes it was a little bit frustrating. This was especially true when I would attempt to discuss things with her and her concentration seemed to be more on the actually words coming out of my mouth instead what I was trying to communicate to her. This frustration added to the fact that for a brief period during first grade my mother home schooled me added to my dislike of the English language. I especially did not like spelling or grammar. I still remember looking in my workbook from first grade reciting language rules over and over. My least favorite happened to be phrase when two vowels go walking the first does the talking and says his long name. The vivid picture of two vowels strolling along side by side, skipping, hand in hand still bothers me today. In “English Belongs to Everybody” the work begins by talking about how to much stress is put on language today and that because of that many people have lost the love that they had or could have had for it. I completely related to this claim. I felt that by pushing this grammar and language upon me I grew to resent it. While I do realize that language is present in almost everything I do I believe that my life might be much easier if I had more of an appreciation for it.