Tuesday, October 30, 2007

This article sucks

When I was a kid, "suck" was considered a bad word. We could only say it if we were talking about vacuum cleaners. Now it's all over TV and high school students use it freely. A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to teach Algebra to H.S. freshman. One day after hearing the word about 500 times and most recently about 50 times from a student in my class complaining about how the school, the teachers, his parents, and his life sucked. I threatened to write him up for disciplinary action if he said it again. He thought I was crazy. "Suck isn't a curse!" He protested. But the way I remember it, it was a minor curse word like Crap or Damn. And it wasn't used lightly. As kids we used to say it stinks when we were displeased. The other word was only suitable when something was outrageously unfair, not just a minor inconvenience. Last week a student in my Greek class (where I am a student), said that English should be spoken correctly. Thay way it would be easier to learn another language. It seems he's not familiar with the proper usage of future and past verb tenses, in English. They aren't common in our spoken language. But he is in his 20s and never learned the finer points of our own language in school. What's happening to the English language? I'm all for progress, but after all is said and done, it will have sucked (future perfect tense).

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