No. 15: More Tidbits for Verbal and Written Communication
September 4th 2008 20:46
Better vision
I was hoping some of you would comment by providing all of us some more verbal and written grammatical help. Since none have arrived, a couple more have come to mind.
Once again, I use hyphens to accentuate where needed.
A very common, and irritating verbal omission of the letter r is blasted at us when some say "Feb-U-ary." If you do this, you may wish to take another look at the word. It should be quickly pronounced as "Feb-ru-air-y."
The same goes for the word "library." There is an r in there. It should never be spoken as "li-berry." Better we should say, "li-brair-y."
If we mispronounce the above words, we sound like we are undereducated and backwards.
ABC Family television network has a person doing voice overlays who says the word "family" improperly. It is not "fam-ly." There is an obvious letter i in the middle. Omitting this letter also makes some shutter and maybe look down on the speaker.
Over the last 50 years, I have noticed more and more people saying "poem" as though there is no e inside the word. If the word was supposed to be pronounced "pome," it would be spelled "pome," with the e following all other letters.
Once again the second letter t is often omitted in words like interstate, intramural, intercoastal, intercostal, intercontinental, etc. This tends to add a special under-educated flare to the sound -- maybe even hick like.
Just about everyone has complained about taking arithmetic and mathematical studies, while in our learning phases of life. Seldom does one get past school without hearing people ask, "Why do I need to know this stuff anyway? I will never use it later." WRONG!
Even if years pass without using anything more than addition and subtraction in the grocery stores, we all still need to train our minds in the most efficient ways to get from point A to point B. Learning mathematics does just this -- training our minds to become focused and disciplined enough to stick to the task at hand until the correct outcome is reached.
I say all this because when we speak, or write, we need to have trained our minds to focus on what we mean to say and also to write it concisely. It is not hard, but it gets easier as we practice better usage while traveling the communicative roads of life.
Perhaps we should all be thinking more about others hearing us speak, or seeing what we have written. We speak, and write, in ways that convey to others our inner discipline and attention to detail. Getting better never hurts. It only can help.
Those of you who read my posts regularly, will recognize I make no claims to perfection. I suggest these corrections to our verbal and written usages because adapting them could help us all communicate better. I guarantee you the spoken and written word means much in our advancements for employment and social interactions. You WILL look better -- even if your clothes or shoes are out of style!
Keep it between the lines...
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