Colloquial Does Not Have to Equate with Ignorant

Colloquial Does Not Have to Equate with Ignorant Colloquial Does Not Have to Equate with Ignorant Colloquial Does Not Have to Equate with Ignorant By Maeve Maddox Ive written more than one post criticizing non-standard usage on television and will probably write more. A frequent opinion among the wonderful readers who take the time to comment is that I may have unreasonable expectations regarding the use of standard English on television. One recent comment especially gave me pause: the misuse of pronouns is valid because that’s how people speak. It would sound odd to most people’s ears if a ‘normal’ character in a show spoke correctly rather than with the colloquialisms and oddities that have become intrinsic to spoken English. Can this be true? Is there some kind of automatic disconnect between correct speech and colloquial speech? I dont think so. Colloquial speech is informal, but it is not of necessity ungrammatical. Trying to define such terms as colloquialism is always dangerous, especially nowadays when anti-authoritarianism is the dominant philosophy. I think most of us would probably agree with these definitions of colloquialism: an expression considered more appropriate to familiar conversation than to formal speech or to formal writing Websters Unabridged Dictionary [words or expressions] characteristic of or only appropriate for ordinary, familiar or informal conversation rather than formal speech or writing. Wikipedia Its not always easy to distinguish between colloquialisms, regionalisms, and slang. For example: Yall is a common expression in regional dialects, but it can also be considered a colloquialism since it is universally understood by most English speakers. Catch you later may be slang, but if we continue to use it, it will be a colloquialism. Me and my mother went to the cabin that summer is just bad English. We can relax our speech without trashing conventional grammatical structure. I grant you that To whom do you wish to speak? sounds stilted, but My mother and I went to the cabin that summer sounds, wellnormal. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Expressions category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:45 Synonyms for â€Å"Food†Comma Before ButTreatment of Words That Include â€Å"Self†