Archive: Arts & Entertainment

SMART TALK

by Dr. Saber S. Poder



BE SURE AND:  Some time back, I ran some trenchant remarks about how otherwise intelligent people often say try and instead of try to.  They even claim to feel badly about some things.  In trying to sound sophisticated, they use bad grammar and sound uneducated.    

These are the same earnest folks who admonish each other to be sure and set the alarm or whatever.  Of course,they mean be sure to do it, but the illogic of their language never enters their well-styled heads.

At the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired, we nickname patients who abuse the language this way BWBs, for British Wannabes.  They also often say EYE-there instead of EE-there, and sometimes DEPP-o instead of DEE-po.  Not wrong like be sure and, try and, or feel badly, but pretentious and not American.

Like most Brits, they also don't know the difference between that and which, but I'll leave that one to a colleague.

v7i27