Grammar Bitch

*insert throaty sigh*


I haven't wanted to do this. I mean: I have, but I haven't. 


One: What a tired freakin' subject.
Two: Does anyone care?
Three: Shouldn't I be sleeping?


I am fairly sure that the answers are "Duh, no, yes", in that order.
Esther, I am counting on your long-distance moral support, albeit silent, on this topic. Bon, d'accord, on parle deux langues différentes quotidiennement mais je crois que tu soutiens ma thèse générale. N'est-ce pas ma belle chérie pour qui je faisais des nattes à huit heures du matin auparavant? :)


ONE: "Your" vs. "You're"


English teachers of America: Can you drive this home, please? See, when the word used is "your", it is possessive. 
"Your English grades would likely improve if you knew how to correctly use the word 'your'."


Not, "Your so funny! LOL!!!!"


Alternatively, "You're an idiot if you can't tell the difference between 'your' and 'you're'."


I hate this. Make it go away.


TWO: "Get" vs. "Become"


Okay, maybe this is niggling on my part, but in my own mind "get" means obtaining a tangible thing whereas "become" means intangible change.


Or, "I get change whenever I give the cashier a dollar for something that cost 79 cents." 


Yes, I understand that there are correct and current uses of "get" to describe intangible change:


"I get cold when you leave the windows open." 
Or, "I get scared when I see 'Poltergeist'."


Nevertheless, I can't help but think (should I be listening to the above sentences) of someone receiving cold or acquiring scared. 
Am I weird? Most likely. But the next time that you get indifferent to something, perhaps you'll become indifferent, and think of me.


THREE: Double speak


As someone who talks...too much, I am probably guilty of this, regardless of the fact that this manner of speaking annoys me horrendously in its inefficiency and redundancy.
One of my favorite examples is the following:


"Me, personally, I sleep in a T-shirt." (Thank you, Britney Spears.)


As if she, as someone else, could sleep in a T-shirt. Me, personally, I find this silly.


I love yoga and I love most of my yoga teachers, but they are not beyond my grammatical wrath. I have one teacher who, during savasana, says, "If any outside thoughts should enter your mind, dismiss them away." 


Wouldn't it suffice just to dismiss them? Doesn't that imply 'away'? 


Similarly, I have noticed a tendancy for a speaker to use two words or phrases (that mean the same thing) in conjunction, as if they suspect that their audience isn't listening. 


"Previously, before the boob job, she had no self-confidence." 


FOUR: "I" speak


"I" speak is something that I wish more people would do, more often. As human beings, we can only speak for ourselves and our own experiences. This is why I am very conscious of speech in which the speaker tries to project himself upon the listener.


If you listen, you'll hear it all the time. 
An example: "When you're on the front lines, you start hearing bullets whiz past you, and then you start getting really scared."
I have never been on the front lines. I have never heard bullets whiz past me. And, in this particular interview (culled from my real-life radio listening) I would have been much more captivated by the speaker saying, "When I was on the front lines, I started hearing bullets whiz past me, and then I started becoming really scared." 


I'm sure that I have more to address on this subject, but the Grammar Bitch must retire, now. When I stay up too late, I become tired.