How come my english is going down the pan????

Question

I was good at schoool and I still read a lot of books................is it because Im am surrounded by people who use slang????
I do use slang myself, but can change in accordance to whoever Im speaking to.

Answer 1

Yes, it's the same as if you are surrounded by people that swear a lot, eventually you will end up swearing.

Answer 2

Society as a whole has become lazy with the english language, text/sms messages and chat room abbreviations and the confusion caused by the differences in British & American spelling mean that whole new generations will lose the wonderful art of spelling. Slang has taken over every day speech & people who once had decent to brilliant vocabularies often are forced to 'dumb it down' in order to be understood at all by the average joes. You're not alone ... just work on it.

Answer 3

Practice makes perfect.

You never stop learning English all through your life. A lot of people change their speaking manner according to who they are talking too. And dialect is not wrong, it's just a different way of speaking to the "standard English" Only natural!

Though I do hate a couple of habits I have picked up recently from others though - in particular this type of phrase from American teenage TV programmes - "And I was like SO excited/stressed/squee/uncool!"
*cringe*

Mind you - I still say things like "That was well good." "I have to go-un get me things." But as long as I know not to put these sort of things in an exam question or application form I'm sure I'll survive. :D

Answer 4

Well, it really depends on how much time you use the language properly. If you know the rules but you tend to imitate the people around you, you'll really end up destroying the language.

Sometimes, it's not really the influence of other people. It really depends on the user. You better watch out. You may not know it but the constant use of slang may endanger your grammar.

Answer 5

Oops! You dangled a preposition! Everything is better with practice. If you start using slang in one area, you will find it gradually creeping in elsewhere. Keep up the good English - Lord knows there are too few of you!

Answer 6

That isn't necessarily true, because you were surrounded by your class mates that were also talking slang. It is because as the old expression goes use it or lose it. I learned three languages at school French, German and Latin but I can't remember any of it.

Answer 7

No, I don't think your English is being downgraded. I was in a similar situation once. Those guys around me speak a variety of languages, English, German, French, Japanese, Korean, etc. Overtime, I learn a thing or two about their language. I found increasingly I tend to inject a few words I learnt from them into my English Language.

Then I got serious. I decided to speak proper English. I decided to take my time to articulate what I wanted to say. Over time, I regained my ability to speak well again.

Answer 8

It depends on the people you are surrounded by. I never use to swear a lot, rarely used the f word but last year I moved to a new job and one of my colleagues swears like a sailor continuously. She litters every sentence with the f word and I've noticed that I've started to swear just like her when I'm working with her!
I'm trying to stop though because I don't like filth like that coming out of my mouth!

Answer 9

Could be. I've noticed myself being unsure whether a particular verb has an irregular past tense or just takes the standard "ed" because so many irregular past tenses (swam, dove, pled) that i AM sure of are no longer used (swimmed, dived, pleaded).

Answer 10

I'm in the same situation. I found another guy who feels the same way and we made a rule that if one of us breaks a grammatical rule, a slap in the face is the punishment.

I rarely end my sentences in prepositions these days.