Hey Reader,

I’m sorry to say, my greeting isn’t quite as enthusiastic as it should be this afternoon because I have come to a realization. I’m a fuddy duddy.

I’m an English language fuddy duddy and have a difficult time keeping up with some of the trends in popular speech. Something in my head screeches to a halt and a big red sign pops right up in  my mind – STOP!

You’d think I had excellent English teachers in school, but they hardly knew anything and taught us If-1 to If-7 in a little textbook that just had to be bought from Nairobi, and was written by someone called J.A. Bright.

If I had not been the voracious reader I turned out to be, there would be more mistakes in my language than there currently are. Thank goodness there were books with great prose and beautiful language that brought life to the characters on the page, books I can look back to when I’m writing my own and think, “Would I love this if I were reading it?”

So, when I read someone’s words and find phrases like “… it was what she had dreamed about her whole life… ” or “… she could of tried to make the relationship work…” I quail. Not because I’m afraid of the state of the English language. English has been on the path of evolution since it was first spoken up North. Check this image to see just how many other languages have influenced English.

My fear is that I will sequester myself for a month or two in order to finish some novel I think is going to change the World, and then when I return, no one will understand it!

Am I exaggerating?

Fine, maybe I am. But I wonder how long I can hold onto my fuddy duddy status before I begin smelling like old mothballs. Although I doubt I will ever be able to say “could of”.