Uh-oh! I feel a lecture coming on . . .

I thought I was NEVER going to reach the end of this thread!!! But I read every message, and mentally crossed out items I might have addressed when I saw they had been more than adequately dispatched.

Right up front, a disclaimer: I am not only a former teacher and principal, but am now a central office administrator, responsible for managing the state certification and subsequent professional development programs of some 900 Catholic-school teachers in Florida's Tampa Bay area. I am also in my 60's, and agree whole-heartedly that part of the issue under discussion is generational, part is regional, and part has to do with the expectations parents have of those with whom they share the responsibility (Dare I say "privilege"?) of educating their children.

Previous postings have touched upon formal vs informal speech, sensitivity to colloquialisms, and an ear for dialects. There have been several references to what might be called "a sense of the appropriate." Sociology was invoked to help explain the "creep" of what were formerly considered inflexible rules of grammar and syntax. And psychology goes a long way towards explaining the intensity (or lack thereof) when long-internalized rules appear to be de-valued in critical circumstances (such as the education of our children). The very fact that there are rules or conventions governing the use of language is as important to some as it is irritating to others, and the lack of consensus is - to me - the real crux of this thread, on both sides of The Pond. As an example, permit me a little thread-creep, please, into my own personal angst at two flagrant, pervasive, seemingly ubiquitous and irreversible corruptions of grammar and syntax in current popular American speech and writing.   (One is only marginally thread-creep, I think, because it jumped out at me as I read the very first posting in this thread, and I read all the way through to see if even one other person would address it. Unless it happened while I was writing this, I rest my case.)
   
But first: It seems that wherever one turns today it is impossible to avoid substitution of the plural "their" for the singular "his or her" when the antecedent is singular, e.g., "Who left their book on the table?" I haven't yet seen it in textbooks, but when I hear it defended as "gender-neutral language," or as "ink and space economical," it's like fingernails running down my mental chalkboard.   
   
The second strikes me as even more egregious because - to me, at least - it represents the failure of an entire generation of teachers to instill just a tidbit of critical judgement into deciding when to use "I" or "me" in association with another person. In fact, most Americans today automatically default to "I" in all situations, because all they remember is being told repeatedly to say "xxx and I" - with no context applied. What I, and my generation of teachers learned to teach was a simple test: Which would you substitute for "XXX and I/me," "We" or "Us"? If you would say "We," then the correct choice is "XXX and I." No one has trouble seeing the error of "Us did it," but don't realize that that is the reason why "Tom and me did it" is incorrect form. In like manner, if one can see clearly why it is not acceptable usage to say "The teacher addressed WE," why is it so difficult to transfer that judgement to the correct form: ". . . the teacher addressed my wife and ME?"

I think I need to avoid threads that set me into lecture mode. Happy what's-left-of-Hallowe'en, youse-all! M. : )