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Need input on Y R kidz can't spell 2 good

J

javelin98

New Member
Hello, everyone. I'm writing an essay on the impact of commercial advertising on how children spell. I'd appreciate it if some of the members could send me fine examples of how marketers murder our language to push product. Some of the tings I'm thinking of are store/brand names (Toys 'R' Us, Kum 'N' Go, KarBrite, etc.), product lines (Xtreme Racing, 2Kewl, etc.), and ad campaign slogans (skool daze, kool dealz, etc.).


I'd love to hear any that you've seen or are common in your area, or that just really annoy you. Thanks!


Andreas
 
Hope you don't mind if I take issue with your basic premise.

Some kids can't spell well at an early age for a very good reason: they are TAUGHT that it's not important.

There is a common teaching practice in place now in which teachers accept ALL spellings as valid in the early school years (until about 3rd grade, I think), so as not to "inhibit" the child's "expression." My son and I experienced this phenomenon first-hand, though I fortunately taught him to read and write phonetically before he went to kindergarten. The school halls were lined with misspelled essays that received written praise and high marks for "creativity."

While the misspellings of marketers may make a minor contribution to the problem (in reinforcing the practice of "accepting" misspellings), the main culprit is an educational system that places more emphasis on self esteem than on knowledge and facility. You'd have a hard time making the case to anyone who's recently raised a kid that advertising is a primary cause. Still, it's an interesting phenomenon in itself, just as accepted mispronunciation is.

I am ashamed before the world that our President says "nook-u-ler."

Novella
 
Oh, one more thing you might find funny.

When my son was about 3 or 4, he pointed at the Toys 'R Us sign and said that it was insulting to little kids. I asked why, and he said because it was making fun of the ones who couldn't read and teasing the ones who could. He then would get really mad whenever he saw a sign in fake "kid's" writing.

Also, he learned to read script on the logos of parked cars, e.g., Malibu Classic, Coupe de Ville.
 
I remember being devastated in elementary that I got 49/50 on a spelling bee. The word I got wrong was "through". I spelled it "thru", the way they do on all the drive-"thru" signs outside Burger King, MacDonald's, Tim Horton's, etc... I even told my teacher that the sign said it so it must be okay, but my teacher was a little smarter than that. :)
 
I'm not saying by any means that it's the sole reason kids can't spell, Novella, but it is one source of disinformation that has a large presence in many kids' lives. That's all. My wife and I homeschool our kids and teach them to spell phonetically, and we don't watch broadcast television either, but there's still plenty of stuff in the newspaper and magazines and billboards and whatnot that we have to be careful of what they absorb. I imagine that poor kids in single-parent households who are regularly babysat by the television have it far worse.

Thanks for the "drive thru" example, Dele -- that's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for.
 
Mobile phones. I don't know how bad it is on your side of the Atlantic, but over here everything is in bloody text speak. Ads use it, children's tv shows use it, even government agencies will use it in a bid to 'communicate with the kids'.

I hate it with a passion. It just doesn't have the naive charm that leet speek does.
 
It's terrible up here in Scotland.

Here's a news story from a while back:

Ananova said:
Student writes essay in text message form

Education experts say literacy could be damaged by text messaging after a pupil handed in an essay written in text shorthand.

The 13-year-old girl submitted the essay to a teacher in a state secondary school in the west of Scotland.

She said she found it "easier than standard English", reports the Daily Telegraph.

Her teacher, who asked not to be named, said: "I could not believe what I was seeing. The page was riddled with hieroglyphics, many of which I simply could not translate."

The teenager's essay began: "My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we usd 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 :- kds FTF. ILNY, it's a gr8 plc."

Translation: "My summer holidays were a complete waste of time. Before, we used to go to New York to see my brother, his girlfriend and their three screaming kids face to face. I love New York, it's a great place."

Judith Gillespie, of the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, said a decline in standards of grammar and written language was partly linked to the craze. "There must be rigorous efforts from all quarters of the education system to stamp out the use of texting as a form of written language so far as English study is concerned."

Dr Cynthia McVey, a psychology lecturer at Glasgow Caledonian University, said texting was second nature to a generation of young people. "They don't write letters, so sitting down to write or type an essay is unusual and difficult. They revert to what they feel comfortable with - texting is attractive and uncomplicated."
Click to expand...

Only yesterday a council further north installed a new road sign directing traffic to a Grammer School.

The problem has many roots:
  • America - not content with English as it should be spoken and going against their if it ain't broke don't fix it philosophy, they decided that words would be better simplified and written how they send; thus we have color, armor, favorite, hypnotize, civilization, etc. America's me! me! me! tactics of getting into every nook and cranny of the world has meant our shelves (books, for example) are awash with products with American spellings. Kids in Commonwealth countries still learn English as it should be known but are presented with loads of American produce. Spelling is lost here.
  • Kids' products. Sometimes when trying to attract kids to eat certain foods or buy (well beg for!) certain toys they are packaged in colourful cases with all manner of horrid spellings.
  • The advent of email and text messaging (are there any kids under 5 without mobiles these days?) means that nobody writes letters (or at least not as many) these days. On a computer or phone you fall into the temptation to revert to this awful text message speak that is, for there is better description, crap.
 
A church near us resorted to putting 'the msg' out in txtspk in a futile attempt to attract a younger demographic. They failed miserably.

A semi-unrelated point, but I find it quietly amusing that I have developed my english grammar more in Latin and Classical Greek lessons than in English. I guess classicists are just sticklers.
 
novella said:
There is a common teaching practice in place now in which teachers accept ALL spellings as valid in the early school years (until about 3rd grade, I think), so as not to "inhibit" the child's "expression."
Click to expand...
Is that what's going on?? I've been wondering why I encounter so many kids who can't spell worth a damn. Though I notice quite a few adults making spelling mistakes too, but not as frequently. My wife actually told her kids that if they put items on the grocery list and spell them incorrectly, they won't be getting anything.

When I was in school, there were several years when we had weekly spelling tests and I did very well on them. I don't know if they are the reason that I can see a word once and usually spell it correctly from then on.


How about Chick-Fil-A (I've never been there, but I assume it's short for Chicken Fillet. That's the only one that popped into my head. I can't think of any others at the moment.
 
That's exactly what I was thinking of, Mort. "Krispy Kreme" and "Safway" (a building supply company) are two more examples.
 
No one here teaches grammar anymore. In my high school, we actually asked our English teacher to teach sentence diagramming because no one had bothered up to that point. And then there's the problem that we don't teach any foreign languages until high school, so no one ever learns grammar structure.

What's been driving me crazy lately: overuse of apostrophes. Even in advertising, I see 's for plural all the time. Plus quotes on everything. And its/it's errors. Blah.
 
muzik biznes

The popular music industry, especially music aimed at the youth market, has had intentional misspellings for years.
With titles, bands and performers like:
Cum On Feel The Noize; Nothing Compares 2 U; Limp Bizkit; Def Leppard; Ludacris; OutKast.
And so on.
 
Spelling was a problem long before companies started calling themselves "X-pres 2 U" and other such nonsense. The biggest problem is that English is a terrible language for spelling -- just one is example is the spelling of words ending in "ough" which can be "cough," "bough," or "through." The way to teach children to learn all these spelling "exceptions" has always been to read. Read to them and read with them, then they become familiar with these spellings and are less apt to be confused by them. It's easy to blame advertising, the media, and pop culture. It's harder, for some people, to turn off the damned TV for 20 minutes each night to read with their children.

Irene Wilde
 
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