It’s not cute and it’s not funny. It’s our responsibility as parents/educators/adults in kids’ lives to help them learn. Otherwise they’ll end up sounding like a fool.
In an extreme case I learned of from a friend who worked for CASA, a husband and wife taught their young son the wrong names for things – on purpose! He learned that a television was called watermelon, that frog was the word for the color blue, and more. The kid went to Kindergarten a complete mess (and was, of course, subsequently was removed from his disastrous home)!
It’s not always that bad, but if you don’t teach your children proper English, then they end up teaching THEIR children improper English.
A friend realized she needed to move back to California from Georgia when her daughter’s teacher was giving a spelling test which included the word yeller. Y-e-l-l-o-w. Yeller.
How many times have we heard folks on TV or the radio say “eltswhere” or “reckonize.” Even a former President would say “newcyuler.” Some of the mispronunciations are due to regional dialects and accents, but I grit my teeth in disgust when a public figure with thousands or millions of listeners mispronounces a simple word. I once listened to a pastor’s broad-casted sermon that talked about Jesus and the leopards.
When we hear our child speak a word improperly, it is our responsibility to help them learn the correct pronunciation. Not with harsh expectations of perfection the first time around, of course. Obviously a 2-year-old is going to say “puhskettee.” It’s cute when they’re 2.
But not when they’re an adult on a live broadcast reaching 1000′s of Americans, or a teacher giving a vocabulary lesson. It’s just embarrassing.
You can read more from Michelle here.
We homeschool–and I have strict rules about my youngest son (7) “messing” with my youngest daughter (5) when she is learning. He often wants to joke around and give her the wrong answers on purpose. That’s when lion-mommy comes out to shut it down. Cute mispronounced words are one thing (I cherish the “hettatocters” up in the sky)…poor grammar and spelling another–our kids will be judged for many years by how they speak and spell, whether we like it or not.
I don’t think all teachers do a bad job. We always hear about the extreme cases in any topic we choose. But for the parents? Even in the extreme it is just unacceptable to not teach your child to be the best that they can be. The school system across our country is failing our children. It has been slowly diminishing for years. I know, I’m the product of the failing school system. I am not perfect with my grammar, but I do the best that I can. I understand that grammar is important, but honestly, it is the intent of the heart that is most important.
My absolute pet peeve isn’t so much a mispronunciation as it is incorrect usage of the words “seen” and “saw.”
I hate to hear a man or woman being interviewed on TV say, “I seen the gun before he shot me,” or “We seen the tornado desroy the house across the street.” Arrrrgggghhhh!!!
I agree with you that adults who make ginormous grammatical mistakes sound like buttheads. My biggest pet peeve, however, is when it happens on paper. Typos, misspellings, and a general misuse of the English language in its written form has me seeing red.
Not yeller.