I have a question concerning the changing of the English language.
I recently read Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and noticed that they wrote the word goodbye as good-by.
Now, I thought that this was an interesting way of writing it but thought it was a one time deal but I recently started reading The Catcher in the Rye and noticed they used the same spelling.
I was originally going to send this question to Nanny to ask her about it considering she wrote for the newspaper years ago and has most likely read a few million books in her time so perhaps she can answer why there was a change from good-by to goodbye?
There are other examples (I just can’t think of any right now) where I notice the English language has changed. Is it out of laziness? Or is there a stronger reasoning for changing the spelling of the word?
Anyone know?
9 replies on “Goodby”
I once read somewhere that good bye actually started out as “God be with you” and it just kept getting shortened. Also, I believe the spelling without the “e” is the more common American spelling. We Canadians like the “e”.
Ryan, Your Mom and I have been saying that the english language has been changing for years and I think the reason for it is that proper grammer and spelling are not as important in the school system as it used to be. I hope I didn’t make any mistakes in this statement.Ha, Ha, DAD
Here’s an interesting twist on the comment left by your dad. What if this changing grammar has more to do with higher education becoming more available to the masses.
Go back one generation; how many people have a post-secondary education?
Go back two generations; how many people have a high school equivalent education?
The counter-argument to that is to spend about 2 minutes in an internet chat room with teenagers to see that laziness is impacting the next generation of people. How long before we see the often used accronyms from the chat rooms in a newspaper article? in a company policies? in the Canadian penal code?
Well I can’t speak for Asimov’s book but I will say this about Catcher in the Rye. When I studied this book in school, one of the things that was mentioned was the many grammar and spelling mistakes throughout the book. This was intentional on the authors part as it is supposed to reflect the level of intelligence of the narrator.
Hey Mike that is an interesting point about the book. Makes sense I guess? Interesting how school gives you some things to think about.
I agree with Dish about the American spelling. For one example, the way that we spell color and the way that they spell colour.
Another thing to consider is the wide spread use of phonetics to teach reading and writing, sound it out kids… In the olden days when kids were taught to read and write words were spelled and sounded a certain way because they just were. Although this didn’t make for the best teaching tool it bread an entire generation of nearly perfect spellers (I find).
Unlike today, I remember one day I was supply teaching and we went to the computer room so the students could do some research and one kid (approx 11-12) couldn’t for the life of him make his search work. I kept saying use a dictionary if you don’t know how to spell it. It still wasn’t working. Finally, I go to see him and he has the word “quaumant” written in the search bar… It took me a second then I realized it was supposed to be “comment” (French for how). As atrocious as that was he was just doing what he was taught.
The other this that will just propagate the bad spelling epidemic, is all the new fangled spelling of kids names, Phaylicks, Danykah, Khloei, Rhyleagh… Give me a break people.
Phaylicks?! What is that supposed to be, Felix?
yeah, I made that one up but there is probably some poor kid out there who has to live with it and the other ones are real…