I’ve just had enough of speaking proper

ELEANOR GOGGIN

My parents were anal about grammar and pronunciation. I couldn’t get through a sentence without being corrected. Even when I was having a rant, the wind was regularly taken out of my sails. I could be shouting at my father that none of my friends were subjected to this treatment and he would calmly and patiently correct me and say “none of your friends was, none takes the singular”. Needless to say I would become apoplectic. My mother hated high-pitched speakers and used to make me repeat stuff in a deep voice. “Bring the timbre of your voice down and round your words” she would say in a pretend plummy voice. As a result I sound like a man.

I tried to teach the kids to speak well but I didn’t go overboard and sometimes I hear something that’s incorrect and it grates on my nerves but I try to shut up and not berate them. But lately I’m having a crisis of the twilight years. I actually enjoy using bad grammar. The checkout woman in the supermarket said to me the other day when I showed surprise at the magnitude of the bill “it don’t be long adding up” and I replied with gusto “It don’t, sure it don’t”. And I find myself looking in shop windows and thinking I like ‘them’ shoes.

My mother’s main bones of contention were relise for realise, reconise for recognise, Thomas where the ‘h’ shouldn’t be pronounced. She waited with excitement for news readers to screw up. Over the years I had morphed into her and found myself shouting at the TV. And now I find myself embracing the mispronunciations. I throw them into sentences and a warm fuzzy feeling comes over me. I’m a bold child again. Defying my parents when they are no longer with us. Wait until I start talking like actor Joe Pasquale on helium.