LOSING MY LINGO

I never thought that writing a column in the vernacular would cause a horrid deterioration of my writing and speaking skills in english. I mean, I'm supposed to be multilingual. That means I can write and speak in my two languages easy, with the use of one not causing a loss of ability with the other. The sad truth is that it is.

The same way that typing in the internet and in Microsoft Word deteriorates the use of the shift key. How many net users type their I like this: i when one should always refer to oneself in the capital, after all, one should speak and think highly of oneself! I tend to forget this, since I have been using Word since its early inceptions in Windows 3.11 version, which a lot of you kiddies might have never even seen.

Oh but truly I am aghast at this development. My father-in-law thus gave me great exercise, to stop this degradation. He told me, "After you write your column, translate it from the vernacular to english, or write something in english also. You might someday find your daughters speaking better in english than you."

Point taken. In fact, the best sample was the faux pas that I recently did when I heartily blurted out to my gaming group: "They said I was being fired because my tenses was bad." To which Corinna and Alma (Corinna under her breath, and Alma at the top of her lungs) retorted: "Were!"

Oh the shame. The shame.