Really, the English language as used (or manipulated) in America is not exactly what you think it is.
It started out spelled just as it sounded. There were many dialects, accents and local expressions, but with the invention of the Gutenberg press (In 1450 Johannes Gutenberg made his first printing press) all of that came to be standardized and natural spelling somehow not good enough for educators or those who publish.
They didn't change anything about the way the word was spoken from one place to another, they just demanded that everyone adopt their ways and spelling.
From the first time I had heard about that process I found I was disappointed. I never liked conformity, I disliked it even more to see that it could dominate a whole nation. That a few could decide over the rest.
One passion I have always had is reading. I have always enjoyed books written in the 1400's through mid 1500's. The thing I honored most in those reads was the fact that you don't read the word. You read the voice that wrote the work.
That was the beginning of the cultural rip-off that people just wallow through. The second was media.
Starting around 1970 television and radio stations started joining together and later affiliated.
Still up until around 1974 there remained a great deal of local programming on both ends and people watched news anchors deliver their news in their own style of speaking.
Next came the network broadcasters and they slammed it all to the wall. They began to dictate "proper" sounding English. That was the beginning of "fake it or get out".
I remember ordering an ice cream in Florida back when they still had their beautiful accents The woman at the counter asked me "Waont sprainkles owenit?", I asked "What", she asked again "Waont sprainkles owenei't?" I asked what again and she pointed at the chocolate jimmies and yelled "sprainkles-sprainkles-sprainkles!". I smiled and said, "No jimmies please" and tried not to laugh because she would have taken it the wrong way. I wanted to smile though over just hearing her beautiful voice.
Okay, to cut that short. Right now, where we are it's nothing but cheap fad expressions. The Good l' Days when you went a few hundred of miles away people had their own expressions, opinions and to some extent culture. There were opinions then too. Opinions based on local social issues and local views on national issues.
Now there is nothing but recycled crap handed down from prime-time TV script writers and actresses and actors that we all know have exactly no morals or cares for anything except their own images and the sparkle of being idolized. I swear sometimes a lot of people only watch news to get an opinion that won't make them stand out and learn what the new catch phrases will work the best at social gatherings (mini-sparkles and fractional idolization).
Honestly, I don't and won't ever know how to write, not unless I could do it my way and that will never be accepted. Still I hate trends, I hate people that look for other people to steal from or share opinions with.
Actually I hate bullshit and if it aint coming outta yer mind it is pure bullshit by the time you spit it out.
Why did I write this post anyway?
Because I know of a site made by Michael Hart (RIP September 2, 2011). In 1971 he was asked to help put the internet together or help make it have some usfulness for the common person. He was given $100,000,000 (One-Hundred-Million-Dollars) worth of time to use the internet [More info], and he wanted to make his contribution worth something.
So he thought and thought and thought it over and he decided to make what was actually the very first computer virus.
He typed in the full Declaration of Independence and sent it out to every person he could on the internet at the time. He had reasoned that if he sent out 1000,000,000 copies of it then each would be worth at least $1 and in that he would have earned his money honestly.
Soon, as things picked up and the internet started becoming known to all walks of life he decided to move forward and from there he started Project Gutenberg.
I found that site more than 12 years ago while looking for books from 1400-mid 1500's and I still love browsing through it like a library. They now have over 38,000 FREE ebooks that range in everything to everything else. Some of my favorites are the old "The Boy Mechanic" by Popular Mechanics (get those in pdf, not txt files if you want to see the actual pages with illustrations), The 1887 version of the White House Cookbook, The Dreamers Dictionary (10,000 Dreams Interpreted) by Gustavus Hindman Miller and the early non-fiction books that contain a few of the undiluted facts about our past.
Sorry I ragged on like that, but I doubt anyone will read this anyway.
Here's the link to a shit load of free and legal ebooks and pdf's...
http://www.gutenberg.org/
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