Grammatical Trials of Marriage

I have been married a long time and it amazes me that we have stayed together given our differences. Marriage is no piece of cake! The man I married twenty years ago is not the man I live with today. I am sure the reverse is also true. Some of our current differences are causing a bit of a strain on our relationship, but some of the differences, while annoying to me, are rather humorous, and I have to just pat myself on the back for biting my tongue and push forward. Here is an example of the somewhat humorous differences that have annoyed me through the years, but are, at the same time kind of funny. My husband and I didn't meet until we were in our mid-twenties, so I don't really know what his family life was like as a child. I was the product of two teachers who were adamant about grammar and spelling and sentence structure and manners and all that stuff, so when I married this guy whose parents are first generation Italian-American, and non-college educated, I had to back off a little. So. . . here are the things that bug me. My husband insists that words like long and song and wrong all end in the hard g sound---lon-guh, son-guh, wron-guh, etc. I insist  that those words end in the soft g sound, unless you are saying longest, strongest, etc. Another thing that is annoying to me is that he insists the correct usage of the plural of pair is pair. One pair, two pair. I, on the other hand, learned that it is one pair, or two pairs. My husband's reasoning is that one doesn't say, "I have 2 dozens of eggs" but I don't think that reasoning is really right. I'm not sure what the rule is, and truth be told, I think both ways are correct, but I think my way at least sounds the best. Another thing that really isn't grammatical but something that gets on my nerves is every time someone says "...it changed my life forever..." he has a fit because he says that the "forever" isn't necessary. Change happens and things will never be the same, so, according to him, adding forever to the statement is superfluous (my word, not his). The adding of the word "forever" just doesn't bother me. I think it is often added for emphasis. One last thing that bothers me is that my husband thinks the words bring and take are interchangeable. He says, "You need to bring this library book back." Whereas, I would say, "You need to take this library book back." Come to think of it, I don't think he ever uses the word take. I'm not sure why his use of the word bring instead of take annoys me so, but I really do not believe the two words mean exactly the same thing (thin-guh). At any rate, at least I can recognize the little bit of humor in it now instead of the annoyance of it  when we were first married.

Watch Your Grammar, Please!

Here's a little something I thought I would throw on my trash heap this morning: local news reporters' grammar. Last night I was watching the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie "The Russell Girl" when the usual local news teasers came on during the break. Here is what the over-enthusiastic news reader yelled at me: "Join us at 11:00 news where we are working on the story of a shooting that left one guy dead, and another guy wounded. Hear what cops think happened!" I really didn't think I had heard the words correctly. I asked my husband if he heard what they said, and he too, was appalled. What is the idea behind using such casual, slang (not to mention disrespectful) language? What will they spew out next, swear words to emphasize a story? I am disenchanted with the news that comes at us all the time anyway--it seems reporters are no longer required to be impartial, but to hear such casual language somehow makes the story less serious than it should be. I don't like it, and I hope that it was just at one time thing from a station that was using inexperienced, young news readers on the late news to give them a little taste of what the job is really like. If it happens again, I will definitely be writing to the news director!