Greetings from the "Grammar Nazi"

Esteemed ladies and gentlemen, today happens to be a Friday and as usual you will have your weekly dose.

I know that those who know how I am wired have been expecting an official Richie Online rant on the fees hike and issues surround it (like the poorly planned demos) or the Kasambara case. Well. Those would be good to comment on, but I think we have talked enough about that. We all have talked of how it is not good to hike the fees by that margin and we have all pointed out that it is an act of cowardice for an actual police officer to slap a defenseless and compliant (and beautiful) girl for whatever reason. Zimenezo tonse tagwirizana. On the other hand, there is something we have not yet agreed on and the elephant in the room has to be poked chifukwa zaonjeza.

Through the week, I have posted a couple of updates on Facebook... Well, only that they were not updates. They were two or three word posts which were (not where) meant to show that there might be a number of words with a similar pronunciation but different spellings in English. Some (especially teachers) understood why I did that. They picked it out that it was a cry; a lament for the declining standards in the command of the Queen's language in it's written form.  The other section of my Facebook friend list took it as a personal attack on them and their grammatical sins and took it to my Whatsapp to tell me to "stop the war". Glad to announce that it wasn't a war but a cry.

As someone who faithfully passed through the Malawian school system, I got introduced to the Queen's language at an early stage in my education. Standard one, if not that kindergarten in some poorly lit building near Chisitu Parish in Mulanje. The stuff got a bit serious in standard five when all the subjects except Chichewa language decided that they wanted to be taught in English. That became a challenge because most of us did not have a good command of the white man's language which meant that we had to struggle through deciphering the language before getting the gist of what was being taught. Of course the teachers resorted to throwing in bits of vernacular when teaching but the problem was that we still had to write the examinations in English. That, dear reader, was an issue. You all know the sort of thing that happens when someone is thinking in one language and expressing himself in another.

Fast forward to 2010 we got to college and a couple of years down the line we are here as graduates (at least many of those I was with). Our command of the English language is still not good and things are a bit worse for those in primary and secondary school. We hardly have the hope that  things will get better because the very people who are supposed to be instilling competence in our kids are busy posting updates on Facebook in broken English. I know that someone is already giving a judgmental frown on reading this, but believe me that this is the reality out there. This hurts because the old stars can happily mock our generation citing that they could do at standard 5 we cannot do in college; and they have a point.

I know that there are people who will disagree withe content of this article because they like to disagree with me, which is pretty fine. The other group will disagree because they think that knowing how to communicate in English isn't all there is and that people can do without it. While that might be true, I think there still is a price to pay for not being on the safe end of this. Of course that is not the point of this article. 

I have been thinking of why we struggle to put up nice constructions when it comes to writing, academic or otherwise and I think that I can happily announce to the world that I have cracked it. Two reasons, mainly or so I think; decline in the reading culture and (at a later stage) social networking. 

The way language and communication works is that you have to be a good listener if you have to be a good communicator. This entails that if you are into reading you are more likely to be better at writing. The reading culture is pretty much gone in the modern generation and it is very hard to develop good writing skills in such a situation. Nchifukwa ndimanena kuti we hardly have hope for a better tomorrow. I mean, how do you rectify that?

Social networking? Well. Pretty much everyone is on a social network of some sort and everybody has a hunger to be heard. There is too much to be heard and that has bred a thing called shorthand writing which is gradually being taken over by incompetence. The big problem is that people do not notice that it is affecting them and that even if you told them they would disagree. In short, we are moving from high school (secondary school) where we are half baked English-wise into a world of social networking and Malawi24 where people do not care about whether their grammar (and even spellings) are correct. Glad we can get away with it. 

How do we fix that?

Well. Not sure. Maybe we should get all the kids in high school to read Richie Online.

On a serious note, I think we need to re-align our education system back to the point where reading will get interesting. Instead of focusing on Life Skills (which I am told are coming in a bit too early nowadays), why can't we concentrate the nice reads in junior primary school so that these kids can get into "Language Mode" like Uncle Richie? I mean, some of you (achina Newiri) studies education and you know how to fix the rest in senior primary and in secondary school. As for the rest of the uncles and aunties in college and workplaces, it might be too late to change. Good thing is that it is not perceived as a problem, so we will leave things that way. Some of us who think it is an issue will keep on pointlessly complaining in the social networks once in a while.

I have one request, though. When we are texting we can at least observe the basic rules of capitalizing the first letter of a name and put a question mark at the end of a question. Those "how has been your day" things need question marks need something that looks like "??????" at the end.

Didn't write this to agree with the esteemed reader, unlike the articles for the past few weeks. My ideas might be far fetched, but that is why they are mine, right?

Zizungu zinabwera mochedwa and sizathu but that should not be an excuse for not writing well. Not knowing some things might cost you, and this is one. M'mene ndikuonera ine, eti?

DISCLAIMER: This Grammar Nazi has nothing to do with the one on YouTube