Barb mumbles? I've never noticed.

 

That construct was a bit ambiguous wasn't it? Miss Byrd would have been quite displeased.

 

On one hand, look at all the contractions etc that are used in advertising these days. I.E. McDonald's "I'm lovin' it" etc.

I have to ask how many impressions a school age child sees or hears McDonalds ads every week versus some one like a teacher or parent stating "I am loving it" ?

 

Either I was never taught the correct usage of thee and the, or it was taught when I was in La La land. I don't think I ever knew this before.

 

Bush has a lot of hypercorrect pronunciations like this in his official apeech. He also apparently thinks you should always say ' a' /ey/ soldier, instead of ' uh' soldier -- and ' the' /thiy/ war in place of 'thuh' war. Rapid speech has its own acceptable rythym, and we expect to hear the reduced vowels in standard American speech.

 

I always thought people use (as I do) pseudo-contraction's like "lovin'" to convey informal conversational speech. I tend to use 'em when posting on the internet and in informal email communication -- never in business communication.

Mark

 

There we go. I feel better now. There are times when the "correct" usage works, of course, because it just sounds better, in terms of rhythm and so on. HPH

 

Forget the media. It's all about the message.