MAJOR goof
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pogostiks — 20 years ago(December 31, 2005 03:45 AM)
Hi
I have to admit that I too dislike the lack of adverbial use in American speech.
A typical one that makes me go crazy is "I did real good" instead of "I did really well".
The real problem here, I think, is that if you DO talk correctLY, then people begin to suspect you of not being a "regular guy". In America, sophistication - in dress, taste or language - before you are in your 50's, seem to suggest gayness, and heaven forbid that anyone ever be suspected of THAT!
Remember the Apple advertisement: Think Different!
Do you really think that the ad execs don't know that you should say "think differently?"
But they would never use that in an advertisement, because the average American would think it was snobbish!
Ah, America, always bringing things down (even an Apple ad) to the LOWEST common denominator!
PS: If you also wanna call ME anal retentive, go ahead, but just for your information, my problem tends to be the opposite! -
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torreydeluca — 20 years ago(February 04, 2006 04:07 PM)
A long time ago I posted in this thread that I'd once read the transcripts of the Congressional Hearing for an undergrad college paper, and I was pretty sure that Ralph's speech at the end of the film is verbatim to the real van Doren's speech.
I recently got around to looking through my papers and books to see if I could confirm the section in question. Yes, it did take me five months and a rainy weekend with nothing to do to finally look through stuff in my room. I guess this really isn't a hot button issue for me.
Anyway, I don't have the appropriate papers in my own possession. From my search I was able to determine that the full transcript of the hearings is available in a book fully entitled:
Investigation of Television Quiz Shows: Hearings Before a Subcomittee of Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, 86th Congress, 1st session, Washington D.C., U.S. Government Priority Office, 1960
The library at the university I work for doesn't have the book, and neither does my city's public library. If one of you has the time (not to mention the motivation!!!) then he/she can look it up and put this to rest. I know that Harvard University has this book - in case one of us is a Crimson and has current access to their library system.
I can tell you that this transcript is 1156 pages long in most published forms, but I can't tell you what page to look on!! -
momlovesannie1998 — 20 years ago(March 21, 2006 04:31 PM)
Hey, Cable. You should see how they tore me up over on the board featuring the television show, the Medium. I posed the same point; the U.S. does not demand excellence in writing therefore the grammar basically sucks. (I know I need a noun after suckser, how about lemons?) Boy, did I catch hell. I agree with you 100%. Two more:
"Everyone is taking their date to the party."
"I am going to lay down now." -
EJF — 19 years ago(April 26, 2006 02:38 PM)
To get back to the original question that was asked, the complete transcript of Van Doren's testimony including his statement and all the questioning was published in the New York Times on Nov. 3, 1959.
The line "I had all the breaks; everything came too easy" does not appear. -
torreydeluca — 19 years ago(May 04, 2006 03:33 PM)
Thanks EJF. I could've done that months ago as the university I work at has all the New York Times editions on microfiche. And the library is only a one minute walk from my office!! Oh well
Over a decade ago I wrote a paper as an undergrad on the quiz show scandals, and had even read that very NYT edition on microfiche. I didn't recall at all seeing the complete transcript of van Doren's testimony. Shows you how well you can trust your memory on these things.
I think when I get a spare moment soon I'll check that statement out. I know that Charlie's original prepared statement was way longer than what's in the movie, but I thought that Attanasio had basically lifted certain parts of it word-for-word. I guess that section in the film about being down in the mud and building a foundation was all Attanasio's own writing, but it sure sounded like something van Doren would have said! -
jgravely — 19 years ago(July 13, 2006 08:20 AM)
"In a way he was like the country he lived in. Everything came too easy."
That's a line quoted a couple of times from a paper one of Robert Redford's characters Hubbell Gardner wrote in the Way We Were. Hubbell Gardner and Charles Van Doren both were golden boys who seemed to have everything. I think it's just a nod to that earlier film.
It's a dirty job, but I pay clean money for it. -
bitherwack — 16 years ago(March 06, 2010 10:08 AM)
The difficulty in criticizing others' errors is that one is prone to make them as well.
Might I point out your 'gaffe' as an example, and hope that it instructs as well as guides one to tolerance of those actively persuing the 'disintegration' of the English language.
Purists might take 'Major goof' and 'Say what?' as overly colloquial for written English. But who am I to complain? I'm certain that I've left glaring mistakes as targets for criticism, but then, I don't mind. -
Huge_Ego_sorry — 13 years ago(April 08, 2012 09:46 AM)
I still want to know why it is incorrect to say the party is "fun".
Anyone?
From the free dictionary online:
The use of fun as an attributive adjective, as in a fun time, a fun place, probably originated in a playful reanalysis of the use of the word in sentences such as It is fun to ski, where fun has the syntactic function of adjectives such as amusing or enjoyable. The usage became popular in the 1950s and 1960s, though there is some evidence to suggest that it has 19th-century antecedents, but it can still raise eyebrows among traditionalists.