And Plus

I owe y'all some posts (prom was last weekend), but here's a quickie so you don't get bored.

I did not always have the perfect, English-teacher grammar and vocabulary that I do now. I used to say all sorts of horrible things: "and plus" was perhaps my biggest faux pas. It's redundant; you need either "and" or "plus", not both. I would also wait for any number of activities hopefully -- instead of hoping they would happen; the actions were not taking place in a hopeful manner. I would also pahk my cah (although I had absolutely no idea why everyone else was laughing at me -- I seriously could not hear the difference between car and cah). I eventuall figured it out when I ran home in 2nd grade and told my mom that we had learned about "stanzers" (sorta like a dawnzer, I guess) -- from Rach's boyfriend's older sister, no less. Turns out I got so used to adding Rs on words that I heard ending in As, I thought "stanza" was "stanzer".

Throughout all these (and more -- I used to say "disgusting" wrong (?) -- Rach, you gotta help me out on that one), my mother taught me what was right. Even today, hearing someone say "And, plus" is like nails on a chalkboard. It takes every ounce of my strength to not be a douchebag and correct them in a loud and deprecating manner.

So, as I was reading through a letter to send out with my students to the publice, I come across this, "I understand that this will take time; hopefully, the time you spend with your senior will lead to a rewarding experience for both of you."

Do you see it?

I know, I know. Grammar is actually descriptive and not prescriptive. Language and usage change and become "correct" as more and more people use them in a certain manner. Dictionaries track how people use words more than they tell us how to use them. But it still grates on my nerves. The time the expert sources will spend with the seniors will not be done in a hopeful manner (well, if they are helping tomorrow's leaders, maybe it will done in a hopeful manner), but the author means that he hopes the time will be rewarding.

sigh

And it's not even worth getting into a discussion about it. I'll just change it in my version. Still, mad props to my mom for teaching me about this little slip of adverbial usage.