Ain’t that a shame

By Crystal Dupré / publisher

February 23, 2008 11:14 pm

— Several months ago I wrote a column that outlined several of our great state’s symbols or legislatively named items. If you remember, the last question on the Mississippi symbol test was, “What is the State Language?” In case you don’t remember, our Legislature voted to establish English as our official state language in 1987.
I am sure this is no surprise for many people in our area, as the vast majority of people in our area speak English – or at least some version of English. That’s right, there are several variations of the English language here in our state as well as in our county.
To be honest with you, I was not an English major in school, nor do I profess to be an expert in picking out adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, nouns or any of those other things when dissecting sentences. But, there are a few pet peeves I have about the use, or the misuse, of our language.
Over the last year, the speech of my oldest daughter has turned into a cross between a country bumpkin and a southern belle. I am sure you are probably struggling to put that together. She has the ability to take a two-syllable word and stretch it into, depending on the word, a five- or six-syllable word with a weird twang or twist on the end.
However, stretching syllables is minor compared to the grammatical slaughter I hear on a daily basis. The worst examples are the misuse of “come” and “seen.” When I hear someone say something akin to “I come down that road and I seen it myself,” I want to crawl under my desk, ball up in the corner and rock back and forth until the language offender is out of earshot.
It is not only people that live deep in the county or high in the hills that are stereotyped as grammatically challenged anymore. Unfortunately, the misuse of see/saw/seen and come/came are becoming accepted in our officially adopted English language. The really scary thing is that people who know the difference are misusing those words anyway. I have heard doctors, prominent business people, professional speakers, and even school teachers start a sentence with, “I come” or “I seen.”
Another word that makes me cringe is “ain’t.” Not only is “ain’t” so common that it is hardly even noticed in common conversation anymore, it has become a common word in many songs old and new: “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad,” etc. In fact, my Internet search for songs containing the word “ain’t” turned up over three million hits. We’re talking an “ain’t” epidemic here!
A few years ago when I worked in Laurel, while I was sitting in my office listening to the butchering of our language, I snapped. I walked into the middle of the newspaper office and declared that the word “ain’t” was officially barred from our building. I placed a coffee mug on my desk and charged employees twenty-five cents every time I heard the word “ain’t” uttered. If you ever need a quick fund-raiser for your office, this is it. That coffee mug was full in no time.
There were only two problems with this game. One, people became so paranoid to talk that many people quit speaking and began using fingers to communicate with me. Two, it was costing some employees (especially Brian Livingston) quite a chunk of change to come to work every day. When I started getting “IOU” slips in the jar, I decided it was time to slack up a little on my language demands.
Little things to make people aware of our speech can help us improve our language skills and help put an end to the stereotype of the “ignorant Southerner.” Believe me, I come into this office and seen it work, and I ain’t lying.

Crystal Dupré is publisher of The Meridian Star. E-mail her at
cdupre@themeridianstar.com