The Boy was

complaining the other day about how hard it is to learn a foreign language.

He said he has to take two years of it just to graduate from high school.

"That's

nothing." I said. "When I was in school, I had to study a foreign

language for five years."

The Boy replied,

"Yeah, and I bet you walked to school barefoot, in the snow, and

uphill both ways too." The Boy ­ he just gets smarter everyday.

I answered,

"No, the foreign language I took in high school was English, and

every paper I turned in came back with lots and lots of red marks on it."

"Dad,"

he said, "Trust me. Things haven't changed much."

Why did our

forefathers make the English language so difficult? I bet none of them

had to diagram a sentence before they could get out of the eighth

grade.

Ever listen

to a British sitcom on PBS? I have ­ can't understand a single word

spoken. The Wife say's it's called the Queen's English. Well, I got news

for her: the Queen can keep it. No wonder our founding fathers left England;

they got tired of talking that way.

Think you have

a good grasp of the English language, do ya? Got your nouns, pronouns,

verbs, and adjectives all in order? Well, just start writing for a newspaper

every week. Your perception will change quickly.

You'd think,

just because I've lived here for over 40 years, I'd at least know how

to speak and write the language. Dad told me to always say what I meant

and mean what I say. Well, below are just a few of the reasons why it's

hard for me to understand what he meant, much less do what he said.

Why do their

and there , write and right , sum and some ,

sound exactly the same but mean something totally different? Why are can

and can spelled the same, sound the same, but aren't the same?

One can is a container, while the other is saying that you can

do something. English is indeed a hard language to learn. Sea, er, see

what I mean?

I have The

English Teacher look over all my stories before they go to the paper.

That's only after The Wife checks them out first to see if they make cents,

er, sense. The English Teacher looks to see if I break the paragraphs

right, the tenses in the stories are correct, and the punctuation is all

in order. Between the two of them they have two masters' degrees. They

make me sound intelligent - which, by the way is no easy feet, er, feat.

What? You think

I can do this myself? My senior year in high school, I got a C in Miss

Sanders' English Literature class. I saw more red in that class than in

the movie "The Patriot."

The English

Teacher read my latest story, stopped half way into it, looked at me and

said, "Rick, you have a dangling participle." Embarrassed, I

said I was sorry and turned around. Looked down and finding everything

okay, I asked her to explain. She then said I had a run-on sentence ­

that it seemed like it went on forever, just rambling on and on and not

really say much of anything. (Yep, sounds just like me. I've been accused

of that a lot lately.)

She added,

"Rick, you have to be careful of the syntax also." I told her

that Sonny Perdue and his new sin tax didn't bother me 'cause I don't

smoke or drink, but I'll be careful just the same.

She went on

to say, "One last thing, people really don't use ellipses that much

anymore when they right ... err ... write, understand?"

I agreed with

her and replied, "How did you know we sold the Eclipse and bought

a Mercedes?" She just laughed, shook her head, and handed back my

paper ­ with a lot of red marks on it. Miss Sanders would be pleased

with her.

Looks like

The Boy is right; some things haven't changed much after all.

[Rick Ryckeley

is employed by the Fayette County Department of Fire and Emergency Services.

He can be reached at [email protected].]