Peppered Hearts

I am a grammar nazi. I am a stickler for proper spelling and usage. I’m also pretty sure I’m going to make a mistake somewhere while typing this that will just be like a “hahaha, you suck” moment but that’s okay because I’ve discovered this:

Found here.

I’m especially a stickler for “then” and “than”. Probably because someone I’m talking to doesn’t seem to know the difference. Just like he doesn’t really know the difference between replying 24 minutes and 24 hours later. But this is not going to become a passive aggressive rant, no sir.

Anyway, I’m probably also a bit picky about grammar because I’ve grown up correcting my parents’. Both were born and raised in Socialist Poland, which meant that neither was exposed to much English. They speak Polish, Russian, and German though. My dad had a few years of English in college but my mom never learned the language until she came over to the US. My dad speaks nearly perfect English–his accent has all but disappeared. My mom, on the other hand, still somewhat struggles through the language. She knows English, of course, but she is much more comfortable speaking Polish. Either way, I’ve spent my life hearing Polish at home and English at school. My parents have always been worried that my vocabulary and grasp of English would suffer because I grew up in a bilingual home. Luckily enough, I’m a bookworm and a total nerd so I more than made up for it by my reading. I think the reason I give so much of a damn about grammar is because I’ve always wanted to speak properly. I still hate reading aloud for fear of mispronouncing a word. I’m not sure why but the idea of saying something incorrectly petrifies me. It’s weird, I know.

No matter what, though, there are some basic things that all English speakers should know, especially the native-born. Not to point any fingers but crappy-texter-boy.