One Last Task for the Outgoing Governor
By Silver Springer • Jan 16th, 2007 • Category: Government and Politics
Get the name right.
Found this in an elevator.
How sad! This is really inexcusable, not only did they get the name wrong they got the zip code wrong too! It reveals itself as some kind of joke but if the state government can’t get it right is there any hope?
Silver Springer is
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You blacked out the location, but I’m guessing this is in the Blairs– saw this error in the elevators there and wondered if it was an employee of the Blairs responsible for the error.
I’ve seen the same thing.
Bastards…
Hmmm, I guess the problem is more widespread than I thought, cause it ain’t The Blairs
Is there two-months past expiration something to worry about too?
The same people who call it Silver Springs also say “K-Marts”, “Wal-Marts” and “Nordstroms”. Unfortunately, this idiocy is not unique to Silver Spring.
As a linguist, I find it horrifically racist to label speech as “idiocy” The pluralization of common singular words is a defining characteristic of Ebonics. As Ebonics is a culturally based language system, I would think very carefully before labeling language as “wrong.” Just because someone does not speak/communicate in how you feel is appropriate, does not mean that they are an idiot or stupid. I think we need to watch the racism that constantly takes place up in here. Between the “blacks ruin movies at the Majestic” to “GANGS of blacks put bombs in mailbpxes” I wonder where everyone hides their hoods. I think SS might be one of the most racist areas in the country.
“horrifically racist”????
Give me a break! How in the world can you take what I said and make it racist? No where did I reference anything about race or skin color–you INFERRED that. In fact, I have never heard a person of color speak in the “plurals” to which you refer. I grew up in the deep South where countless white people did this.
And since you are a linguist, you certainly know that we are not talking about “commonl singular words”, but proper names of established businesses.
As a minority myself, I can understand being sensitive about racism and racial commments (and there certainly have been some on here). It is not necessary, however, to have a chip on one’s shoulder and then just wait for it to be knocked off.
In your posting, you made an assumption about my “true” intentions and then made inappropriate accusations calling me a racist. Actions like yours water down the genuine intentions of your cause in the same way as the boy who “cried wolf”. Think twice please before you accuse.
Ebonics is a bunch of bull crap. “You got 50 cent?” No, it’s “do you have 50 cents that I can borrow?”
I have no problem correcting people with their language regardless of the racial or ethnic background.
There should be one language standard, one dialect standard. If it were up to me, I would purge Southern accents, New York accent, Boston accent, and various Midwest dialects.
I won’t pretend to know the origins, but it’s a very common thing to do with department store names. Montgomery Ward = “Wards”. The Hecht Co. = “Hecht’s”. Woodward & Lothrop = “Woodies”. JC Penny = “Penny’s”. Hechinger = “Hechinger’s”. It seems particularly common when the store is named after a person. Maybe it goes back to ownership - like Joe’s Bar and Grill. “Let’s go to Joe’s”.
“K-Marts” sounds weird because “mart” is a real word, making it would like you’re talking about more than one mart, rather than something owned by K-Mart. It just seems less grammatically correct, although I guess it’s not much different than the other examples.
Maybe it’s a regional thing.
“Silver Springs” is just flat-out wrong though.
I checked an elevator in the Aurora when I went home last night because I thought I remembered seeing something wrong on our certificate. However, the certificate was missing.
Ross said…
“Is there two-months past expiration something to worry about too?”
1/16/2007 03:19:20 PM
Tick, Tock. Same thinking here but you see this all the time in many elevators. I wonder if there are any penalties?
That’s funny. I noticed awhile back that the elevator in my office building says “Silver Springs” as well, but I figured it was a one-time typo. I stand corrected.
The problem of the extra “s” on “Spring” has been around since at least 1929 when Dudley & Kiefer Pharmacists at 8241 Georgia Avenue listed themselves on a sign affixed to the building as being located at SILVER SPRINGS, MD (see photo p. 19, “Historic Silver Spring.”
I hate yuppies,
What in the World would we sound like without our regional accents??
Perfect Proper Englishmen or English Ladies? It’s what makes us diverse, in Silver Spring or anywhere in the US. I happen to like accents, whatever they are. But seriously, if you took all those accents, etc. out of the picture, what WOULD WE SOUND like? or what would YOU like us to SOUND LIKE?
In the case of Extra S on the elevator sign, don’t get me started about people who do that, especially government officals!,Dept of Licensing Inspectors and the like, it makes my blood boil.
I hate yuppies: you should change your name to I Hate Everyone. I knew you were way out of line with your “anti-anyone with money” BS, but now you hate anyone with an accent. Dude (or lady), you need to take a good hard look inward and as the Bible-thumping southern evangalist would say (in his deep southern accent)….”reeeee-pay—ent sinnerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”
I always thought that those (of any race) who improperly added an “s” to the end of a store name like Wal-Mart or K-Mart weren’t doing so because they misunderstood it to be a plural, but because they misunderstood it to be a possessive (i.e. Wal-Mart’s, as if it were Joe’s or Sam’s).
Aren’t we all technically linguists?
cunning linguists…
Actually, true ebonics would not say “50 cent” but “fiddyseh” (one word). And why can’t so many black people say the word “ask” instead of “axe”. It’s as bad as our President who says “nuk-you-lar” instead of nuclear. It’s not an accent, it’s ignorance.
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