Nobody parses anymore. Sentences haven't been diagrammed in school for years. I remember conjugating sentences in English class. I can still diagram a simple sentence, but anything past noun, verb, adverb and adjective escapes me. New words are added to the dictionary every year; however, the actual number of words used diminishes. This is partly due to the advent of text messaging. But the language was dumbing down before that. Speaking correct English in everyday conversation has become looked upon as affected and slightly suspect. Electronic word processing has been invented. Spell-check has been added. Proof-reading by an actual human is considered redundant. Thousands of proof-readers have lost their jobs! Chaos reigns!! (Oh, sorry... got carried away.) New books contain ever-increasing numbers of miss-spelled words and words spelled correctly but that don't belong in the sentences. Sometimes fragments of sentences are missing. I am seeing more and more corrections penciled in on pages of the books I borrow from the library. Bless our hearts. We who parse are falling by the wayside. Our days are numbered. Oh, well... as long as people can still communicate and understand each other, I guess everything will turn out all right. Yo.
The 2009 Spelling Bee Winning Word has finally given me a definition with which I can identify. Laodicean: lukewarm or indifferent in politics or religion. I was excited and energized by the last Presidential election as I haven't been in years. My enthusiasm for politics has since waned. Again. If that makes me a Laodiceac, so be it. Hmmmm... Spell-check doesn't like those words. Maybe they'll add them in the up-dated version.
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