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| Grammar | Rating: 
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| Posted: Tue Jan 5th, 2010 09:25 am |
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1st Post |
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Hellcat Person 
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Ok, I'm not out to make fun of anyone from the war, so please don't think that's what I'm doing here. I have Burke Davis's The Civil War: Strange & Fascinating Facts and thought it would be nice to share this with folks who don't have the book or have never seen the letter. Davis presented this letter from Nathan Bedford Forrest from May 23, 1862 to a D.C. Trader of Memphis. This is how it appears in the book, complete with what I assume is Davis's explination of a word.
Well, as bad as it looks, I begin to think that he may have had better grammar than kids may have in the very near future. Though some of the spelling in the letter looks a little like phonetic spelling to me.
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| Posted: Tue Jan 5th, 2010 11:35 am |
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2nd Post |
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Texas Defender Member 
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Hellcat- General Forrest lacked formal education, either on the civilian side or the military side. In spite of this, he had become a wealthy man in various businesses before the war, and was considered a prominent citizen in Memphis. It was probably a surprise to many when he enlisted as a private in Captain White's company of Tennessee Mounted Rifles. Governor Isham Harris promptly commissioned him a lieutenant colonel and authorized him to recruit a battalion. Promotion and regimental command soon followed. Considering his lack of education, I think it was surprising that he did as well with spelling and grammar as he did. Based on a few examples of his handwriting that I have seen, I think it would have been a challenge for Mr. Davis to try to read the letter as well.
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| Posted: Tue Jan 5th, 2010 06:45 pm |
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3rd Post |
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fedreb Member 
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OK, so he couldn't spell and his grammar weren't good (although as Hellcat says it would look OK on a modern day kids cell phone text)but hey......he sure could "fite"!
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| Posted: Tue Jan 5th, 2010 06:48 pm |
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4th Post |
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Texas Defender Member
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fedreb- Especially when he was able to get there firstest with the mostest. Then he was more than: "Abel" to raise Cain with the yankees. Last edited on Tue Jan 5th, 2010 07:00 pm by Texas Defender |
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| Posted: Wed Jan 6th, 2010 04:35 am |
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5th Post |
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Hellcat Person
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Is it "get there firstest with the mostest" or "git thar furstest with the mostest?" Davis uses the latter, and again some of it sounds a little like phonics to me. I mean looking in a dictionary the spelling for the pronunciation of first is furst. Though firstest and mostest aren't words as far as I'm aware. In another dictionary the spelling for the pronunciation of there is thar or ther (I'm looking up in the pronunciation in the Encarta World English Dictionary and the tenth edition Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary on CD-ROM, right now their easier for me to find vs. the actual book version of one of the several dictionaries I've got here). Even with his lack of a formal education I still believe his grammar is better than what kids grammar is becoming today, thanks in a large part to texting and other factors. Could that letter have used some help? Yes, it looks to me like two run-on sentences instead of two seperate paragraphs. Though we can probably figure out where a sentence ends and begins. But there have been times I've seen words that are used wrong by kids today because they sound like the right word. And these are kids in high school and college. Like there may be a sentence that reads "if you go their you'll be glad you did" or "they put there gloves on because it was cold out." Now it's one thing if it happens once, maybe twice. I mean maybe you got in a rush or were tired. Or maybe you got distracted and didn't realize what you were doing. Mistakes happen, and when words sound alike or close enough to each other it can be easy to understand. But what about when the same mistake happens numerous times in something a person has done and it keeps appearing in their subsequent writings is it really a mistake or is there something wrong there? I'm not a teacher, and I expect my own grammar leaves a lot to be desired. But I have looked online at some of these kids writings in forums as well as the fact that I volunteer on a yearly basis for the local DI program. I see it less in the program with what high school kids have written (if I see mistakes like that their more often made by the little kids), though when it comes up it's got just about all appraisers scratching our heads and trying to figure things out or having to grab one of the kids and ask them what it says. This letter was a little easier to figure out than that. And I think there's very soon going to come a time when Forrest's non-formal education will look like a formal education in comparison to today's kids.
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| Posted: Wed Jan 6th, 2010 11:38 am |
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6th Post |
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pamc153PA Member
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Hellcat, As a secondary English teacher, I can agree and disagree with you about kids' grammar skills today. I'll admit, though, that I'm not of the strict grammarian school (teaching grammar out of a grammar textbook isn't "in" in English teaching today  ) and tend to find grammar "sticks" better when kids learn/use it in their writing, rather than by rote. I've found that, on the whole, by 8th grade (the level I teach), most kids have picked up enough grammar rules to suffice sufficiently. Keep in mind that these kids, unlike, say for example, me, have grown up with texting and email, and whether one agrees or not with it, there is a different set of grammar rules for those two kinds of communication--basically, NO rules for capitalization, punctuation, spelling, etc. And except for the occasional use of "cuz" or "u" for because and you, I don't find that the kids I teach (avid texters, all) have a hard time differentiating between recreational writing (i.e. texting) and classroom writing. So I tend to think that the way kids write as texters and emailers is a deliberate thing, consciously or unconsciously. That said, there are always lousy spellers and grammar students, both in school and long past school age, just as there are lousy drivers. And I tend to think that it made a huge difference whether a person was "educated" in the time of the Civil War, or not. When I read Civil War letters, especially, I get a kick out of the spelling, etc.--sort of like a puzzle. And I have to admit, I'm glad I didn't have to teach Forrest, for many reasons, his grammar being only one. My two cents. . . Pam
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| Posted: Wed Jan 6th, 2010 08:55 pm |
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7th Post |
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19bama46 Member
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Hellcat wrote: Is it "get there firstest with the mostest" or "git thar furstest with the mostest?" Davis uses the latter, and again some of it sounds a little like phonics to me. I mean looking in a dictionary the spelling for the pronunciation of first is furst. Though firstest and mostest aren't words as far as I'm aware. In another dictionary the spelling for the pronunciation of there is thar or ther (I'm looking up in the pronunciation in the Encarta World English Dictionary and the tenth edition Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary on CD-ROM, right now their easier for me to find vs. the actual book version of one of the several dictionaries I've got here). I believe what the General actually said was "Get there FIRST with the MOST" The "git and thar" business may or may not have been said, but the "firstest and mostest" was, I believe, a myth
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| Posted: Fri Sep 17th, 2010 06:46 pm |
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8th Post |
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Texas Defender Member
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Hellcat- I happened to be reading an article about Forrest, and so thought back to this thread re: the "Firstest" and the : "Mostest." I pulled out a recent dictionary which is Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition. (It says that it is : "The Official Dictionary of the Associated Press," not that that is anything to be particularly proud of). While I can't find: "Firstest," I can say that: "Mostest" does appear as a slang term. Its questionable that words spoken by Nathan Bedford Forrest almost 150 years ago had anything to do with it becoming recognized as a word, but for whatever reason, it is there now.  Last edited on Fri Sep 17th, 2010 06:55 pm by Texas Defender |
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| Posted: Sat Sep 18th, 2010 02:09 am |
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9th Post |
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Hellcat Person
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Interesting. When was the fourth edition first published?
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| Posted: Sat Sep 18th, 2010 02:35 am |
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10th Post |
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Texas Defender Member
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Hellcat- The first copyright date is 1999. Publication of the Third Edition was from 1988 to 1997. As for: "Mostest," it says: most-est (Mos'tist) adj., n. [Slang] tautological var. of MOST ["the hostess with the mostest"] No mention of Nathan Bedford Forrest.
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| Posted: Sat Sep 18th, 2010 03:28 am |
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11th Post |
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Hellcat Person
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Ok, I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have the first time to the fact it appears as a slang term. Was a little more cocerned with some of what they put in dictionaries today. But hostest with the mostest is a pretty old term compared to some that seem to some of the terms of today.
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