People who live in glass houses ...

Given all my verbal "slips" and incorrect word usages, I'm loath to correct anyone's speech. This morning at the coffee shop, though, I couldn't resist.

See, there's this incredibly loud young woman who hangs out there sometimes. She's in love with anything and everything from Scotland or Ireland and she will go on at length about these topics. I don't mind her obsession; I mind that she speaks in such a loud voice that everyone else must share in her conversation. Anyway, this morning she was over in "my" part of the coffee shop talking the high school kid who works there most mornings. During their conversation, the young kid made the mistake of saying something was "badder" than something else. Of course he should have said "worse" and it did sound odd, but the loud girl POUNCED on his slip.

The "correcting" was good-natured, but it was loud and it went on a bit too long, I thought. So imagine my surprise a few minutes later when she said something was "funner". I couldn't resist. I told her I was surprised, given her speech a few minutes earlier, to hear her use "funner". I figured that would be the end of it, but she couldn't figure out what point I was trying to make. In other words, she didn't understand that "funner" is not an acceptable word. When I suggested she might want to use "more fun", she looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign tongue. Finally, she admitted (grudgingly) that I was probably right.

Intrigued, I did some digging (well, metaphorically) and I was taken aback. No one has come out and admitted "funner" and "funnest" as acceptable, but the general consensus seems to be that these words will become acceptable in the not too distant future. I am appalled! Of course, one should take my language rants with a grain of salt. I am, after all, the guy who misspelled "BITE" in a spelling bee. In my defense, my error had MUCH more to do with my colossal fear (at the time) of speaking in front of an audience than my spelling ability. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.