Talking Good English

I'll keep this short, I promise.
I am no pedant when it comes to language. I acknowledge and even celebrate changes in the way we use and speak English. I don't buy the argument that the way New Zealanders speak English is somehow inferior to the way our British cousins speak our language. I've accepted that we don't pronounce L any more and that in New Zealand women and woman are pronounced the same way.

I have to draw the line somewhere, however, and the I've decided the line will be drawn on the ground where professional language users meet their public. Malapropisms from reporters on the TV and radio news - people who ought to know better (or at least have superiors who ought to know better).

Tonight it wasn't even a Malapropism because the word the reporter used didn't actually exist. I've linked the story. Notice how she twice says "a fluent". She means effluent, of course. It's not a mispronunciation so much as a reinvention. The way she says the word suggests she would spell it with an A. She has no idea what she is saying.

Last week it was reporter who (once again) misconstrued the meaning of the expression "lucked out" so that she said the opposite of what she meant to say. I heard "overtly" used instead of "overly" this week. John Key makes that mistake, as well.
Other recent examples: the oft misused "hypo" when she probably meant "hyper";
"illusion" used instead of "allusion" (although that might have been
pronunciation); "less" when she wanted to say "fewer"; a news reader, a reporter and a radio presenter all misusing "literally"-one actually said, "he was literally expiring from fatigue".
That is not only about as clumsy as a sentence can get but - unless the subject was dying - also patently untrue. I heard all of these instances in the last ten days.

Am I being pedantic? Overly sensitive? Doesn't it behove a professional communicator to use the language properly? I know that "properly" is always going to be subjective but aren't there some standards worth preserving? Too many rhetorical questions?

I think there are some standards worth preserving. I believe that some words change their meaning over time and that's the nature of language. I don't believe that "illusion" will ever mean "allusion". You can tell from the elements of my style that I'm no Strunk or White but I don't believe "a fluent" will ever be commonly used as a term meaning "that which flows out".