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Written language skills are changing, but I do not believe anything is being lost. I believe there are more choices, gains in written language. Language has changed as long as it has existed. In early days, word was spread by paintings and hieroglyphs on the walls of caves. On the linguistic timeline, there were stories like Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Leap to Chaucer's day. In my university, I was taught Middle English to be able to read his Canterbury Tales. I often wondered the value of that exercise at the time, given the content of the literature Chaucer wrote bawdy tales to tickle the fancy of the naughty people in the British Kingdom; however, I must admit I enjoyed speaking the 1980's version of Middle English. Shakespeare came along and the language flowed (to our ears) more smoothly. We were introduced to higher forms of poetry and the beauty of the play, never intended to be written, but to be performed.

Language is not a static, but rather a fluid concept. My mother disliked hearing various accents, and she complained bitterly. I found beauty and history in different dialects and the sound in my ears. I live in the south now, and some southern accents sound almost musical, as they (unwittingly) reach into the past to bring forth words like "reckon" and "yonder" from formal English as spoken by our forefathers in England.

My husband was born and lived many years in the United Kingdom. He mixes British pronunciation with American, and he often does the same when he writes. A couple we spend time with (and their 10-year-old son) are from Romania. Their written word is close to pure Latin, but to hear them speak, with a Moldavian dialect, is fascinating. Their son, on the other hand, sounds as if he were born in the United States, but he slides effortlessly into Romanian to speak to his parents. We live in an area with many universities, and many of the students and faculty are from India, Asia, Brazil, and Germany, to name a few. This area is also heavily populated with Hispanic people and folks from all over the African continent. Our written language skills are bound to change based on what we hear and, more important, what the children hear.

There is a change in the importance placed on grammar skills since I took Transformational Grammars from an older strict Scotsman, Dr. Campbell, who would not consider writing a letter of reference for graduate school or employment for an English major who did not receive an A in his class. I

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