Degredation of the English Language

“There’s already a couple gallons of milk in the fridge.”

You’ve heard it. Though chances are you did not notice at the time. Can you spot why the above sentence is incorrect?

I’ve heard it said that you can follow 80% of American conversation with a working English vocabulary of only 800 words (as opposed to, say, 2000 words needed in other languages, such as French). This is because we always opt for the simple word, and, in fact, it often sounds awkward to use the less-common, but more precise, alternatives. Are we just getting lazy as we speak? Why does it seem odd for someone to use a “big” word in everyday conversation?

Our language is slowly fading away into vague nothingness. As a speaker of a couple secondary languages, I’m amazed at how over-simplified English has become. What takes six different conjugations in most languages (hablo, hablas, habla, hablamos, hablais, hablan) takes only two in English (I/you/we/they speak, he/she speaks).

Guess what’s going next? “There’s already a couple gallons of milk in the fridge?” NO! There is not a couple gallons of milk in the fridge! There are a couple gallons of milk.