English Grammar Revamped?

I have been receiving lots of junk mail. Normally I just trash them without bothering to open. This morning, I received a junk mail entitled "Sexoholics, Anyone?". Wait a minute : sexoholics? From alcoholic to workaholic to my own chocoholic, now there is a sexoholic as well? Hmmmm..... (I am "hmmming" about the word, not what it implies.)

English Grammar has been revamped through the years. Nowadays there are words like "teas" and "coffees" when in the past these were known as uncountable nouns and therefore should not be used in the plural form. This occurred due to all the expansion and franchising of coffee joints around the world. So when people go into Starbucks or Coffee Bean or TCC, instead of using the old proper way of "May I have two cups of tea / coffee", they cut it short to "May I have two teas / coffees". When everyone starts doing that, it will become a universally accepted word. I wonder if "sugars" and "milks" will come next.

The English language has evolved throughout the years. From real olden ancient script like Geoffrey Chaucer (try reading the unabridged version of "The Canterbury Tales" - did that for my 'A' level 'S' paper, almost died) to Shakespeare to Victorian English (like Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters) to the Roaring Twenties (like F. Scott Fitzgerald) to modern simplified English and now to an evolution of the language, where new words are being added and traditional grammar rules broken. Nowadays there are accepted words like "babelicious", "hunky-dory", and now "sexoholics". I wonder if my "chocoholic" will ever be accepted? Then why is "blog" still not accepted as a proper word?

But there are certain common grammatical errors which are still unacceptable -

1. "Fish" will always be "fish", not "fishes".
2. "Crossroads" will always be "crossroads", never a "crossroad".
3. "Fruit" will always be "fruit", never "fruits".
4. "Furniture" will always be "furniture", never "furnitures".

Even for word pronunciation, there are many common mistakes made by Singaporeans. For instance :

1. "Amateur" is pronounced as "ah-ma-ter", not "a-mae-ture".
2. "Modem" is pronounced as "mo-derm", not "mo-dam".
3. "Motor" is pronounced as "mul-ter", not "mo-to".
4. "Sword" is pronounced as "sord", the "w" is silent.
5. "Salmon" is pronounced as "sa-mon", the "l" is silent. Same goes for "almond".

These are just common examples. There are lots more common grammatical mistakes, but it will be too much to state them all out. If I do that, then I may need to conduct a crash course on English Grammar. Most people think English Grammar is very easy but it is not true. I spent a whole semester in NIE, taking up 60 hours, just for the English Grammar course. I realised I was doing a lot of things wrong, and the 60-hour course really made me un-learn and re-learn everything. I had been totally enlightened after that.

It was not easy teaching English Grammar to the students because I had to teach them the proper usage. Because of that I had to pacify a lot of parents who thought I was teaching the wrong things (due to the common misconception of the common grammatical errors) and had to try my best to convince them. It was one thing telling kids they were wrong, but when it came to adults, it was a different issue altogether. I notice most adults nowadays never like to be told they are wrong and will still insist on doing things their own way.

Now that there is "sexoholics", I am waiting to see which other word will be invented. Maybe words like "partioholic" (someone who likes partying), "teaholic" (someone who loves drinking tea) or "coffeeholic"?