You know your old when

[AndyF]

In the spirit of the original thread, it seems to be generally true that those who understand the subtlety and richness of the English language would like to see it preserved, while the uneducated don't see the problem. I think it's fair to say that this division is generally age-based, and is due to a decline in formal language teaching over the last 30 years or so.
The emergence of the internet means that we are now exposed to written English produced by the unskilled; this forum is not without examples, and I am irritated by authors who can't be bothered to use basic punctuation or to spell-check their contributions. 

Hmmm!..... Nothing personal but I think this is the sort of rather pompous academic attitude that grates with me. The view that somehow people who don't think it's a problem simply don't understand it and are an uneducated rabble. It's the sort of view taken by advocates of modern art that if you think a light switch going on and off in a room isn't art it's because you are a Philistine and just don't "get it". The closed club does understand, and if you don't subscribe then you are sloppy or lazy or uneducated.

This is really an attempt to differentiate oneself from the rabble by attaching importance and status to something quite irrelevent. Rather like fashion, buying a peerage or joining the freemasons....  Being in a select club of people "in the know".

To "preserve" a language...what does that mean exactly? Pickle it and resist any natural changes to it? Why....?  To advocate that is to admit a total lack of acceptanceof the fluid, changing, evolutionary nature of all languages. Thats why we don't speak like Chaucer.....

Study of English should be observational. Look at what it does and make sense of, not try to wrap it in a straightjacket and lay down laws for it.

 

[Peter Burgess]

Some rules are necessary, for goodness sake! Nobody tells you what car to drive, but you are expected to follow the Highway Code!! 

 

[Peter Burgess]

You know when you're old when you really can't be bothered to argue the toss about a few misplaced commas or spelling mistakes, and would rather just go home, sit by the fire with your slippers on, and sip a nice warm cup of milk.

Go on, you lazy language murderers. Do your worst!!!  :chair:

 

[Walrus]

Study of English should be observational. Look at what it does and make sense of, not try to wrap it in a straightjacket and lay down laws for it.

You lay down laws for it to try to prevent ambiguity and make sure it can be understood by everybody - even forigeners can translate it easily, but if you dont bother with punctuation, spelling etc civilization will come crashing down...  if you break your leg don't come running to me.

 

[Peter Burgess]

For those who strive to set an example, in the hope that others might follow:

Matthew Ch.7 v.6 

 

[racingsnake]

You know when you're old when you really can't be bothered to argue the toss about a few misplaced commas or spelling mistakes, and would rather just go home, sit by the fire with your slippers on, and sip a nice warm cup of milk.

Go on, you lazy language murderers. Do your worst!!!  :chair:

At last someone with some sense. Thank you for bringing this thread back on side my mendippy friend

 

[pisshead]

Right - at the risk of getting shot down in flames... why is 'train station' wrong and 'railway station' correct? Why do we say 'bus station' and not 'road station' therefore?

I too am someone who gets frustrated by grammatical errors. And I would also point out that I'm 22. I particularly dislike:
"Have you got any crisps?"
"Yes, I do"

It's "have" - you have got some, not you do got them! Anyway...

As far as I'm aware, the term OK comes from America. It is a bastardisation of 'All Correct'. People delivering crates of goods off of ships would check the contents and mark them as 'all correct'. This got changed to 'Oll Korrect' (as a joke, I believe!) And caught on. It was eventually shortened to O.K. and is now accepted as OK. What annoys me is "Okay".

Incidentally, it also annoys me that when I spell-checked this, 'bastardisation' was highlighted as an error and 'bastardization' was suggested.

 

[whitelackington]

Bloody Americanos

 

[pisshead]

Ooo

I remembered that I had intended to reccommend "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" by Lynn Truss. It discusses the downfall of grammar and is really quite funny...if a little scary at times. That woman is obsessive!

 

[AndyF]

Right - at the risk of getting shot down in flames... why is 'train station' wrong and 'railway station' correct? Why do we say 'bus station' and not 'road station' therefore?

Train station is more logical, as station is a corruption of "Stationary", ie where something stops....that would be the train then.....

So Train Station == Train Stops Here.. . sound OK to me....hehe

As far as I'm aware, the term OK comes from America. It is a bastardisation of 'All Correct'. People delivering crates of goods off of ships would check the contents and mark them as 'all correct'. This got changed to 'Oll Korrect' (as a joke, I believe!) And caught on. It was eventually shortened to O.K. and is now accepted as OK. What annoys me is "Okay".

Incidentally, it also annoys me that when I spell-checked this, 'bastardisation' was highlighted as an error and 'bastardization' was suggested.

Ahhh!!  Language evolution at work... and it is still happening for OK...

It seems as though the terminology "KK" came about to be a common replacement in North American Internet Culture sometime after 2000. Believed to be started in hacked game servers where often people of different cultures were unable to communicate due to language restrictions, "KK" became a universal understanding of acceptance in arranging game options, when communication was impossible without the use of services like AltaVista's Babelfish. Soon thereafter, KK became widely accepted as a replacement for the singular consonant, "K".

And I thought "K" was a cider from the 1990's.....

The OED accepts O.K., OK and Okay....... so anyone going to tell the OED that they have it wrong....?

 

[Elaine]

Because you only get 160 characters in a text, so an abrreviated language conveys more for less.....OK

That would be a very convincing argument if those who wrote their texts like this used their 160 characters each text. Or perhaps they are just such busy people they cannot write full words. No time, no time!

 

[kay]

Also at the risk of getting really slammed it seems to me that there is a real excuse these days not to bother learning to write or spell correctly as you can always claim to have learning difficulties. I am lucky enough to be fine with general spelling and arithmatic so that I don't usually have to get a dictionary to check my spelling (although I always will if I am not sure). However as far as machinery goes I am not so bright and I have to think carefully and check what I am doing as I go along. Why can't the same apply to those who find writing not so easy.
It must be me and my advancing years. I find it the attitude that 'if it doesn't come to me easily I don't have to bother' very irritating.

Well, you invited me to slam 

My son is dyslexic, and it is a long way from "finding writing not so easy" - that is but one symptom of an underlying set of patterns, including short term memory problems.

When he was at school, copying from a blackboard during class was impossible for him - he could not hold more than two letters accurately in his head, and the words had been wiped off long before he had transcribed them. He still does not know his times tables, and adds up on his fingers, but is finding no trouble with the mathemetics which is part of his university course.

He has worked hard to get this far, but would not have achieved the necessary GCSEs and BTEC Nat Dip had it not been for dispensations over spelling in exams other than English.

You may perceive this as an example of "if it doesn't come easily to me I don't have to bother". But you can also see it as taking a young man who would otherwise have left school with no qualifications, and who, not being of practical turn of mind, would have found it very difficult to get employment and to support himself, and instead putting him in a position where he can use his intelligence and talents and has every chance of a reasonable career, supporting himself, and not becoming a financial burden on the rest of us.

 

[graham]

Kay, I am sure that Anne, like, myself, has great sympathy with genuine sufferers from dyslexia. What we have a problem with is those who do not have it but use it an excuse for simple sloppy workmanship.

 

[Elaine]

Argh, I am too late. I was just about to put in another post. I really should have made it quite clear at the beginning that I do understand that dyslexia is a genuine and debilatating condition. It is not these people that I was talking about. Of course not.
An analogy is the difference between sick people and people pulling a 'sicky' to skive work.

 

[graham]

The good Professor Tolkein (whose books some of you may have read) first became interested in language when, as a small boy, he asked why "the great green dragon" was correct but "the green great dragon" was not correct.

 

[Bob G]

Communication is the single most important thing we do as humans; there is a case, in my view, for doing it as well as we can.

The issues, for me, are quality and respect; quality as in the book  'Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance' and respect for others.

When writing, I wish to show respect by using accurate and concise English, not the non-punctuated, misspelt equivalent of talking with my mouth full.

 

[AndyF]

The good Professor Tolkein (whose books some of you may have read) first became interested in language when, as a small boy, he asked why "the great green dragon" was correct but "the green great dragon" was not correct.

...and the answer is........??

 

[Sid Weighells Dog]

Isn't the problem here that language change (we can all agree that language does change) is one of the few instances where it's possible to observe a form of evolution in action. Several hundred years ago we would all have been thee-ing and thou-ing and forsooth-ing and whatnot and looking down our noses at the young upstarts who collapsed it all into a simple 'you' for both second person singular and plural and did away with forsooth altogether. If you're used to the 'old' ways, then you don't necessarily take easily to the new. The interesting question is whether the 'new' will survive to, one day, become the 'old' and be replaced in their turn.

I'm quite happy to admit to being one of the oldsters/dinosaurs (I don't want to push the evolution analogy TOO hard... ellipsis, dammit, I knew that, I KNEW that!) but I'm also quite happy to see the language change and to observe it happening. For one thing, as communication gets faster and faster who knows whether 100 years from now this thread won't seem very dated. It remains to be seen whether l8r and LOL (and IIRC, IMHO, etc) form part of that new language/dialect - I suspect that natural selection will decide: if they prove useful and intelligible to the majority, then yes, if not they will go the way of forsooth etc.

Also we are really only talking about spelling, it's unlikely I would have thought that the major grammatical conventions will change. The great green dragon will continue to be correct and adjectives will continue to precede their nouns. Although I can't stand the ubiquitous 'like', I can't see that it's any different from um, er, and the other space fillers we all use.

Texters use l8r etc because txting is all abt spd of rspnse (there, now, you understood that, didn't you? :ras.

As for standardisation - try this (courtesy of GB Shaw I think) what is this word and why: GHOTI?

 

[kay]

Kay, I am sure that Anne, like, myself, has great sympathy with genuine sufferers from dyslexia. What we have a problem with is those who do not have it but use it an excuse for simple sloppy workmanship.

I know. Sometimes I think I'll learn not to overreact when someone touches a nerve, but I seem to be a very slow learner  :-[

 

[kay]

Argh, I am too late. I was just about to put in another post. I really should have made it quite clear at the beginning that I do understand that dyslexia is a genuine and debilatating condition. It is not these people that I was talking about. Of course not.
An analogy is the difference between sick people and people pulling a 'sicky' to skive work.

I apologise. I realised sometime earlier that I'd delivered to you a quite unjustified rant, and that nowhere had you said anything that suggeted you felt dyslexia was trivial. So I came back on tonight to say I'm sorry.