General Bitching

[Johro]

Originally Posted by Darth Marsden

A till is something that you put money in and out of.

'til is an abbreviated form of the word Until.

I've never really heard of people getting the two mixed up, but I guess the internet makes fools of us all.

Thank you,
...but apparently it's both now. Sometimes, I hate this world.

[Darth Marsden]

Oh, that's just bullshit. Every day I find new reasons to hate the world, I really do.

[crysisnova]

Why the fuuuuuu can't tell tale release devils playhouse on xbox!? Ps3 gets every thing!!!

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu--

[Darth Marsden]

...oh look, there's another reason.

[Alcoremortis]

I'm okay with misspelled words being added to the dictionary due to common usage. Like, I used to misspell "all right" as "alright" (still do) but it's no longer a misspelling. Apparently.

[Vainamoinen]

Originally Posted by Darth Marsden

It should though, because it bugs the hell out of me as well. It's like people not pronouncing letters when they speak. 'fing' instead of 'thing', for example. It's mangling the English language and you should be slapped across the face if you do it. Sadly, you can't do that over the internet - all you can do is correct them, and that gets you labelled as a Grammar Nazi. Bleh.

Also, thanks for resurrecting my thread. Forgot I made it!

All right, it's "general bitching", and I'll serve.

"Spellling" and "grammar" are two completely different things just as spoken and written language are governed by different laws.

First of all, it makes absolutely no sense to "pronounce a letter" in spoken language as if the writing somehow determined how things should be spoken. That's a jumbled logic. It doesn't work that way.

Written language mostly follows the sound rules of spoken language and (almost) never vice versa. But if a change occurs in spoken language - and a language that people use always changes - these changes are not immediately put into writing. In fact, present writing could be regarded as a dated, incomplete and faulty representation of a language's sound rules.

Orthography is an essentially arbitrary system of conventions about how certain words "should" be written. Now written English, mind you, through its varied history (and a lot of foreign early printers, no less) is known for its notoriously broken connection between written and spoken vowels. For such a random attribution of letters to sounds, there really is no need except tradition. If oh so many people spell a word "wrong" in the very same way, maybe present spoken language intuition dictates it and the writing should in fact change.

Spoken language, as I have already written in the Grammar Nazi thread, is an ever changing entity. Some changes are only attempted, stay a fashion for some time, then disappear entirely. Other changes are adapted by more and more speakers and are one day considered a correct form by most speakers of the language. Pedants look in sixty year old grammar books and raise the index finger, but they're looking at completely dated material, because a grammar book is nothing but a desperate attempt to guess and describe the subconscious, changing language rules stored in the mind of the present language speaker.

Now if a change in progress is spotted by so called language guardians, all hell breaks loose. All of a sudden, people who use the variation are supposedly stupid, ruin the language, do not understand its "logic" any more or make it incomprehensible.

But the language guardians are the laughing stock of linguists for several reasons. Their kind is thousands of years old, and those from thousands of years ago who saw the downfall of the Greek language in this or that variation have been proven quite wrong. From an objective standpoint, there's absolutely no reason why /fing/ should not work as a word in the English language alongside or instead of /thing/. The only reason people get enraged is because it differs from their own use, and the "reasons" they make up why their usage is "right" and other usages are "wrong" have led sociolinguists to the sound belief that the central reason for this kind of language critique is the preservation and elevation of one's own social status by insulting other people.

Sorry... I studied Language for too long.

[KuroShiro]

Originally Posted by Vainamoinen

Written language mostly follows the sound rules of spoken language and never vice versa. But if a change occurs in spoken language - and a language that people use always changes - these changes are not immediately put into writing. In fact, present writing could be regarded as a dated, incomplete and faulty representation of a language's sound rules.

Orthography is an essentially arbitrary system of conventions about how certain words "should" be written. Now written English, mind you, through its varied history (and a lot of foreign early printers, no less) is known for its notoriously broken connection between written and spoken vowels. For such an arbitrary attribution of letters to sounds, there really is no need except tradition.

As someone who works in linguistics (and in sociolinguistics specifically) I also feel the need to comment on this. Historically, English orthography is "broken" for a number of reasons. Essentially it is a matter of language planning & standardization. Back in the early days, when written English was just being codified with the invention of the printing press, there was tremendous regional variance in spoken language. Even for a word as simple as "Egg", a printer would often have to choose between two highly distinct forms within a single city. In this sense, it is anything *but* arbitrary, as spoken language change was actually heavily influenced by orthography (i.e. the other form for egg is no longer used because it was standardized away via the writing system).

On the other hand, some aspects of English orthography really are just artifacts of changed pronunciation. For example, all the final 'e's you have in English actually used to be pronounced. i.e. 'House' used to be pronounced 'hoosuh' (in middle English). English also underwent a massive vowel shift which basically rotated the pronunciation of vowels around the articulatory space. English orthography hasn't really been updated much since the late 18th century, so a lot of that silliness remains.

Prescriptive grammar (stuff like don't end a sentence with a preposition), however, is of no interest to linguists. Since linguistics is inherently a descriptive field, we generally laugh off any attempts to prescribe or proscribe language use. Sociolinguistics is probably the only field that seriously examines it, even if it is mostly for the purposes of proving how wrong and horrible language planning can be.

[Darth Marsden]

Oh dear sweet lord, what have I unleashed.

[KuroShiro]

Originally Posted by Darth Marsden

Oh dear sweet lord, what have I unleashed.

A linguistics seminar!

[Vainamoinen]

They_were_in_dire_need.

Thanks KuroShiro for stepping in and providing more detail for what I just called a "varied history". My degree is from early 2007 (GOD I AM SO OLD), and I have forgotten far too much to still be lecturing that way.

But maybe we should leave it at that before someone forces us to tell the egges or eyren story.

[Chyron8472]

Originally Posted by Vainamoinen

All right, it's "general bitching", and I'll serve.

"Spellling" and "grammar" are two completely different things just as spoken and written language are governed by different laws.

[...]

Now if a change in progress is spotted by so called language guardians, all hell breaks loose. All of a sudden, people who use the variation are supposedly stupid, ruin the language, do not understand its "logic" any more or make it incomprehensible.

But the language guardians are the laughing stock of linguists [...]

So, you're bitching that people bitch too much/too loudly about inevitable changes in the spellings of words and phrases?

By saying "'Spellling' and 'grammar' are [...] two completely different things," are you saying that your rant is about spelling nazis and not about grammar nazis'? I should hope so. The fact that a language changes over time does not excuse willful and blatant ignorance of how to use it. For example, so very many people can't tell the difference between when to use "I" verses "me" in a sentence, nor does this ever-increasing group of idiots know to phrase others before yourself in a sentence.

ie. Using "me and her" (instead of "she and I") when referring to the subject of a sentence, is so obviously wrong yet used by so many, it's ridiculous.

[KuroShiro]

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

The fact that a language changes over time does not excuse willful and blatant ignorance of how to use it.

Yes it does, except we prefer the term 'variation' to 'blatant ignorance'. You might be interested (wishful thinking on my part perhaps) in reading some seminal studies by William Labov, or more recent relevant studies by Penelope Eckert. They're actually quite interesting.

For example, so very many people can't tell the difference between when to use "I" verses "me" in a sentence, nor does this ever-increasing group of idiots know to phrase others before yourself in a sentence.

ie. Using "me and her" (instead of "she and I") when referring to the subject of a sentence, is so obviously wrong yet used by so many, it's ridiculous.

If you understand what they are saying, and would not feel a twitch in your head that tells you it is not a valid sentence of your native language, then it does not matter in speech. The concept of 'others before yourself' is a perfect example of prescriptive grammar, which does not apply to spoken language.

Writing is another matter altogether.

[Johro]

...I still will not accept "till" as a variant form of "until".

[thesporkman]

Originally Posted by Johro

Thank you,
...but apparently it's both now. Sometimes, I hate this world.

Oh, yeah. Now it's both. It's always been both! It says right there in the dictionary entry you just posted: "First known use: before 12th century." Till used as a preposition/conjunction dates back to Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse, possibly even earlier. Until is a more recent formation. It only dates to the 13th century, to Middle English. It's a compound preposition/conjunction, formed from un (meaning "up to," cognate to the Old Norse unz, and the Old High German unt) and the older till.

Why would you post a link to a dictionary entry to prove a point, and then not read it and discover that it contradicts your point?

[Vainamoinen]

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

By saying "'Spellling' and 'grammar' are [...] two completely different things," are you saying that your rant is about spelling nazis and not about grammar nazis'? I should hope so.

You're hoping in vain.

Language changes, so does grammar. Maybe in two hundred years, there's no explicable difference between "I" and "me" or "she" and "her" any more, and it wouldn't be a less understandable or less "logical" language because of that change. Less people today seem to use these words according to the older rules, that might (might!) be a sign that these parts of your language are about to change. In no case is it a sign that some people are less intelligent or negligent than others, and in no case is it a sign of language "decay". The English language would become less complex in this respect (while developing new complexities elsewhere no doubt), no harm done.

If you don't like it, don't use it that way. That is as much power as you have concerning language change - exactly one voice.

In a job interview situation or in conversation with superiors you can expect people to "dress up" their language. Their ability to chose the most accepted language variation is of utmost importance to communicate their social status there. A signal of respect, a signal of their ability to adapt to the situation. In most other cases, in most other conversational circumstances, fuck it. Criticizing other people's language there has no sense but the one mentioned above.

[Darth Marsden]

Originally Posted by Johro

...I still will not accept "till" as a variant form of "until".

How about if it's only got one L? As in "It wasn't til later that he discovered she had stolen his penis".

Or would you require an apostrophe to be sated? So more like "'There was nothing he could do 'til she returned it after her night out with the girls".

I'll agree that till is not acceptable, but mostly because a till is actually a physical thing. As in "He briefly wondering how much the till would ring up if she decided to pawn it in".

Till as an action referring to a point in time yet to come is, to me, bollocks, and should always be until or 'til. For example: "But until she returned later that that brandishing either the member or a receipt, he decided to put the thought out of his head and use one of his spares he'd hidden from her 'til now."

[KuroShiro]

Originally Posted by thesporkman

Oh, yeah. Now it's both. It's always been both! It says right there in the dictionary entry you just posted: "First known use: before 12th century." Till used as a preposition/conjunction dates back to Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse, possibly even earlier. Until is a more recent formation. It only dates to the 13th century, to Middle English. It's a compound preposition/conjunction, formed from un (meaning "up to," cognate to the Old Norse unz, and the Old High German unt) and the older till.

Why would you post a link to a dictionary entry to prove a point, and then not read it and discover that it contradicts your point.

Because proponents of standard language ideology are generally more interested in maintaining the current standard than understanding the socio-historical trends that led to it.

[Chyron8472]

Originally Posted by KuroShiro

In the case of people using 'me' and 'her' as a subject of a sentence... I've never heard that once in my life. Could you provide an example? Like... 'Me am going to the store'? If you understand what they are saying, would not feel a twitch in your head that tells you it is not a valid sentence of your native language, then it does not matter in speech.

You've obviously not watched enough television. There are so many characters in TV shows, litigants on court shows (like The People's Court) and interviews with various people on the news wherein people say things like "me and her went to the store" or something similar.

I can't believe you're basically saying that no one is ever wrong in phrasing how they speak, and that such is a legitimate reason for change in the grammar of a language. The next thing you'll tell me is that "Ebonics" really is a legitimate dialect and not just an excuse to proliferate ignorance of proper use of the English language.

[KuroShiro]

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

You've obviously not watched enough television. There are so many characters in TV shows, litigants on court shows (like The People's Court) and interviews with various people on the news wherein people say things like "me and her went to the store" or something similar.

Sorry, I misunderstood what you were saying (see the edit to my earlier post).

I can't believe you're basically saying that no one is ever wrong in phrasing how they speak, and that such is a legitimate reason for change in the grammar of a language. The next thing you'll tell me is that "Ebonics" really is a legitimate dialect and not just an excuse to proliferate ignorance of the English language.

Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. And ebonics very much *is* a legitimate dialect, with structural and lexical rules that have been studied and documented. Saying otherwise only proves your ignorance. Do you really want me to take the gloves off on this? Because you are empirically incorrect in the arguments you're making.

[thesporkman]

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

You've obviously not watched enough television. There are so many characters in TV shows, litigants on court shows (like The People's Court) and interviews with various people on the news wherein people say things like "me and her went to the store" or something similar.

I can't believe you're basically saying that no one is ever wrong in phrasing how they speak, and that such is a legitimate reason for change in the grammar of a language. The next thing you'll tell me is that "Ebonics" really is a legitimate dialect and not just an excuse to proliferate ignorance of proper use of the English language.

Ebonics is a legitimate dialect, and it even has a more regular and consistent grammar than Standard English.