General Bitching

[Vainamoinen]

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

I can't believe you're basically saying that no one is ever wrong in phrasing how they speak

The concepts of "right" or "wrong" language belong to prescriptive grammar, and linguistics has left that path, what, 60 years ago. Isn't it great how science develops?

[Chyron8472]

If you say so. Don't let me stand in the way of people intentionally sounding like idiots. I'm sure the corporate world really loves for people who are supposed to sound professional in their jobs to speak and write like they only have a 5th grade education.

My parents are Social Security Disability attorneys. Maybe they should start writing all their briefs in leetspeak. I'll bet the courts would find them very knowledgeable if they did.

[Vainamoinen]

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

If you say so. Don't let me stand in the way of people intentionally sounding like idiots. I'm sure the corporate world really loves for people who are supposed to sound professional in their jobs to speak and write like they only have a 5th grade education.

Read my comments again, I have reserved a special place for the "corporate world".

Also, read.

[Chyron8472]

Originally Posted by Vainamoinen

Read my comments again, I have reserved a special place for the "corporate world".

People can't "dress up their language" if they don't even know what the heck they're doing wrong or how to correct it.

And I'm not racially prejudiced, I disapprove of people saying that because someone is ignorant of the rules they are ultimately not wrong when they breaking them.

[KuroShiro]

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

If you say so. Don't let me stand in the way of people intentionally sounding like idiots.

Don't worry. I don't hold it against you.

Also, since I just like expounding on this topic, (spoken) Standard American English is actually simply upper-midwestern dialect from the 1950s. It was adopted, in rather arbitrary fashion, by the news networks once broadcasting began to become more national rather than local. The written form of American English was (largely) codified by Noah Webster (you know, Webster from Miriam & Webster's Dictionary) as an attempt to separate American English from British, for mainly nationalistic reasons. :: screen goes black :: The more you know...

[Chyron8472]

So, you're basically saying that no one should bother to put any effort at all into learning how to speak their native language properly. In the end no one should give a shit about it anyway, and if they do then they're ultimately the ignorant ones and should pull the stick out their collective asses.

[KuroShiro]

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

So, you're basically saying that no one should bother to put any effort at all into learning how to speak their native language properly. In the end no one should give a shit about it anyway, and if they do then they're ultimately the ignorant ones and should pull the stick out their collective asses.

No. People are free to speak however they want. If you want to speak in a certain way, then by all means do. It's just that the type of language you learn in school, while perfectly valid, is simply a style and register of speech. There's nothing about it that's inherently more correct than any other way of speaking that is understood. If you're actually interested in learning more about this, (particularly in light of your comments on style-shifting in a corporate environment) you can read some of Allan Bell's work, such as this (a bit out of date, but still relevant).

[Vainamoinen]

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

People can't "dress up their language" if they don't even know what the heck they're doing wrong or how to correct it.

And I'm not racially prejudiced, I disapprove of people saying that because someone is ignorant of the rules they are ultimately not wrong when they breaking them.

You unfortunately fail to see that language varieties that are accepted in some social groups, complex varieties of English that fully function to convey even the most complicated meanings, are not accepted and thought of as stupid by speakers of other language varieties.

You are correct to assume that speakers used to a certain variety are not necessarily able to use another at will, which they are simply less familiar with. We all know that there is a language barrier in social rise. These people might learn what is acceptable in the English "standard" language and what isn't. They would learn new rules, arbitrary language rules which happen to communicate a different social status. But damn, that doesn't make their own way of speaking "wrong" or "broken".

If your parents tried to write their briefs in leetspeak (a WRITTEN language convention, not SPOKEN!!), the court would deem it inappropriate because they would insist on their own written language conventions, and they would deem it insulting because of the failure to adhere to their own written language conventions. The example is a bad one, but you might see leetspeak as a sociolect used by a certain group to identify and socialise with members of the same group. Adressing the court in leetspeak would be like speaking German on this forum. I'd use a fully functional language, but it just would not be appropriate and not necessarily understood.

"Wrong" or "stupid"? Comes in nowhere here.

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

So, you're basically saying that no one should bother to put any effort at all into learning how to speak their native language properly.

I think we're basically saying that "their native language" can mean a whole lot of things. Especially when it's a form of English.

[thesporkman]

Me ðynceþ ðæt we ealle scyle gieta þus sprecan.

[corruptbiggins]

Isn't this supposed to be general bitching? Getting way to specific for my tastes!!

[Darth Marsden]

I'm just ignoring them until this whole mess blows over.

Here's a genuine bitch - there's too many Indie Bundles! I'd be happy to support one or two, but there's so gaddamn many that I'm getting turned off to the whole idea. I mean come on! I just gave a bunch to Double Fine, and now there's another Music Bundle? Jesus! And in a couple of days the Valentines Bundle'll be up and gah! I AM NOT MADE OF MONEY.

[Vainamoinen]

All right, all right, I'm sorry.

Studying Language makes people rather open-minded towards and interested in other people's way of speaking, while language critique seldom strikes a chord.

Being confronted with the ocean of mostly arbitrary changes the English language has experienced in its past, present battlefields of usage can just be interesting things to observe and record for us. The linguist knows full well that language change can hardly be stopped, and he also knows that it doesn't harm (or really advances) a spoken language as a whole.

You pretty much think that after your studies, you understand how language works (a rather foolish assumption, come to think of it), while the "general public" just dares to retain their opportunist misconception that their language is right and that of others is wrong. People from a hundred years ago would undoubtedly call THEIR language decayed and perverted.

But I can stop here.

[Iryon]

Originally Posted by Vainamoinen

But I can stop here.

Gust as ik met mui süms üawareine kuommen was, dat wui niu oll Platt kuiern sollen ...

[Alcoremortis]

I'll put in my oar and say that I want everyone to learn proper spelling and grammar because I was forced to learn it. It really grinds my gears when other people can get away without spending all the time and effort that I spent learning and (even worse!) don't find it worthy of putting in the time and effort to learn.

Also, reading chat-speak on facebook gives me a headache and a compulsion to delete seventy-five percent of my friends list.

In short, evolution is one thing, laziness is another. Changing "all right" to "alright", adding "meh" to the dictionary, allowing use of prepositions at the end of sentences...that's all well and good. But "your" and "you're" mean very different things and shouldn't be used interchangeably since they obscure the meaning of a sentence.

[Chyron8472]

which is my feeling exactly.

[Vainamoinen]

Originally Posted by Alcoremortis

But "your" and "you're" mean very different things and shouldn't be used interchangeably since they obscure the meaning of a sentence.

Let me address this to KuroShiro, because (a) I don't want to enrage people even more and (b) I just don't have the history at hand to back up my hypothesis. Maybe he can help.

"you're" is a shortened form of "you are". As far as I know, shortened forms are the red button for language guardians as they pop up, so I will assume that at some time in the English language history, people have protested their lungs out against people saying "you're" instead of "you are" (= stupid, lazy, incomprehensible, yadda yadda yadda).

For such a shortened form to even reach writing, I would assume a second wave of protest to have occurred. One that hasn't necessarily ebbed out by today (you'd write "you're" on the Internet, but would you do it in rather formal texts?).

Meanwhile, English spoken language has fully wiped out the sound differences between "you're" and "your". This is very widely accepted today, even among the highest educated classes. I would assume that this means the English language works just as well (or comprehensible, logical, formal, complex, right, yadda yadda yadda) without the explicit distinction.

Now I like the written difference between your and you're. It helps me to interpret a written sentence as someone whose Native language is NOT English. And I do feel the occasional irrational language guardian anger when I see that mistake, as I feel as if my undoubtedly high learning was insulted. But as spoken English got rid of the difference completely, and therewith proves that the necessity for distinction doesn't really exist, the question should be natural whether English writing should reflect this as well.

That said, of course no one who types "your" instead of the correct "you're" wants to make a stand in that matter. You would of course find these writing "mistakes" primarily in the messages of lower educated classes, those of very young people or in the writings of foreigners; and I see another reason in the Internet's natural tendency to save typing time by developing shortened forms (since time in memorial or at least since normal, non-computer-nerds took their first steps in the net; you may thank Apple, Facebook or the ordinary SMS for establishing dire need for ever-shortened orthography).

And that is why you won't see me wasting letters in here just because coolsome doesn't get it.

[KuroShiro]

Firstly, sorry if I got a bit rude before. We all have our pet peeves, and this thread happened to touch on mine. In terms of the your/you're distinction... well, people have always liked to make spoken language shorter and easier to pronounce, and sometimes if it becomes entirely pervasive it translated into orthography. Contractions in English are pretty long standing though, going back a few centuries.

Anyway, if I somehow came across as being against proper education, then I didn't express myself very well. I *am* a teacher after all, that would be pretty silly of me. As I said, written language is very different from spoken. It's codified, and planned, and when you screw up in writing, it very much *is* incorrect. It always makes me chuckle (with rage) when some English teachers say that there's no wrong way stylistically to write English, while correcting how students speak.

Anyway, I agree with you, messing up your/you're and their/they're makes you look stupid, and 'chatspeak' makes you look even worse.

[Alcoremortis]

Honestly, when I speak, there is definitely a difference between between "your" and 'you're". "You're" ends up being slightly more "oo"-like than the broader "your". Maybe this is why it bugs me so much.

And I'm one of those weird people who tend to write more grammatically accurate texts. I may not always be up to finding the apostrophe, and in that case I end up writing the shortened version: "youre".

Because I like the difference to still be there.

[Johro]

I hate lip syncing and phoned in sound. Friend of mine went off on Eurovision for this and that';s just garbage. I've seen some bad performances, I've been to venues with horrible sound, but I would still prefer that to listening to a track.

For instance, KISS' ALIVE was half rerecorded in the studio because of mistakes(and general performance issues) and when this was revealed in an interview(in the 90s I think), a whole lot of fans I know instantly hated that record.

[Chyron8472]

Originally Posted by Vainamoinen

Meanwhile, English spoken language has fully wiped out the sound differences between "you're" and "your". This is very widely accepted today, even among the highest educated classes. I would assume that this means the English language works just as well (or comprehensible, logical, formal, complex, right, yadda yadda yadda) without the explicit distinction.

Now I like the written difference between your and you're. It helps me to interpret a written sentence as someone whose Native language is NOT English. And I do feel the occasional irrational language guardian anger when I see that mistake, as I feel as if my undoubtedly high learning was insulted. But as spoken English got rid of the difference completely, and therewith proves that the necessity for distinction doesn't really exist, the question should be natural whether English writing should reflect this as well.

Given that this is a written internet forum, I would speculate that most "language guardians'" anger in this context, (including my own) is largely referring to written language. For myself, I admit to have recently fixated on the verbally incorrect usage and order when referring to oneself ("me and him" instead of "he and I") but improper usage of the written word is a more prevalent problem concerning conversation on the net.

They're, their and there; no and know; too and to... are not incorrect written usages that warrant one day becoming interchangeable, and they (among other similar things) do greatly annoy me.