GalacticCactus Forum
Forums => English & Linguistics => Topic started by: Jonathon on August 19, 2008, 08:51:44 PM
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I just came across this episode (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00d0hw7) of the BBC Radio show Word of Mouth, and I thought I'd share. They talk with some notable descriptivists like Geoff Pullum of Language Log (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?author=3) and David Crystal, author of The Fight for English (http://www.amazon.com/Fight-English-Language-Pundits-Shot/dp/019920764X), as well as some prescriptivists like the guy who founded the Typo Eradication Advancement League (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87937893) (who seems to think he's not a prescriptivist). It's interesting to hear how many people resort to the slippery-slope "English is going to devolve into caveman grunts if we don't uphold these standards" argument.
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The eradication of typos is different from linguistic prescriptivism, in my opinion. What variations a private individual may wield in their private life may be none of my business, but when you publish a document or erect a sign, aberrations are spread throughout the populace.
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I don't see how that makes them not prescriptivists. They're "enforcing rules governing how a language is to be used (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_prescription)."
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You know, I'll bet this happened to the French-speaking Brits when the commoners started using Norse as well. "This will be the end of our language."
They were right too!
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Good thing!
Maybe any language that has to be propped up with rules deserves to die.
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You know, I'll bet this happened to the French-speaking Brits when the commoners started using Norse as well. "This will be the end of our language."
They were right too!
French-speaking Brits? The Norse invasions predate the Norman conquest by a couple centuries, and Old Norse never really took over, though a lot of Norse words were borrowed into Old English. The French came along later.
Your point remains, though.
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Really? Thanks for the info!
Wiki Entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language#History)
Fascinating.
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some prescriptivists like the guy who founded the Typo Eradication Advancement League (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87937893) (who seems to think he's not a prescriptivist).
He's the guy who said that typos are "vile stains on the delicate fabric of our language." As if English has not survived most of its life without a standard spelling.
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If you call that living.
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He's the guy who said that typos are "vile stains on the delicate fabric of our language." As if English has not survived most of its life without a standard spelling.
Seriously. Judging by the few Early Modern English documents I've read, I'd say that spelling now is more consistent than it's ever been. Take any of the orthographic gripes people have nowadays—misplaced apostrophes, random capitalization, scare quotes, and so on—and educated people were doing the exact thing two and three and four hundred years ago.
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And look where it got them. Dead!
[/Tante]
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Them was the kinda ginormous uppityness of which I cannot remain irregardless.
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Yeah. What pooka said.
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Is it bad that Jon's Super-Grammar and pooka's Super-Ungrammar make me slow down my reading the same?
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*sends Scott to the Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too*
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Typo Eradication Advancement League (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=87937893)
Jeff Deck has been charged (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=522)
Two self-anointed "grammar vigilantes" who toured the nation removing typos from public signs have been banned from national parks after vandalizing a historic marker at the Grand Canyon.
Jeff Michael Deck, 28, of Somerville, Mass., and Benjamin Douglas Herson, 28, of Virginia Beach, Va., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Flagstaff after damaging a rare, hand-painted sign in Grand Canyon National Park. They were sentenced to a year's probation, during which they cannot enter any national park, and were ordered to pay restitution.
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Judging by Deck's own statements in this article (http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/08/22/20080822grammarcops0822.html), he sounds like a world-class jerk.
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Emense.
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Emense.
"emense" is a fairly common archaic (http://blog.oup.com/2008/08/emense/) variant of "immense". It wasn't a mistake.
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I think that when spelling is as standardized as it is in English, you can reasonably regard the use of archaic or obsolete forms as an error or mistake. Of course, I think it's important to keep that in perspective. Saying that you "shall be haunted by that perversity" is a severe overreaction; saying "this form is not commonly in use and will be negatively regarded by others" is entirely appropriate.
I would assume that the author of the sign chose that spelling because that's how the words sounds and she didn't know the standard spelling, not because she was relying on established historical spelling.
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Why would you assume that?
I understand that Jeff Deck might not have had the OED on his person, but if he really cared about the language, he might have tried to find out why the word was spelled the way it was.
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In general, I'd say that you're safer assuming ignorance instead of assuming esoteric knowledge.
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Why would you assume that?
What Porter said. Unless the signage contained some evidence that the author knew and preferred archaic spellings, then I'd say that ignorance is the simpler explanation.
I understand that Jeff Deck might not have had the OED on his person, but if he really cared about the language, he might have tried to find out why the word was spelled the way it was.
Agreed. It seems to me that when some people profess to love language, what they really love is following rules and inflicting those rules on others. Language simply provides a lot of rules to follow and inflict.
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I think we should all live by one simple rule -- stop trying to get other people to follow your rules.
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Even when we're forced or entitled to share common areas?
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*taps sarcastometer*
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Unless the signage contained some evidence that the author knew and preferred archaic spellings, then I'd say that ignorance is the simpler explanation.
How old is the sign? The article just said that it was a historic sign -- is it possible it was written in a time when that spelling would have been more common?
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That had been my assumption.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7595509.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7595509.stm)
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Unless the signage contained some evidence that the author knew and preferred archaic spellings, then I'd say that ignorance is the simpler explanation.
How old is the sign? The article just said that it was a historic sign -- is it possible it was written in a time when that spelling would have been more common?
This article (http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/08/22/20080822grammarcops0822.html) says it's 60 years old. And from my limited research, it appears that the spelling "emenese" was never exactly common. A search of the entirety of the OED turns up one entry by Caxton in 1490. Google Books shows just over 400 hits, compared with 150,000 for "immense," though I don't know how much you can judge by that.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7595509.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7595509.stm)
That list just made me sad. Those are the best examples of grammar rules being flouted? The article certainly got one thing right—grammar just ain't what it used to be.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7595509.stm (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7595509.stm)
I love how an editor has had to add a bunch of notes correcting a lot of the misconceptions.
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But not nearly enough of them, in my opinion.
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I would assume that the author of the sign chose that spelling because that's how the words sounds and she didn't know the standard spelling, not because she was relying on established historical spelling.
This is why I still don't agree with people using the word orientate. It may be a valid word, but they're not using it because they know it's a valid word. They're using it because they're back-forming it from orientation.
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20. Stadiums, as a plural of stadium, rather than stadia.
C. Matthews, Birmingham, UK
NOTE: Fowler's says that when dealing with modern sports grounds, rather than ones from the classical world, the plural is "stadiums".
Does this apply to syllabus as well? I've heard about 47 people refer to "syllabi" this week.
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I can't stand when people talk about the city buses. The correct plural is city bi.
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I would assume that the author of the sign chose that spelling because that's how the words sounds and she didn't know the standard spelling, not because she was relying on established historical spelling.
This is why I still don't agree with people using the word orientate. It may be a valid word, but they're not using it because they know it's a valid word. They're using it because they're back-forming it from orientation.
I don't think those things are mutually exclusive. Back-formation is a valid way to form words, sort of like how back-form is back-formed from back-formation. ;) And I disagree about people's motivations. Most people have no idea about morphological processes, at least not consciously. People use words because they hear them being used, not because they've studied the processes for word formation in Latin and English.
And anyway, it's not clear that it's a back-formation as opposed to a regular derivation of orient + -ate. I think the original reason why it became a prescriptivist bugbear in the US is that we've developed this notion that if we have two words that mean the same thing and have similar forms, but one has more syllables, then the longer one must be wrong.
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20. Stadiums, as a plural of stadium, rather than stadia.
C. Matthews, Birmingham, UK
NOTE: Fowler's says that when dealing with modern sports grounds, rather than ones from the classical world, the plural is "stadiums".
Does this apply to syllabus as well? I've heard about 47 people refer to "syllabi" this week.
I'm not sure how modern sports grounds relate to syllabuses, but many nouns of Latin and Greek origin can form the plural two ways, like appendixes versus appendices. Some fields may prefer one form over the other, though.
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I can't stand when people talk about the city buses. The correct plural is city bi.
bus is from omnibus, which is alread a plural in Latin, it's the plural dative of omnis. So in fact the word has no singular, which mean we shouldn't refer to long motor vehicles for carrying passengers in the singular. I've noticed that many people talk about one bus, but this is wrong, meaningless, and offends the senses.
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20. Stadiums, as a plural of stadium, rather than stadia.
C. Matthews, Birmingham, UK
NOTE: Fowler's says that when dealing with modern sports grounds, rather than ones from the classical world, the plural is "stadiums".
Does this apply to syllabus as well? I've heard about 47 people refer to "syllabi" this week.
Make that 48.
*waves*
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bus is from omnibus, which is alread a plural in Latin, it's the plural dative of omnis. So in fact the word has no singular, which mean we shouldn't refer to long motor vehicles for carrying passengers in the singular. I've noticed that many people talk about one bus, but this is wrong, meaningless, and offends the senses.
Also, I'm pretty sure that it should be 'bus, not bus.
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(http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h276/DianneOnly/sm_kiss.gif) ?
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But not nearly enough of them, in my opinion.
No joke. That article was annoying.
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(http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h276/DianneOnly/sm_kiss.gif) ?
I take it you loved the sarcasm?
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So, bus is always plural, like pants and panties and scissors? Except, I guess pants and panties and scissors always come in pairs. If you break up a pair of panties into one panty and another panty, well, you've probably had a very exciting evening.
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So, bus is always plural . . . ?
No. Bus is and always has been treated as a singular form in English.
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Well, what about Latin panties, then?
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You'll have to ask someone who knows Latin.
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(http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h276/DianneOnly/sm_kiss.gif) ?
I take it you loved the sarcasm?
It's a buss.
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Hee-hee. These guys got the Stuff White People Like treatment (http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/08/25/white-people-in-the-news-political-prison-edition).
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(http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/20081008/funniestyet_550x367_540x360.jpg)
Steve Jobs, you wound me.
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I happen to thing "iPod" (and the subsequent i-Ification of other things) is a worse offense than "funnest".
"Funnest" just sounds like an 8 year old.
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You think it's just funner, but not funnest?
(I don't think that there's anything wrong with funner nor funnest.)
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Fun, more fun, most fun. NOT fun, funner, funnest. Bleh!
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You think it's just funner, but not funnest?
(I don't think that there's anything wrong with funner nor funnest.)
Yep. Freakin' superlatives. There are going to be way funner iPods in The Future.
But seriously, yeah, "funner" and "funnest" are like nails on a chalk board for me.
So is the practice of pronouncing "hundred" as "hunnert'". These are related to each other only in that the people that I've known that use the word "funnest" are likely to pronounce the word "hundred" in that way.
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Fun, more fun, most fun OR fun, funner, funnest!
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(I don't think that there's anything wrong with funner nor funnest.)
That's the retardest thing I've ever read.
Nor heard.
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Fun, more fun, most fun OR fun, funner, funnest!
You are even more wrong on this that about gun control. :P
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That may very well be true.
But if so, it means something far different than what you think. :P
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Obligatory link providing actual facts (http://literalminded.wordpress.com/2008/09/20/fun-with-funner-and-funnest/).
In short: it's a pretty sharp generational divide. If you hate the inflected forms, it probably just means you're old (or old at heart). :P
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I'm never gonna grow up!
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<-- old fogie for years now
And get off my lawn!
(Also, I just noticed your sig. :lol: )
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She said that a couple of weeks ago in response to something one of our kids said.
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Care Bear gets upset if I tell her to get her shoes and socks on when she already has socks on.
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Not yours (although it's funny too). Appleboy's.
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:(
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*pat pat*