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Author Topic: New column-type thingy  (Read 111462 times)

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Offline BlackBlade

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #650 on: January 12, 2014, 08:01:36 AM »
I live in the mid atlantic until I was 17,

So like St. Helena island?
Kyrgyzstan, is the homeland of the Kyrgyzs, a people best known for cheating at Scrabble. -Tante Shvester

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Offline pooka

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #651 on: January 12, 2014, 08:34:27 AM »
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."  Comte de Saint-Simon

Offline BlackBlade

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #652 on: January 12, 2014, 04:20:41 PM »
Kyrgyzstan, is the homeland of the Kyrgyzs, a people best known for cheating at Scrabble. -Tante Shvester

What, you expected us to be badly injured or dead, and flying blind to boot? You're the one who told us all to be Awesome. -Brinestone

Offline Tante Shvester

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #653 on: January 12, 2014, 06:11:15 PM »
I'm surprised that people don't know about this.  It's the part of the East Coast between New England and the Southeast.  Then again, being from there may make me more aware of it.
Fighting thread drift with guilt, reverse psychology, and chicken soup.
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I love Bones.  -- Sweet Clementine
She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef. -- anonymous

Offline BlackBlade

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #654 on: January 12, 2014, 06:43:04 PM »
I'm surprised that people don't know about this.  It's the part of the East Coast between New England and the Southeast.  Then again, being from there may make me more aware of it.
Nobody calls Hong Kong the anything Pacific.
Kyrgyzstan, is the homeland of the Kyrgyzs, a people best known for cheating at Scrabble. -Tante Shvester

What, you expected us to be badly injured or dead, and flying blind to boot? You're the one who told us all to be Awesome. -Brinestone

Offline Jonathon

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #655 on: January 13, 2014, 09:15:53 AM »
Lynne Truss and Chicken Little

Ruth thought the last one was a bit presumptuous, but I decided to leave it in anyway. >:D
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Offline BlackBlade

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #656 on: January 13, 2014, 09:50:59 AM »
I loved that you quoted Beowulf,

"HWÆT, WE GAR-DEna in geardagum,
þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon,
hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon!"

I remember my 6th grade teacher playing a recording of those lines in Old English, and I was like, "Duuuuuuude." English isn't English anymore!
Kyrgyzstan, is the homeland of the Kyrgyzs, a people best known for cheating at Scrabble. -Tante Shvester

What, you expected us to be badly injured or dead, and flying blind to boot? You're the one who told us all to be Awesome. -Brinestone

Offline Jonathon

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #657 on: January 13, 2014, 10:12:17 AM »
No kidding! People think Shakespeare's hard to understand, but he's pretty easy compared to Chaucer. And someone without any training can still muddle their way through Chaucer and understand a little of it. But Beowulf? Nope. No way.
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Offline Tante Shvester

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #658 on: January 13, 2014, 10:25:46 AM »
Linguistic Apocalypse sounds like a cool band name.
Fighting thread drift with guilt, reverse psychology, and chicken soup.
Sweet! Law of Moses loopholes! -- Anneke
I love Bones.  -- Sweet Clementine
She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef. -- anonymous

Offline pooka

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #659 on: January 14, 2014, 02:09:03 PM »
Quote
“we might as well all gooff and kill ourselves.”

FTFY
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."  Comte de Saint-Simon

Offline pooka

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #660 on: January 14, 2014, 02:12:59 PM »
Quote
Maybe linguists are like meteorologists who observe that, contrary to the claims of some individuals, the sky is not actually falling.
This might not be the best analogy, unless you are a global warming denier, or possibly a manmade global warming denier.  The latter would be very consistent with the point you're trying to make. 
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his work."  Comte de Saint-Simon

Offline Jonathon

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #661 on: January 14, 2014, 02:30:57 PM »
I thought about that, but I decided to ignore it and go with the analogy anyway to stick with the Chicken Little theme.
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #662 on: March 04, 2014, 08:19:59 AM »
You underestimate my ability to take things seriously!

Offline Tante Shvester

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #663 on: March 04, 2014, 09:22:34 AM »
Teaching grammar for its own sake is fine, but learning grammar can also be a tool for upward mobility, for people whose native grammar is nonstandard.  Like with Eliza Doolittle and her posh accent lessons with George Bernard Shaw.
Fighting thread drift with guilt, reverse psychology, and chicken soup.
Sweet! Law of Moses loopholes! -- Anneke
I love Bones.  -- Sweet Clementine
She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli and he was room-temperature Canadian beef. -- anonymous

Offline Ela

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #664 on: March 04, 2014, 12:08:07 PM »
I liked this line: "Good writing breaks these rules all the time, and following all the rules does little if anything to make bad writing good."

I'm not saying it was good writing or anything, but it still bugs me that a sixth grade teacher changed a word of a poem I wrote for an assignment because he didn't think the word I used was grammatically correct. But the word he wanted me to use wasn't what I meant!

(Ironically, I don't even remember the actual poem anymore, just the incident.)


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Offline Jonathon

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #665 on: March 04, 2014, 12:39:53 PM »
Teaching grammar for its own sake is fine, but learning grammar can also be a tool for upward mobility, for people whose native grammar is nonstandard.  Like with Eliza Doolittle and her posh accent lessons with George Bernard Shaw.

I wholeheartedly agree that people—especially nonnatives or those who speak nonstandard English—ought to learn to read, write, and speak Standard English. But that's not the same thing as learning grammar.

I liked this line: "Good writing breaks these rules all the time, and following all the rules does little if anything to make bad writing good."

I'm not saying it was good writing or anything, but it still bugs me that a sixth grade teacher changed a word of a poem I wrote for an assignment because he didn't think the word I used was grammatically correct. But the word he wanted me to use wasn't what I meant!

(Ironically, I don't even remember the actual poem anymore, just the incident.)

I would wager that a lot of people have had incidents like that, and this is precisely why a lot of people are so insecure about their writing or their speech. They hear the message over and over again that they're doing it wrong because they haven't mastered an arcane list of rules, and eventually they just give up. A few others can overcome this because they have enough natural aptitude (usually because they're excellent readers, I think) to absorb the rules or to realize that the rules aren't all they're cracked up to be.
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Offline rivka

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #666 on: March 04, 2014, 12:49:01 PM »
Some of us loved grammar class and think many of the rules are cool.
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Offline Ela

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #667 on: March 04, 2014, 12:56:50 PM »
I liked grammar in school, don't get me wrong. I was jokingly called the "grammar buff" in high school. (That started after an English teacher said to me, "You certainly are a grammar buff.")

And certain grammar errors bug me a lot.

But I don't think we need to be obsessive about the rules.


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Offline Jonathon

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #668 on: March 05, 2014, 09:51:33 AM »
And now I have a guest post on the Macmillan Dictionary blog: "Grammar and Grammar".
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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #669 on: March 05, 2014, 09:54:34 AM »
Some of us loved grammar class and think many of the rules are cool.

I would have loved it if it had been taught better—I certainly loved grammar once I got to college. And many of the rules are cool, but I think it's important to recognize which rules are valid and which aren't and to teach kids the difference.
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Offline rivka

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #670 on: March 05, 2014, 10:27:34 AM »
And now I have a guest post on the Macmillan Dictionary blog: "Grammar and Grammar".
Quote
And last I checked, linguists are people too, and they have just as much of a say as anyone else. Language is the ultimate democracy, and everyone gets a vote. I vote for greater understanding of what grammar really is.
Nice. :D

I would have loved it if it had been taught better—I certainly loved grammar once I got to college. And many of the rules are cool, but I think it's important to recognize which rules are valid and which aren't and to teach kids the difference.
I had some decent English teachers, who emphasized that these are the rules, but if you know what you are doing you can sometimes break them. I also had some crappy ones, who clearly hated teaching grammar as much as most of my classmates hated learning it.
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #671 on: March 05, 2014, 10:37:53 AM »
Quote
And last I checked, linguists are people too, and they have just as much of a say as anyone else. Language is the ultimate democracy, and everyone gets a vote. I vote for greater understanding of what grammar really is.
Nice. :D

Thanks. :)
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Offline Jonathon

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #672 on: April 14, 2014, 12:47:21 PM »
I'm trying out a new theme. I'm still ironing out some minor style issues, but let me know if you see anything weird or buggy.
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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #673 on: April 25, 2014, 09:02:44 AM »
You underestimate my ability to take things seriously!

Offline rivka

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Re: New column-type thingy
« Reply #674 on: April 25, 2014, 09:16:53 AM »
"Sometimes you need a weirdo to tell you that things have gotten weird. Your normal friends, neighbors, and coworkers won’t tell you."
-Aaron Kunin