The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Wild Card => Topic started by: arkabee on June 11, 2004, 01:39:06 pm
-
Explain to me about the evolving language, and I will tell you of the devolving discourse.
i doubt i could _explain_ to you about evolving language, but i certainly shall try in an attempt to get you to tell me of the devolving discourse.
Language, as utilized by the people and for the people, is evolving by several percentage points daily. This is happening for several reasons.
One possible reason, is the influx of semi to non literate children posting to the internet in a second or further removed language. Given the number (or volume if you will) of posts by these people, and the general reaction to such posts, the evolution is thusly spawned.
or something.
now, quick like a bunny, don't think about the gibberish i spouted, but enlighten me to your theories, please!!
-
People are dolts. They just can't be bothered to take any amount of care with anything they do, except their own personal thing, whatever it might be. For instance, I might dress like a slob and shower infrequentlky and spend most of my time down at the bus station leering at people, and only make a big deal about the way people use language. Someone else might be all uptight about how a person plays a collectible card game. Everything is devolving into chaos. It's the end of the world.
-
It's the end of the world.
I feel fine.
It's always been this way. People have always been dolts. We're just painfully aware of the particular fashion of doltishness occuring in our lifetime.
So cheer up, dammit!
-
It is natural for language to change. Many words that you don't think twice about caused all kinds of uproar at previous points in history. But eventually, the people who thought, for example, that you shouldn't use the verb 'donate' (derived as a back-formation from 'donation') all died, and now no one cares. It seems ignorant now when people write 'ice tea' instead of 'iced tea,' but it doesn't bother anyone that we say 'ice cream' when it used to be 'iced cream.' Etc.
I could give you dozens more examples, but I've packed all those books and put them in the attic and in five minutes I have to have a phone interview for a zookeeping job and I don't DO this stuff anymore, dammit.
If language didn't change, we'd still be speaking Old English. Modern English isn't worse than Old English, it's just different.
This isn't to say that people aren't stupid and ignorant. Just that this is maybe not the right thing to focus on if you want to eliminate stupidity and ignorance from the world.
-
Modern English = "I Melt With You" < Olde English = "Malt Liquor"
Bad English = Neal Schon + John Waite < both of the above.
These are provable with math!
-
My dearest and most esteemed Wombles:
For the record, I agree almost entirely with your immediately preceeding post. However, as is my wont, I have a few gratuitous comments.
1. OK, OK, grammar is descriptive, not prescriptive. Language is dynamic, not static. Language is whatever bits of sound and scribbles we use to communicate with each other. But...
At any single point in time, don't we have some collective idea of what is and isn't correct, accepted language? When I say that something is not grammatically correct, you know what I mean. We always have some loose concensus of what correct grammar is. This may be a fluid concensus, but we do collectively set parameters on what is and what is not an acceptible, "correct" way to use our shared language.
Given that, isn't it acceptible to say that a given statement isn't grammatical? "Pwned" may become a perfectly cromulent English word in a few more years, but as yet it has not reached full acceptance. Therefore it is incorrect in some sense to use it. Also relevant is the nature and degree of the incogruity with the accepted rules. Blatant violations of subject-verb agreement or tense formation seem less likely to become acceptible through evolutionary change than do neologisms, back-formations and mispronunciations.
2. Yes, language is always changing and evolving. But can't we take a snapshot and have at least a decent idea of what is acceptable right now? And if so, can't we learn something about the speaker from his usage? I think what we collectively disdain in our "Grammar Cop" posts is willful ignorance. Empirically, I've found that people who are willfully ignorant about our language are usually willfully ignorant about everything else. The structure of language is how we arrange our thoughts, emotions and desires for presentation to the rest of the world. An inability or unwillingness to do so in a coherent (if not artful) manner speaks for itself.
3. I have only a couple gratuitous comments rather than a few. Please forgive me.
-
Grammar almost always depends on setting. It's very easy to say that something is acceptable or unacceptable, but there are no doubt hordes of people using this very same internet who would not agree on specific points. There are also usages that I might feel are acceptable here that I would never use when speaking with or writing to my Aunt (we are both tech writers). I'm with Wombat on this, I think.
By the way (or for instance), what does _this_ mean? I kind of get some feeling for it, by reading it, but I don't know. Also, it just looks wrong to me.
-
This is something about which my father and I debate all the time-- He's of the "descriptive" camp, and I'm on team "Ridiculously Pedantic Future Editors"... as you can see from the first sentence in this post, wherein I avoided ending a clause with a preposition.
In theory, I know that language is inexorably evolving, but at this point in time some constructions sound gratingly wrong to me and I'd just rather not use them... or hear them.
I think that articulacy and general mastery of language tend to raise the level of discourse and that laziness of vocabulary and syntax tend to lead to intellectual decadence. I do see this as a cultural decline: political speeches even from the early twentieth century are written to a much higher grammatical and rhetorical standard, and reading them in history classes tends to make me envy the ages from which they came.
Of course, there is the argument that the contemporary tendency to appeal to the lowest common denominator is valuable, since it allows people outside of the upper echelons of education, and by extension, wealth, to understand and to participate in political discourse.
I could go back and forth on this debate forever, so I'll shut up now.
-
By the way (or for instance), what does _this_ mean? I kind of get some feeling for it, by reading it, but I don't know. Also, it just looks wrong to me.
i underline words, to stress them.
see, some people, when they type, they are WRITING.
other people, they are SPEAKING.
me, i am sucking, but that's a whole different ball of monkeygames.
--
on another topic: take a long time IRC user, and put them into an I.M. environment. or, take a mobile texter, and put them on usenet. or etc, et al.
it's very interesting to me, that beyond educational issues, meat-world cultural differences, etc, that the differences in computer based communication histories often-times cause the most difficulties.
i'm, at my basic level, a usenetter who types as if he is speaking. i do not type as though i am writing a letter, nor a disertation, nor a mbl txt msg 4 u.
regardless, where's pedro? i was askin' _pedro_.
-
other people, they are SPEAKING.
I find that somewhat curious, as I tend to alter how I type depending on the medium. For instance here, I will tend to write. Most places in fact, I will tend to write. When I speak, I am often a stickler for speaking correctly, although I seem to also drift off into different vernaculars.
On IRC I always tended to write correctly as well, although there was one channel where I just typed in lower caps. IM I will drift between writing and all lower caps, but I still refuse to abbreviate in the lazy SMS fashion. It is something I truly hate, as with rising intonation outwith a question mark.
So I guess I'm finding it more interesting that it really is; that I drift between different 'dialects'. After all, it is something I do verbally depending on company.
-
Pedro's been busy with our out-of-town guests. He'll get back to you on Monday.
This is his answering service.
-
Blatant violations of subject-verb agreement or tense formation seem less likely to become acceptible through evolutionary change than do neologisms, back-formations and mispronunciations.
Well, actually things like agreement and tense do change. If we were still speaking Old English we'd need to do a lot more case-marking, like in Modern German.
2. Yes, language is always changing and evolving. But can't we take a snapshot and have at least a decent idea of what is acceptable right now? And if so, can't we learn something about the speaker from his usage?
Yes, and everyone does it. People use language for communication in many ways. One of the ways we use it is to find out who's a member of our club - from their accent, for example, or from their knowledge of the Grammar Cop rules of acceptability. But we should be conscious of the fact that that's what we're doing. The people whose usage we dislike don't speak a language without rules - that's humanly impossible - they just speak one with different rules. But yeah, that's one of the things we humans use to categorize one another.
Andalucia's comment is interesting in that if you go back to all the golden ages that people will mention, you'll find people at that time making the same complaints about how the current generation doesn't write or speak as well as some past golden age. I would give you the quotes, but like I said, I packed all the boxes and put them in the attic. Can't we talk about animal poop instead?
[/professor soapbox mode]
-
see, some people, when they type, they are WRITING.
other people, they are SPEAKING.
This is an observation that has often been made before but perhaps never so perfectly, and note that you couldn't make it any clearer by writing it in Dissertation Style.
Like Slink puts it, there are different dialects. One of the things about this messageboard is that most or at least many of us probably are writing like you'd write a dissertation. It's one of our most endearing qualities. I like people who use the Grammar Cop rules. It's just that it spoils it for me when they get on their high hoss about them.
PS Love the new tooth.
-
Yes, and everyone does it. People use language for communication in many ways. One of the ways we use it is to find out who's a member of our club - from their accent, for example, or from their knowledge of the Grammar Cop rules of acceptability. But we should be conscious of the fact that that's what we're doing. The people whose usage we dislike don't speak a language without rules - that's humanly impossible - they just speak one with different rules. But yeah, that's one of the things we humans use to categorize one another.
Yes, exactly. Going farther, I think it's OK to make value judgments about certain categories of people. Sometimes, one can make relatively valid value judgements about grammatically derived categories of people.
-
Y'alls is so lucky this ain't in no forum I moderate, cuz this thread would be SO locked it ain't een funny.
-
So _this_ comes from some other form of discourse where this is unavailable? Or is it convenience? Again, I'm only curious. I've gleaned that [/ whatever mode] comes from somewhere else, so I thought perhaps _this_ deal might as well.
-
Can anything really be off-topic in the "Wild Card" forum, though?
I understand that *threads* can meander, but would a forum subject be verboten here?
I am just reading along like everyone else, free from the shackles called "moderator."
FREE! FREE AT LAST!
-
So _this_ comes from some other form of discourse where this is unavailable? Or is it convenience? Again, I'm only curious. I've gleaned that [/ whatever mode] comes from somewhere else, so I thought perhaps _this_ deal might as well.
Back in the day people used to use the underscores on sites/boards/e-mail/etc that didn't support actual markup. Some people use it as a holdover and some just because it's fewer keystrokes. I still use it in subject lines for emphasis.
I've also seen *this* used to imply italics and this~! is supposed to mean "insert a lot of exclamation points here"
-
Traditionally on usenet and old IRC clients, words words of emphasis were _underlined_, *bolded*, or /italicized/.
[/end-mode] comes from BBCode (BBML, *BCode, &c.), and from </end-mode>, which came from HTML, where tags start like <this> and end like </this>, or are just <empty /> (that's more XML and XHTML).
</geek-history>
-
Nabubrush,
For me it solely stems from habit. Usenet was a plaintext arena, and any non-text based markup was _strictly_ verboten.
Thinking about it now, actively inserting html into what i'm "saying" is absolutely foreign to my thought processes. I'm having a discussion with a group of people, not marking up a web page. [*1]
I suppose that means that i am lazy or resistent to evolving to a web-based forum user. So, it might indeed stem from "convenience".
as for "[/whatever]" mode. From my perspective, i see two distinct evolutions.
1- IRC. IRC used "/" as a preceder to system and user commands. for instance "/me waves to all" denotes an _Action_ as opposed to a verbilization ("Hi all, if i could i'd wave to you!". I saw, and performed as well, a lot of that on Usenet. A mix, perhaps, of "cute", "novel", and "efficiency". Again, this was used to generate a sense of physical action in a purely text based portayal of a verbal conversation.
2- HTML. Again, on Usenet, the one faux-markup i'd use and that i saw most in my little corner of heaven..., was the "[voice type= ]" "tag". Again, inserting more, um, "flavor" into a text-based portrayal of verbal communication.
[voice type=Homer] D'oh! [/voice] Seems to "do" more than: "D'oh! (you know, like homer would say)."
Keeping in mind the era (_before_ people where actually communicating through html oriented interfaces (a la this forum) ), HTML knowledge was still _somewhat_ arcane (albeit decreasingly so) and usenet's "core" user base was distinctively more Geek oriented than not.
Wombat,
Thank Choopernickel. He "magicked" Toofy into the clean-cut calcium deposit you see before you. (Incidentally, i've been asked before why i use the tooth as an avatar before. Simply, whenever i say something really stupid, or possibly mean sounding, or whatnot imagine my response to your query as "hey, i'm a big smiling tooth carrying a toothbrush!!").
As for dialects, i agree. I lived in many different areas growing up, and as such was subjected to the phenomen before i actually understood what was going on. As such, i'd think i'm a bit more lenient, and also my "dialect" is a definite amalgamation. As someone who will say "Ya'll don' know what it's aboot", i guess it makes sense to me to use faux html tags, irc'isms, etc in the "wrong" mediums.
Jldunston,
I don't like your tone. (ha. hah. hahah. answering service? answering machine? tone? get it? see, i'm a big giant tooth holding a toothbrush!)
Slink-
I don't do a ton of text messaging on my phone, but i do use it about once a day or so. as i'm awkwardly ten-keying in "you" over and over again, i ask myself "kevbob, why don't you just use "u"?" and the answer is, because by the time i think of it, i'm done. but, i've begum to use "u" more often. lazy? or efficient?
However, given a keyboard, i don't see any true efficiency in shortening "you", as the time gained versus the communications problems with the receiver do not equalize.
Yet, if i "started" as a text messager, i'm sure i would be much more habitual in my abbreviations.
Andalucia,
Those speeches from previous years _were_ aimed at the lowest common denominator: the LCD of those who could _READ_. Also, has it not been said that Shakespeare wrote his plays for the LCD?
I guess if you can knowingly refer to your pedantry as "Ridiculous", that counts for something. ; )
-
[*1] Ya, i alter my habits based on circumstance as well. For instance, i'm of a general "don't edit" mindset. mistakes are mistakes, if this was for money or my job, maybe, but i'm conversating not designing a bridge.
Yet, here i am editing just to fit in.
Anyways,,,
So i say inserting html is foreign to my brane, then i go on to explain that i used [voice type = ] faux-tags on usenet. so, obviously the idea of marking up in html isn't foreign. except that i said "verboten" too, and The German Language is devotely foreign to me.
YMMV, just add water.
-
Holy crap! Well, anyway, thanks for the info. I could see where a person like me might really go overboard with some of that stuff, so I'm going to go ahead and try not to use it. Especially as I would feel sort of poseuresque because I wasn't really there then.
-
Arkabee,
Thanks.
Kisses,
Choop.
-
Hey ark, we have italics here. Please take the time to show you know how to use them. There will be a test later.
By properly italicising that which you mean to emphasise you show your fellow message boarders that you care.
-
Hey ark, we have italics here. Please take the time to show you know how to use them. There will be a test later.
By properly italicising that which you mean to emphasise you show your fellow message boarders that you care.
This is how you italicize text on a phpbb forum.
this is how you bold text on a phpbb forum.
this is how you underline text on a phpbb forum.
by using "alt+i", you can open an [i] tag. yet, ctrl-z does not undo. [1]
yeah, i'm just in love with phpbb systems. they work so great.
oh, and i look! i can change the colour of the text!
{edit- see [2]}
oh my, indeed, this certainly facilitates easy communication!!
ps,
i thought it would cross the line to "Disable BBCode in this post".
However, the mere fact that i previewed it that way and laughed probably shows that i'm not near mature enough to handle the deep responsibilities of phpbb usership.
pps,
incidentally, when i underline i add 2 characters, to underline within the phpbb system, i use 7.
ppps,
i guess this means i "failed" the quiz, eh?
-
[1] hmm, too bad there's not a footnote tag. because, then when you click the phpbb's insert tag buttons in the message editor, and rather than insert them at current cursor position it appends them to all test, there'd be a home for all the left over tags that remain after you ctrl-z:
[/u]
[2]
"oh, and i look!"? oh, and i look like an idiot. ya, that _must_ be what i meant...
-
Ctrl-Z to undo is a function of your browser software (if you use IE), not a server-side PHP script.
Anyway, you pass the quiz.
A++
-
Ctrl-Z to undo is a function of your browser software (if you use IE), not a server-side PHP script.
eh? that would be my point, sort of, if you hog-tied, gagged, and threw it down your cellar stairs.
this would be a discussion for a different forum, i would think.
-
One of the things about this messageboard is that most or at least many of us probably are writing like you'd write a dissertation. It's one of our most endearing qualities.
Even this will vary with the field of the dissertation author. I doubt that the language of my dissertation is in line with the ideal you have of dissertation-like writing. Style was not the foremost concern of my reading committee (and, given the my advisor is not a native speaker, his advice is occasionally wrong). Rather, they were interested in the scientific/engineering content. Where the style made the content unclear, I strove to repair the text. Even after this, my words are by no means elegant. I tried to be aware of distinctions (comprise, rather than comprised of, for example), and went through the text with Strunk and White at hand. My dissertation (and, by extension, my writing on this board and in other places) is utilitarian above all other concerns.
And I still don't make myself very clear. I guess I shouldn't have slept through College Writing and Rhetoric.
-
Strunk and White
My Heroes!
-
Strunk and White
My Heroes!
Oh man, agreed.
-
One of the things about this messageboard is that most or at least many of us probably are writing like you'd write a dissertation. It's one of our most endearing qualities.
Even this will vary with the field of the dissertation author.
my meaning in using the word "dissertation" was the quality of going over your text as though it were to be presented to a board that held the ability to screw you over in their collective Hand.
as opposed to me, who goes over his text like he goes over his thinning hair with a wet hand, running 10 minutes late to meet his friend to play video games.
-
I've definitely felt the dialect-switch problem; my primary means of online communication for some time has been IRC, which, even on my fairly grammar-conscious server, doesn't permit any markup and thus relies primarily on *things like this.* It's taken training to get myself to the point that on phpBB-bases systems I can italicize properly.
That said, _this_ has always looked wrong to me for reasons I can't quite articulate. Maybe it just breaks my visual "flow" while reading text in a way that *asterisk emphasis* doesn't.
-
my meaning in using the word "dissertation" was the quality of going over your text as though it were to be presented to a board that held the ability to screw you over in their collective Hand.
as opposed to me, who goes over his text like he goes over his thinning hair with a wet hand, running 10 minutes late to meet his friend to play video games.
For someone who in another thread claims that he talks and writes badly, this is damned eloquent, Ark.
-
That said, _this_ has always looked wrong to me for reasons I can't quite articulate. Maybe it just breaks my visual "flow" while reading text in a way that *asterisk emphasis* doesn't.
how odd that two people can be so different.
because, to _me_, circumnavigating an asterisk is, no pun intended, a risky proposition. it's pointy, and it's scary, and it's rounded much like i'd imagine a mine would look like if i were in a boat surrounded by mines.
it lends a sense of forboding to a sentence: *HALT!* do NOT enter this thought, lest Ye Communicate!
where-as the faux-underline makes me think of an iced over lake in Just South of the Upper Peninsula, in Febuary, with kids skating and frolicking and having fun: Why don't ya'll just _zoom_ on into this here sentence, we'll all have some fresh hot cider! Carefull now kids, _this_ here's Adult Cider, the Children's Cider is over _there_, and watchout for *double-entendres*, *sarcasm*, and *hidden invectives*.
For someone who in another thread claims that he talks and writes badly, this is damned eloquent, Ark.
do you _want_ to see a tooth blush? assuredly it would nto be a pretty sight.
Seriously, though, Pedro just tell your "guests" to leave, that an unruly tooth requires your opinion on the Internet!
-
tooth blush
This is persistantly scanning as a rather clever pun for me, although the context indicates that it was not meant as such. Bravo?
-
tooth blush
This is persistantly scanning as a rather clever pun for me, although the context indicates that it was not meant as such. Bravo?
no, no bravo for me.
i'm constantly told that i'm only funny when i don't try to be.
-
Orwell discusses this quite a bit, that to reason clearly, one must speak and clearly.
I think you do have a point, but I don't think that language alone is causing this. A primary cause of the change in political discourse is television. Many politicians are very intelligent people with an ability to write and speak well, but it seems that the modern political observer cares more about soundbites and hairstyles. It's much easier to say "I will be tough on crime" and flash a smile than to dive into a discussion of how to reform the criminal system. Charm is much more important than intellect these days.
However, you don't need to look too far to find beautiful language being produced. There are still masters of standard english out there. I imagine that in all eras of the english languagate there were people who lamented current usage. It's worked out so far.
I do see this as a cultural decline: political speeches even from the early twentieth century are written to a much higher grammatical and rhetorical standard, and reading them in history classes tends to make me envy the ages from which they came.
Of course, there is the argument that the contemporary tendency to appeal to the lowest common denominator is valuable, since it allows people outside of the upper echelons of education, and by extension, wealth, to understand and to participate in political discourse.