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Patashu 04-10-2011 02:08 AM

Re: Decline of Language
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by cry4eternity (Post 3448336)
Surely we've all noticed the recent decline in the ability of the general public to discern between "your" and "you're."

who cares
there's never a point where using one instead of the other changes what you mean, so just mentally substitute the correct one

stopped reading there

~kitty~ 04-10-2011 02:56 AM

Re: Decline of Language
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Emithith (Post 3448564)
EDIT: I also cannot believe how stupid some advertisements are. FFS, I saw an ad that said "Want to Learn English?" I did NOT know you were supposed to capitalize Verbs. I thought it was only nouns. /sarcasm.

Maybe "Learn English" is the name of a dance.

DossarLX ODI 04-10-2011 03:09 AM

Re: Decline of Language
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Patashu (Post 3448713)
who cares
there's never a point where using one instead of the other changes what you mean, so just mentally substitute the correct one

stopped reading there

This brings up a valid point. Many colloquialisms are "technically incorrect" but are still understood to have the same meaning.

For example, "I don't know nothin'". In the literal interpretation, it's a double negative, which means the person saying it actually does know something, but is understood as "I know nothing" because of talking styles.

ScylaX 04-10-2011 09:26 AM

Re: Decline of Language
 
Quote:

there's never a point where using one instead of the other changes what you mean, so just mentally substitute the correct one
Are you trying to say that it would be absurd to be annoyed by the linguistic mistakes of our peers because it doesn't change the fact you understand what they meant ?

Actually, it makes the understanding harder than if they talked correctly. We need a rich language to correctly express things in the most accurate way possible, the deterioration of that abundance lead to difficulties to correctly put into words anything that has a little depth.

aperson 04-10-2011 04:42 PM

Re: Decline of Language
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by ScylaX (Post 3448784)
Are you trying to say that it would be absurd to be annoyed by the linguistic mistakes of our peers because it doesn't change the fact you understand what they meant ?

Actually, it makes the understanding harder than if they talked correctly. We need a rich language to correctly express things in the most accurate way possible, the deterioration of that abundance lead to difficulties to correctly put into words anything that has a little depth.

Ya its you're problem not mine if you get annoyed. Try reprogramming yourself to not be so... annoyable. It doesn't make understanding harder, there is no crosstalk between "your" and "you're" because they have totally different functions in our grammar.

Also for the record, "the deterioration of that abundance lead to difficulties to correctly put into words anything that has a little depth" is ridiculously hard to read mostly because you screwed up lead(s) and you used "abundance" as the subject of a sentence which turned it into an abstract mess. So it turns out that things like verb conjugation actually are important; on the other hand, getting mad about homophony isn't.


Quote:

Originally Posted by DossarLX ODI (Post 3448731)
For example, "I don't know nothin'". In the literal interpretation, it's a double negative, which means the person saying it actually does know something, but is understood as "I know nothing" because of talking styles.

There is no "literal interpretation" of a double negative because double negatives aren't valid in our grammar. You could argue by saying "Negation in language is like multiplying by -1" or something like that, but then you are still invoking something outside of our grammar. In Spanish if you want to make a negation, you have to negate the relevant noun phrase and then every other quantifier, which proves that there is no "literal interpretation" of double negatives because it is completely valid in Spanish to use them to mean the same thing as English's single negation. To Spanish speakers, negation isn't like multiplying by -1, it's a different concept.

Emithith 04-10-2011 05:21 PM

Re: Decline of Language
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by aperson (Post 3448834)
Ya its you're problem not mine if you get annoyed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by aperson (Post 3448834)
you're

Troll.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ~kitty~ (Post 3448726)
Maybe "Learn English" is the name of a dance.

It wasn't the name of a dance. It was ESL, I seriously wonder how many mistakes the foreigners will learn in that course because of them. :rage:

ScylaX 04-11-2011 11:07 AM

Re: Decline of Language
 
Quote:

Ya its you're problem not mine if you get annoyed. Try reprogramming yourself to not be so... annoyable. It doesn't make understanding harder, there is no crosstalk between "your" and "you're" because they have totally different functions in our grammar
I hardly understand where is the counter-argument in this post, it looks like you thought I was talking about the oral understanding when I was in fact speaking about written mistakes. Anyway, please, explain.

Quote:

"the deterioration of that abundance lead to difficulties to correctly put into words anything that has a little depth" is ridiculously hard to read mostly because you screwed up lead(s) and you used "abundance" as the subject of a sentence which turned it into an abstract mess. So it turns out that things like verb conjugation actually are important; on the other hand, getting mad about homophony isn't.
Yes. My bad, I was writing too fast, but wasn't "deterioration" the subject instead of "abundance" ? I try to correct every errors I commit because I'm still far from being bilingual.

kommisar 04-11-2011 11:52 AM

Re: Decline of Language
 
I Like How Everyone's Trying Really Hard To Type Properly In This Thread.

ScylaX 04-11-2011 01:08 PM

Re: Decline of Language
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by kommisar (Post 3449185)
I Like How Everyone's Trying Really Hard To Type Properly In This Thread.

evry1 triez it's best to avoids ad hominem attax lol

smartdude1212 04-11-2011 02:16 PM

Re: Decline of Language
 
The usage of "there is" over "there are" in everyday conversation is more irritating, I'd say. It's a more common violation in spoken language because people tend to have less time to think about what they're saying, but it's as if they're hardly thinking. The same goes for "there was" and "there were," "there has been" and "there have been," et cetera.

Another irritating mistake is "definately" versus "definitely," which makes little sense because when I say "definitely" I don't hear anything close to an "a" in there.

Unfortunately English is so common that we shan't (sha'n't if you're hardcore) have to worry about preserving our language anytime soon.

who_cares973 04-11-2011 03:15 PM

Re: Decline of Language
 
when it comes to definitely people tend to spell the word how the sound it out which more often than not its nat

cry4eternity 04-11-2011 03:38 PM

Re: Decline of Language
 
Okay, so obviously there's no immediate crisis of "zomg we don't has smart enuf ppl to flip bergers at teh burger king." That's not exactly what I intended to ask about. I'm also not talking about accidental typos. In fact, for the thread title I actually meant to type "The Decline of Language." To add one more exception, people who don't speak English natively are also excused.

As a few have pointed out, the ignorance I'm referring to is, for the most part, committed unknowingly. We could go on all day about which words and phrases are confused, misspelled, and misused much more commonly than they should be. Actually I came across this video the other day that seems to poke fun at this issue. However, I'm much more interested in a trend I've noticed and one that is now visible even in this thread. Why do people suddenly become agitated whenever poor grammar is pointed out? Is it really too much to ask that native speakers of a language actually understand that language?

smartdude1212 04-11-2011 04:36 PM

Re: Decline of Language
 
People typically hate to have their erroneous actions be acknowledged. If you point out something wrong that a person behind the wheel does, for example, they're probably going to laugh it off and say "I know" or get pissed off at you for being a purported "know-it-all." They may knowingly go over the speed limit, or unknowingly violate the seemingly lesser-known right-of-way rule in a parking lot, et cetera, but as long as it doesn't affect anybody then they likely aren't going to feel affected by it themselves.

Implicitly, the same could be said for language. They may knowingly abbreviate words on social media sites for brevity and convenience, yet perhaps unknowingly misuse "your" and "you're" because they never understood the difference in school. I'm notorious for pointing out mistakes that people make. The two most common responses are the elongated response of acknowledgement and irritation ("I knoooooooow") and the frustrated response of irritation ("you're a(n) [insert meaningless yet abhorrent phrase here]"). In fact, if I'm not proofreading a written work that is meant to be submitted for grading, I don't think anyone has ever thanked me for correcting their improper usage. If they have, it was laden with sarcasm.

Maybe it's ignorance, or laziness, or downright obduracy. We always seem to be looking for a quicker, more concise way of doing things, and chopping up the English language somehow made its way onto that ever-growing list.

Izzy 04-11-2011 05:14 PM

Re: Decline of Language
 
I don't have a problem with bad english in an informal anonymous internet way, but when it comes to formal conversation and real life you should know how to spell and use proper grammar. The only way for someone to not know the difference between "affect" and "effect" is if they didn't learn it. To me this indicates an education problem.

I used to not know how to spell "definitely" but now I remember it by breaking it into these three parts

de-finite-ly or de-fini-tely

The first one has the word "Finite" in it, which is how I remember.

aperson 04-11-2011 06:54 PM

Re: Decline of Language
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by ScylaX (Post 3449174)
I hardly understand where is the counter-argument in this post, it looks like you thought I was talking about the oral understanding when I was in fact speaking about written mistakes. Anyway, please, explain.

Switching "your" and "you're" is a purely cosmetic error because they have completely separate grammatical functions. It causes no confusion to see them incorrectly because the syntactic structure of a sentence will never be coherent with the wrong one.

Quote:

Yes. My bad, I was writing too fast, but wasn't "deterioration" the subject instead of "abundance" ? I try to correct every errors I commit because I'm still far from being bilingual.
Technically the subject is the noun phrase "The deterioration of that abundance"


Quote:

Originally Posted by cry4eternity (Post 3449306)
As a few have pointed out, the ignorance I'm referring to is, for the most part, committed unknowingly. We could go on all day about which words and phrases are confused, misspelled, and misused much more commonly than they should be. Actually I came across this video the other day that seems to poke fun at this issue. However, I'm much more interested in a trend I've noticed and one that is now visible even in this thread. Why do people suddenly become agitated whenever poor grammar is pointed out? Is it really too much to ask that native speakers of a language actually understand that language?

For a long time English used to not have a formal set of rules for when to Capitalize Things. There also was no formalized rule of consistent spelling, most people spelled phonetically. Try reading primary sources from the 1500s to late 1700s. This was done because being pedantic about these features wasn't necessary. Everyone knows what you mean if you say "definately". Maybe if I mispelled definitely as "defiantly" you might have a reason to complain.

~kitty~ 04-12-2011 12:45 AM

Re: Decline of Language
 
Personally, I feel less likely to be annoyed by spelling errors and such than I am with grammar errors. When people use "u" instead of "you", and other text shorthand, I get kind of annoyed because it is one of those things that definitely will become a habit, and typing the extra two letters isn't taking up much more time to type if you know how to type. I feel it's easier to type out the word because the shorthand text speaking almost seems like another language to me, and I would have to kind of think about it... which means I'll be taking more time to type out sentences.

The real problem, however, is when there are huge grammatical errors that make statements and stuff highly ambiguous and really hard to understand. I see it a lot on the Internet around here, but I don't think it's that much higher now than it was in the past. I think mostly the trend of spelling and other grammatical errors comes from a sense of conformity when you go onto the Internet. I know when I first joined I didn't spell correctly or use correct grammar mostly intentionally. The Internet was a weird place to me and I felt weird typing out words that others didn't type out, and not using acronyms popular on the Internet. Using the shorthand, for me, was actually a little bit helpful when I first got onto the Internet because I didn't actually know how to type, so I had a little bit of an excuse.

That's what I think...

ffraxis 04-12-2011 09:19 PM

Re: Decline of Language
 
its not the decline of language, is the decline of the education system (public) and the rise of the aristocrat.

its also the decline of public concern for morals and the rise of what could be a polluted society. thinking is being replaced by concerns of the self; a rise in the ego; where the only person who matters is "I". that being said, if you can take time out of your day to stop, relax, and think about things outside your daily routine or life, a tip of my hat to you sir/madam.

Plasma King N 04-13-2011 12:19 PM

Re: Decline of Language
 
I really do love correct grammar and spelling. It seems as though to this day, that people who know English but speak other languages better have a better sense of Englis grammar than the English people themselves!

I have a theory as to why this is true. when you get taught a foreign language, you learn it wih all the correct grammatical rules, and to learn a second language is hard enough, so you do not have the time to "modify" it for efficiency: you simply remember the rules, until they're in your head for life.

But when people speak they're own language, they know it too well. They can think of ways to talk to people faster, and even twist the rules a bit just so that they sound "cooler", such as by saying "there ain't nothing you can do about it", but contrary to the implied meaning of the sentence, the actual meaning is positive Meaning "there is something you can do about it".

This usually affects the younger generation because they are generally lazy, but the trend catches on, and it has an effect on everyone else, including the adults, who therefore start using "slang" until there are a picky few (such as me, and the Topic starter) left who want to speak properly.

This theory also covers why decline in the use of punctuation occurs: punctuation is seen as suc a small matter of insignificance that people are too lazy to simply put a dot next to the sentence they write, or a question mark, or *insert punctuation here*, you get the picture.

dore 04-13-2011 08:04 PM

Re: Decline of Language
 
I don't see a huge problem with text-speak and that sort of stuff, because we have always found ways to abbreviate and simplify things for the sake of composition. It's natural to want to compose faster, because otherwise your mind will go ahead of your typing/writing and then you have the possibility of omitting something or some other error like that. I don't see why people are persnickety about that sort of thing, because I think that most people have the ability (assuming they are taught well in school, which is a bit of a dubious assumption currently but I don't think is too idealistic) to turn off that instinct. Just like I use profanity in my everyday speaking and use a little bit of an accent and a lot of slang, but I can turn that all off in situations where propriety is a little more of an issue.

There's nothing wrong with slang. That's how new languages are born. But I think (and this is the responsibility of schools, students, and parents) that everyone should have a solid understanding of proper written English (or whatever language) so that they are able to write intelligently, comfortably, and convincingly in their own voice, because it's really easy to tell when you read something by someone who doesn't have that skill in composition.

Van T 04-13-2011 10:18 PM

Re: Decline of Language
 
Personally, I never understood mixing up 'your' and 'you're' except to be cute online

Then again, I adapt grammar to suit my tone. I hardly ever use commas where they should be because I hardly ever pause when I'm speaking. If there's a break in my speech I'll include a comma but otherwise I see it as plodding and extraneous. The most important thing is to be understood and that generally means avoiding esoteric vocabulary and giving some pity punctuation once in a while
It's all a question of tone, anyway. Hell, I'll coin words if it suits my need--language is by no means meant to be stagnant. And typing differently gives different tones, just as inflection does the same when speaking.

tl;dr Typing with correct grammar and polysyllabic expressions immediately gives the impression that you're serious.
typin like this tells people you dont give two shits


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