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Decline of Language
Surely we've all noticed the recent decline in the ability of the general public to discern between "your" and "you're." I can't help but think that any typical third grader faced with the same dilemma would make the correct choice more often than many people in my age group. If you haven't noticed this, go to your facebook. You might not even have to scroll down at all. If you still fail to find any problems, start reading flyers around your local college campus or public library. You're bound to find something. Flyers for fraternity events seem to be especially problematic.
The obvious culprit for this seems to be txtsp34k. People have become accustomed to typing and writing things in a way that is convenient rather than correct. I also partially blame spell check and the lack of grammar in public education curricula much past elementary school. Just last semester I was taking a required university level writing class. At one point our teacher, who was a grad student in english rhetoric, made us fill out a sheet with a few basic grammar rules. I thought I found a typo in her answers and pointed it out, but in the end she ended up not knowing the difference between the more obscure meanings of "affect" and "effect." Maybe I am a bit of a grammar nazi, but should it really be this common for people to be this ignorant? When I make a big deal of this and point it out, is it me that cares too much, or is it truly a sheer display of ignorance to take a dump on language? Is there something to be said for people who can form a coherent sentence with all words spelled properly while still choosing the proper form of "two," "too," or "to"? In my experience, those who can are *usually* more intelligent in general. So I guess my question is this: Is this phenomenon actually a problem? Do people still need to know how to spell? If you take this point up with a linguist, they'll probably say that it's just the language's way of evolving. I've even heard some say that as long as the message was understood, the language was properly used. Additionally, if this truly is a problem, what do you think should be done about it? |
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I know what you mean. RIGHT across the street from my school, there is a large sign that says "CAR STERIO'S" and I think i die a little bit every time I see it. And I've also had many teachers not know the difference between "its" and "it's". I simply think that there is no excuse for using an entirely wrong word. To me, the huge difference between "there" and "they're" is about the same as "son" and "sun", yet for some reason, it's not considered as bad of a grammar error.
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You have no idea how much the gets on my nerves
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your ensane, I doghnt sea wat u meen.
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I doubt these spelling mistakes are fully unintentional, I mean I can hardly imagine someone that had an - average - education to be able to make total mistakes on a fundamental and recurrent word/phrase, like "your" and "you're", for instance. Only the one that hadn't a correct education can do this without knowing they weren't grammatically right. I probably say this because I learnt English on my own by lurking american sites most of the day and I never have been mistaken by this kind of thing once I have been used to this, but probably does this come from the fact I'm really conscious about having the most correct grammar I can have compared to most people since I don't speak my mother tongue right now, I don't know.
You'll probably have guessed what I thought of the problem. To my sense, it comes from the fact people feel less concerned about being correct or wrong as long as they can understand each other. It looks like they don't care at all, as if stressing the 'correctness of spelling" was something exclusive to language teacher or snob pepole etc. I know the old british english was way more hard to speak because it was grammatically more variable with more exceptions and this semantic simplification seems to happen in every developped country. I don't have historic references that says this phenomenon already happened before and I really can't say if the decline of language is really a problem that is specific to our times, or if we always had some issue concerning the spelling. |
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i wish you were right scylax i wish that everything was done intentionally but sadly thats not how it is.
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It's mostly because people are too lazy or think it's funny to type in such ways. I find myself mistyping stuff all the time mostly because I don't give two ****s about my grammar online. In any professional situation, It's obvious I'm not going to be a complete dick head and type like I came out of dipshit college.
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As much as I have noticed this, I am skeptical of it as a trend.
I'm not entirely convinced that it has been established that this generation is worse at language and spelling than previous generations. I have a sneaking suspicion that there is no decline in language at all, but rather, there has been a shift in the types of language people are using. Has there been any formal studies on the matter to assess this objectively? From personal experience, people in *general* have poor language abilities. Most adults I know have incredibly poor spelling as well. Sure, they don't use the same txtsp33k that kids nowadays use, but none the less they still can't spell their way out of a crackerjack box. Some of my managers at work, for example, cannot spell. They'll post notices on the wall or something with glaring grammatical mistakes. People in general have weak vocabularies. I have to watch the types of words I'm using around young and old alike. I do notice that the older generation has a better grasp on many more difficult words that are formal in nature, but on the same token, they don't understand any of the slang words that the newer generation is using. So, I see this as more of a shift. People today seem like they have worse grammar, but that's only because everyone is broadcasting their stupidity online for you to see. In a formal situation I'm willing to bet that in general, most people just can't write worth shit. People seem like they have smaller vocabularies but in reality they're probably the same size as our parents, except full of different types of words. |
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I notice the ignorance of people's grammer quite often and it's somewhat bothersome that something that people learn for many years in school is being misused to such a degree that people are being called ignorant than just having it be a simple mistake.
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I, for the longest time, corrected everyone's grammar (more often spelling) whenever it was necessary, until I realized I was being a total douche. I still notice it, though.
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Me and my mom always correct each others grammar and it always ends up turning into a war
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I actually rarely see anyone on my facebook friend's list that actually uses "you're" correctly. Even my ex, who corrects people all the time and finds it annoying when people make a spelling mistakes, uses the "your". I honestly can't believe so many people are actually that stupid. It's been drilled into our heads at schools for years and almost everybody uses it wrong. There are some people that can spell perfectly fine for an assignment, then mess it up online. |
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I'm not too sure about this but I think it's laziness. As far as I, know there are hardly any grammar rules.
Compared to French that is xD |
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english grammar can suck a dick
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Seriously just saw this one someone's facebook wall.
"_______ .. YOUR ALOUD OVER TOMOROW . call me (number) or (number)" |
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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. |
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Overall, I'd say that the typical American is unaware of their grammatical errors. In my experience, with the exception of texting and profile-chatting, errors are made unintentionally. The scary aspect of this is that upon being informed of their misuse of, say "too" instead of "two", for instance, most people will either shrug it off or actually grill you for correcting them.
It puts me at a state of great discontent when I stumble across a word that I require spell-check for in order to correctly use. Most people misspell every other 3+ syllable word without the slightest concern. I also believe that it is our generation as a whole that has declined in vocabulary. Sure, we have our slang that older generations fail to pick up on, but the fact remains that our - new words - are either shortened derivations of real words or a combination of real words. The general conversation fifty years ago was most definitely far more advanced than today's and the same can be said for fifty years before that. If it weren't for the technology today, I'd go as far as to say we were a generation of stupid people entirely. In truth, we just have a larger population of people with lesser intellects than those with greater intellects than in previous years. What's ironic is that those of greater intellects actually make it easier for those with lesser intellects to remain at their current level or even decline from their current level through "text-speak," T-9 editing, etc. TL;DR: I'm very much frightful for how future generations are going to speak both at a social level and at a professional level, be it upward, downward or even horizontal communication. |
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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 |
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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. |
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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. |
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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:
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I Like How Everyone's Trying Really Hard To Type Properly In This Thread.
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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. |
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when it comes to definitely people tend to spell the word how the sound it out which more often than not its nat
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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? |
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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. |
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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. |
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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... |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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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I remember I used to sort of consider it as a simple change that language may take over the decades. What I mean there is that, well, over decades, colloquialisms change and language in general seems to make changes over centuries (we definitely speak differently to what was recorded in the 1800s). I used to consider this until I actually started taking the A level English language course and I realised people seemed to make these simple spelling and grammatical mistakes a lot in the class, which sort of surprised me that such ignorance in language was not a barrier for people selecting the course to study.
It's a bit peculiar to think that the informalities in language a century or so ago would seem the utmost of formalities nowadays. I can understand if it's a simple spelling mistake every now and again, be it online or on paper - we're all human and we all make mistakes. If the same mistake is continued to be, though, then it's just plain ignorance. I think we may just be living in more ignorant times, but we should not really blame the ignorant for this, but maybe those that have made our lives more convenient and easier to manage - we have become so used to being dependent now. |
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Man that Chaucer sure was an annoying twat he barely spells anything right how frustrating
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"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."
I beg to differ; if someone uses it, and people understand it, no matter even if its specifically contradictory to the 'official' grammatical rules, it is grammar. Grammar evolves and is made by the people using it, not put upon on us by the educated. However, the initiation of the thread wasn't seemingly about grammar, but about using the wrong word in the wrong place, and not having people care about it. The problem with things like your and you're and two too to are very specific; the words are pronounced the exact same way. If there's a failing in the human language, its the fact that for someone reason we have common words that means different things, and are pronounced the same, but are spelled totally different. The fact that many of the issues stem from conjoint words, like you're, it's and they're, also seems to be a failing of the language which was developed before cellphones and text-editors. I remember learning in grade school that using 'you're' in an essay was wrong even if you used it correctly, because you should've use 'you are' instead. And now apparently people here, in this thread, have forgotten or were just never taught that contractions themselves are examples of 'poor' language. Which I also find pretty neat, because in no other language do I know of contractions being used in any formality. I don't find it at all surprising that someone who learns english as a second language learns the proper grammar and uses it better than someone who doesn't; it works that way for all languages, doesn't it? I can speak and write french alright, and if you speak to me I can understand it pretty good, and I've even read a couple novels in french. I stumbled into a french chatroom before, and I was totally unable to understand most things said. I feel like my sense of the language is far from 'better' than those people in that chatroom; instead I feel cheated that I can't understand them. As to the idea that the simplifying and shortening of our language that's happened, I would say that that's largely happened as a result of technology, not the other way around. Being able to write to someone in real-time, we want to communicate as fast as we do when we speak, so we take as many shortcuts as we possibly can. This effect can only be confounded when the communication uses our hands, which we're used to having free to do other things which we talk. I know all my posts are mammoth in size, but you chat with me, and I will be quick and dirty and not bother to correct your and you're, much less most of my other spelling. And lastly, even if this does mean that overall the language may be in some state of decline on some level, I sincerely doubt its because people are dumber. I think its likely just the opposite in fact. Back in the day, when leaving school when you were 10 to go and help your dad or whatever you have to do, and you didn't learn to read and write very well, or you never even went to school and learned anything...well those people weren't even part of the group of readers and writers. Today, with the number of literate people we have (or semi-literate if you want to call them), who all have a cellphone, who all have the internet, and who all communicate in writing using the technology we have, of course the written language is going to change much differently than if only a highly educated clique uses it. And what Vendetta said. We all just sorta assume that things were different back in the day, whenever that day was... |
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As an aside, english is notoriously bad for spelling. Its so bad that studies have found that people who are english speakers are more likely to have dyslexia than people who speak italian and spanish. (Or at least less likely to be diagnosed, which is in a sense in this case, the same thing, since reading is perhaps the most prominent problem a dyslexic has.) Finetik is definitely the way to go.
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Spanish -- a el -> al, de el -> del German -- in dem -> im which applies to some other prepositions too |
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also the internet has done wonders to the way we structure sentences and paragraphs but you don't hear the grammar nazis narkin on about that
probably because it's harder to do and reveals how shallow and OCD their whole approach to language is i wonder if grammar nazism is a now antiquated cultural relic of a generation of baby boomers whose self-conception was strongly rooted in the fact that they went to college at a time when not nearly as many people did Quote:
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There is no real decline in language. What you are observing is merely a change in the way people express their stupidity and carelessness through their writing and language usage.
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Response to OP: It all depends on the situation. Through typing and texting, people have proven to cut time and quicken communication through shortcuts. It's human nature to find an easier way to do something. The problem is how people utilize this to exploit for profit.
If you're writing an essay and want your message to come across clearly, use proper grammar. If you're texting from a phone without a keyboard with a maximum amount of space for characters, use shortcuts. Anything that really isn't a shortcut has evolved into a stylistic preference, such as our usernames. You obviously know cry4eternity isn't correct, but you don't need it to be. You aren't a grammar Nazi, you are probably annoyed with how poorly people try to make a serious argument wile talkin liek dis. People would never do that in a job. They know that being clear and proper makes the money. For the few that don't, they probably flip burgers for a living. Very few people actually lack the knowledge to properly write and read. So it really is style, preference, and resourcefulness. |
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