Heartland

reactiv8 wrote:Perhaps we should all go back to writing at desks with quills and ink on parchment?

At my school we did have those old fashioned fold-down desks with ink-wells still in them... to be fair they were only used to stick pencil sharpenings and used chewing gum in, but we were only allowed to write with fountain pens. And when we got lines it was stanzas from Shakespeare.
Then again this was not your average school

By the way, before anyone jumps on me, I know it is not technically OK to start a sentence with "And"

It's all part of the evolution of the language. If you go back to Chaucer, it was a very very different language. It was even sufficiently different so as to be semi-unintelligible in places in Shakespeare. It wasn't until the invention of the printing press that spelling became standardised, so correct spelling is actually a relatively new phenomenon. Look at some 18th/19th century writing, it's extremely dense with punctuation, and can be difficult for a modern person to digest without serious concentration.

All that the internet is doing is finally breaking down national differences, which can only be a good thing in the long run.

Oh yeah, "bean's" gets on my nerves too.

I'm glad I'm not the only one!

Our local branch of Mrs Miggins' Pie Shoppe is the worst offender - they're all over the place. "Cake's", "Pie's", "Sausage Roll's", AAAARRGGGHHH!

mh wrote:It's all part of the evolution of the language.

De-evolution more like. People use 'there' when they should be using 'they're'. It's spelling as it sounds like children do at first, and ignorance of their own language.

mh wrote:Our local branch of Mrs Miggins' Pie Shoppe is the worst offender - they're all over the place. "Cake's", "Pie's", "Sausage Roll's", AAAARRGGGHHH!

Get a can of red spray paint and underline them all

What I'm afraid of is a 1984 "Newspeak" situation, where young people are raised without the tools to communicate their thoughts. In fact, not only to communicate them but to have them - language helps articulate emotions and ideas and enables the individual having them to comprehend them so much better. Without complex language nothing can be crystallised, there are just vaguely defined ideas and feelings tugging at your mind and frustrating you as you can't identify them.
I am really fascinated with what various philosophers have had to say about language - we take it so much for granted but it is something almost entirely unique to humans, it uses a relatively new part of the brain and it plays such a huge part in our supposed higher intelligence. With it we can articulate and master not only our conscious mind but even bring our subconscious motivations to light and label them in such a way that we can better understand what we are doing and why.

You only have to look at those in society who are lacking in langauge skills, and how it helps perpetuate their poverty (not only financial poverty but every other kind as well).
Brings to mind a New Model Army lyric "Kids scrawl frustration on a backstreet wall, well most of them can't even spell "bastard""...

Yarbles, great bolshy yarblockos to the lot of you.

I'll meet you with chain, or nozh or britva, any time, not having you aiming tolchocks at me reasonless. It stands to reason, I won't have it.

OMG ROFLLMAO!!!

Hexe Luciferia wrote: Ok, sillyness aside, I do get annoyed when I see some mispelling from people whose English is their first language...I'm like:"why do I get it right and I have nothing to do with it and you, who've been talking it since you were in your mum's womb basically, cannot?"

English does have the largest vocabulary of all by far, so a lot of wordies to remember and many of them have irregular grammar and suchlike too, as we all should know?! Not an excuse of course ... Just a rather obvious observation on reflection! Ha Ha. Makes us all sound like English Teachers eh? Init?

boudicca wrote:(not only financial poverty but every other kind as well).

Three examples against what you said:
1-Dieter Bohlen, German pop-star, host and jury of the german starsearch-clone, multi-millionair who if at all has beginner skills at his native language.
2-Bushido, German rap star. Former member of the Berlin gang "Islamic Force". His lyrics deserve being printed on toilet paper, if at all. According to what I read he doesn't even write them himself. Several of his songs were proven to have been rip-offs of Dimu Borgir tunes. ( ) He's popular to no ends with the kids out here. Consider him an example for all da rulaz of da ghetto here.. Another involuntary clown.
3-Katja Burkhardt, newsreader and host of RTL Punkt 12, a noon news&lifestyle magazine. She uses a version of german grammar she probably invented herself.
All of them are wealthy and famous-With language skills of mediocre performing ten year olds.
The bastard public can relate to that. It sells.

I am not even such a grammar and spelling nazi myself, and could have been better at school at all those subjects myself. (And beg forgiveness for what I sometimes do to your language, but please bear in mind that by now I stayed in England for only ten days.) But I do feel your pain. It seems to happen in all languages that a sloppyness with language in general becomes popular enough that it distorts contents of what's being said to a point where thoughts can't be transported anymore.
Language is just one aspect of inteligence. I know some folks who are briliant technicians, but can't get a sentence out right. But most of them are a real menace of a company.
By the way: I think the sheer number of people who speak English as native or second language (Probably several times the population of the UK) contributes to your problem. There seems to be some "crtical mass" at which a group begins to redefine their language and localize it, shape dialects which morph on to become a new language.
If the environment understands everything you say, you don't need to adapt to it anymore.
In Berlin there are quarters where you can spend your whole life without needing to speak a word of german, Turkish will help you through all your days. By now there doesn't seem to be some special "German-Turkish dialect", but then this situation of Turks being a majority in quarters of cities has only started some 25 years ago, which is a shake of a lamb's tail for the development of a language or dialect.
The situation for English where the native speakers very probably are the minority has been around somewhat longer, though. (it has been the international standard language for some 70 years, or more?) Could what you see happening to your language be an aspect of that?
That surely has its part in what happens to the language.

boudicca wrote:By the way, before anyone jumps on me, I know it is not technically OK to start a sentence with "And"

... or But!

@Jurgen - I wasn't saying that it is impossible to escape poverty whilst only having a weak grasp of your langauge. But it sure as hell is difficult. Most people living in the East End of Glasgow right now who have been truanting from a crap school half the time and only get bunged in front of an inane television programme at home (in place of real conversation with their parents who are down the pub), are not going to become multi-million selling rap stars, or footballers. With the things some of these people live through, they could probably enlighten a lot of us with their stories - but they can't tell them, even to themselves. The self-awareness language brings is so important, only then can you make other people aware of your plight, and navigate a way out.
Plus, as I made clear, I wasn't just talking about physical poverty but poverty in all aspects of life.

reactiv8 wrote:

boudicca wrote:By the way, before anyone jumps on me, I know it is not technically OK to start a sentence with "And"

... or But!

Although I find a perverse pleasure in the use of 'And' at the begiining of a sentence in fiction writing.

I actually do it all the time here... but I think it's fair enough to adopt a slightly different, conversational style when I'm posting. I mean all of these... I use... all the time...

I agree with the "critical mass" theory here. I know for a fact that the dialect of English I speak (as first language) is considerably different to that which our UK friends speak, incorporating far more influences from US English, as well as direct word-for-word translations from old Gaelic languages (which were quite different to the modern Irish language people learn in schools) in some turns of phrase. This only happened within the last coupla hundred years (which seems to provide some reasonable indicative timescale for the process) and within a relatively small population group too. In particular, the US influences are incredibly recent, and have really only come in within the space of a generation or two (I speak a different dialect to that which my parents speak).

The small population bit is probably relevant here. A larger population would be more conservative, by virtue of having to maintain intelligible communications between a larger number of folks, whereas in a smaller group language can evolve in a more fluid fashion.

Nonetheless, watch out folks, cos by the time we're ancient and cranky the young 'uns could be speaking a language which is completely incomprehensible to us!

They already are!

At least you didn't say "we already are" too!

That's the thing... I do consider it to be "they"
*coughs loudly and adjusts hearing aid*

OMFG Seems I vos just prooft to be vun of zhem.. lolz&hurriez off..

SINsister wrote:"One sentence is not a paragraph!"

I used to do one-sentence essays

reactiv8 wrote:English does have the largest vocabulary of all by far, so a lot of wordies to remember and many of them have irregular grammar and suchlike too, as we all should know?! Not an excuse of course ... Just a rather obvious observation on reflection! Ha Ha. Makes us all sound like English Teachers eh? Init?

Dutch Beats English by about 10,000 headwords (171k vs 186k or so) and is vastly more pointless in its irregularity if I may say so You're really lucky to have such straight forward rules for plural forms and genitives, in Dutch it's more a question of luck and how it sounds defining how you should write it Never quite managed to grasp that myself

Anyhoo, don't think this whole discussion's got anything to do with either Dutch or English as such, it's really a global thing. Probably because there are plenty new ways of communication that demand a certain extra speed and make people want to cut out bits, just so they can write more efficiently and still can be understood. On top of that language gets globalised as well, people do tend to communicate much more often beyond where their language stops being common and understood and so they often end up using a bit of an in-between, in which English often is the greatest common divisor, leading to Anglicisms in other languages and - let's make up a word for this - foreignicisms in English. Nothing but a logical evolution I'd say, especially with language being a living thing, as someone pointed out earlier on.

In Dutch we've got the extra disadvantage of spelling changing every other year, so I really doubt whether there are many good spellers left. The common changes made me give up with being really anal on spelling and shifted my focus to other irritating mistakes

Interestingly, the other week something was on telly about a professor writing a book on how all these mistakes are being made so often and have often become more frequently used than the proper ways of speaking and writing. His proposed answer to 'solve' this problem was to accept all the blatant errors as correct. So in Dutch, as far as he's concerned you can say a price is expensive instead of high and things like that

reactiv8 wrote:

Hexe Luciferia wrote: Ok, sillyness aside, I do get annoyed when I see some mispelling from people whose English is their first language...I'm like:"why do I get it right and I have nothing to do with it and you, who've been talking it since you were in your mum's womb basically, cannot?"

English does have the largest vocabulary of all by far, so a lot of wordies to remember and many of them have irregular grammar and suchlike too, as we all should know?! Not an excuse of course ... Just a rather obvious observation on reflection! Ha Ha. Makes us all sound like English Teachers eh? Init?

Italian language has lots of wordies and verbs too
We do all sounds like teachers, indeed!
Sorry, anyway, didn't mean to be rude or whatever...I was just expressing a doubt...

boudicca wrote:

reactiv8 wrote:Perhaps we should all go back to writing at desks with quills and ink on parchment?

At my school we did have those old fashioned fold-down desks with ink-wells still in them... to be fair they were only used to stick pencil sharpenings and used chewing gum in, but we were only allowed to write with fountain pens. And when we got lines it was stanzas from Shakespeare.
Then again this was not your average school

We had to do that too, and we had those old desks! \m/

What really shocked me this week was when my mum sent me a text in text speak and I had to phone her to ask her what it said

Illiteracy really p*sses me off - whether it's people at work who don't know the difference between they're, there, and their, your and you're, and who seem unable to perform the most basic spell-checking or proofreading functions, or the place we had brunch today that was offering a "Prefix" menu. Grrrrrrrrrrr...