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Why Americans can't speak (or write in) English properly.
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Post by
pelf
Delightful response -- all inclusive. I'll make a super-duper style response after lunch.
Post by
Wanderingfox
Fox, are you a language arts/grammar teacher or something of the sorts? You'd be very successful as one for sure :P
Nope, I'm a computer science student, but I enjoy reading and and have been known to write recreationally from time to time. I almost want to say it comes with being in the field that I'm in. It seems that the precision required to program effectively almost rubs off on my other language skills. :P
Post by
RedwoodElf
The Brain in Pain will Mainly Seek Cocaine! (A truly bizzarre parody song)
Eliza: The Brain in Pain will Mainly Seek Cocaine!
Higgins: Again.
Eliza: The Brain in Pain will Mainly Seek Cocaine!
Higgins: She's got it! I think she's got it!
Eliza: The Brain in Pain will Mainly Seek Cocaine!
Higgins: By George she's got it!
Eliza: It's plain the Brain in Pain will Seek Cocaine!
(etc.)
Post by
495174
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
pelf
I honestly think that there are several contributing factors to the problem. Firstly, what Americans speak is
not
English; it's American. This is an important distinction to make simply on the basis of the fact that Americans have changed so much of the language to suit their needs. They find something tiresome, or tedious, so instead of accommodating accepted grammatical standards, they 'wing it' and use whatever happens to be easier at the time.
True enough, though that could be said for any language. Quebec French or UK English to name two; they all abbreviate and contract just like we do. I'd say there's a textbook American English as there is a texkbook UK English -- I think they differ only a bit.
Lastly, you have the fact that America is not a nation of a single race. England is, by and large, populated solely by the English. America, however, is much more of a cultural mixing pot, which leads to vocabulary and slang being adopted from other languages at a significantly higher rate than you would see in England.
This is definitely true. I'm sure the rate of American English dissolution is going to be much accelerated, as you say.
But I digress... it seems too often like proper grammar is actually frowned upon, and that some people think it's "nerdy" or makes you a "teacher". Now, neither of those are really insults in the World (of Warcraft), but the intent of the speaker is to offend. So it really raises the question of what kind of environment we're building as online citizens.
This is definitely not news. Equating intentional precision in anything with something negative has been a theme in primary schools and then even later into adult life for years and years. Has it ever not been? Maybe back when education was almost magic in the dark ages, I guess. Then they just were afraid of you or tried to burn you. That it would bleed into the online community was inevitable. I can tell that it's endemic at this point by the fact that a capitalized and punctuated sentence jars my eyes when I see it in WoW or on forums.
@Everyone who asked why I posted it here (iSylvir, Robotusch, NHDriver4), as was mentioned before I even came back to check this thread, it's because this discussion started with these people in another thread after the OP's question had been addressed. A moderator locked it before we could flesh it out and I broke it out to continue in another thread. The last two sentences I wrote were also duplicated in meaning, though written in other words, in my OP which you apparently skimmed without reading :). As Alundrei said, thanks for reinforcing my point about composition and others' points about laziness.
Also, people whose names start with P are what? Peter, Paul, Pamela -- all idiots, no?
But then again, the whole thread isn't exactly 'nice'.
True enough. It's not nice. It's definitely accusative and derisive in some senses. Another problem in American education is there's this (and has been) move towards a concept of nobody being a loser and everyone succeeding and nobody being inequal. Teachers can't use red pen to correct students anymore because it's too negative. Special education and fast track programs are frowned upon because it fosters a sense of inferiority or superiority (in reverse respective order) among students.
It's disgusting. Some kids are smarter than others; some people are better at this and other people are better at that. Kids make mistakes and kids succeed. If you never learn that you can be wrong, you never learn to be better. If, in education, nobody ever fosters a sense of self-discipline and self-criticism, then people never try, never improve and never understand where anyone who tells them they should is coming from.
Just a suggestion, but pick up an older work of literature (1984, The Great Gatsby, anything really.) and read it.
This is another thing. With so many other pulls on the time of our youth, reading all but destroyed. They're being raised by a generation who was weaned off of books in its teens and exist in a world where books are the last possible thing that one would do with one's time. Why should I have to use my imagination to see a story unravel when I can just watch the movie of the book. Oh, it was a book? That's neat. I admit that MOST of my interest in language and my vocabulary came from a voracious interest in reading that I had as a kid. When I got grounded to my room for this or that, I was always secretly happy. More time to read and nobody to bother me. When I got grounded even more severely to my bed, in my room, it was
exactly
the same thing. More time to read, and I would have been doing so in my bed anyway. In reading literature, you're learning English or any other language by osmosis. When people say, "I'm not sure the rule behind this, but that sentence just seems wrong; this is how it should be: ...," the sense of "seems right" or "seems wrong" comes from constant exposure to language written the
right
way. Without this exposure to proper English, American children are getting their osmosis elsewhere -- as you said, Twitter, Facebook and, (God help me) WoW to name only a fraction.
It depends on the situation, but for the most part they serve different purposes. A semicolon, in terms of connecting sentences, can only be used where a period can be used. That is to say it connects two separate clauses, but it cannot connect a dependent and independent clause. A semicolon is basically a hybrid between a comma and a period (just look at the symbol). It's more than a comma, but not quite a period.
A comma, however, is used to connect dependent and independent clauses because it implies that the two statements are dependent on each other, or are otherwise connected with a conjunction. For example, "It's raining out, but I like it anyway." uses a comma while "It's raining out; I like it anyway." does not.
The only other situation that I can think of that a semicolon is used is in place of a comma in a list introduced by a colon where the items in the list, themselves, contain commas. For example:
My father used to say many things to me when I was a child. A few of my favorites are: when you draw trees, always use green marker; if you have shoes with holes, patch them with masking tape; and, apples and oranges are great for food, but don't eat bark when you're interested, or disinterested, in albatross eggs.
It seems that the precision required to program effectively almost rubs off on my other language skills. :P
I always thought so. My minor was Philosophy which I also thought went well with Computer Science. You'd be surprised, though, how many programmers have the same laziness with their code as they do their English. I think the rule stands well, though: if someone writes code with consistent, good form, then they're likely to be fairly good with their other human languages as well.
---
So, do I have anything to say that's not a response...
Something that I think is raised quite commonly by opponents to by-the-book writing or communication in general is often, "If you understood what I meant, why does it matter that it didn't follow the rules some guy in a suit invented ages ago?" I kind of find this one hard to argue against. It's almost down to a matter of something similar to faith.
It is true that you can argue that maintaining a common set of rules makes sure that everyone is guaranteed to be able to communicate with everyone else. It's a Babel problem where, without adherence to these rules, perhaps in 100 years people from California would have devolved into (yeah I said devolved instead of evolved -- yes, I'm biased) one form of speech that people from New York would have trouble understanding. Look at Mandarin and Cantonese -- all of my friends who speak Mandarin can't understand a lick of Cantonese and those are just two dialects of Chinese. China wasn't unified by a system of communication and space/time contraction like the Internet, telephone, reliable mail, etc back in its infancy. People would move out to somewhere, start a town and begin the process of diverging their language from what it started as to something else. So, under those grounds, the argument could be that without the rules, we would begin to allow stuff like this to happen.
I don't know, for sure ... what do you guys think are good arguments for WHY maintaining linguistic rules and adhering to them and perpetuating them through education is worth doing?
EDIT
: for spelling. I should probably make my composition really good if I'm going to be criticizing composition, eh? :)
Post by
495174
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
224056
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Vlet
This thread is booooooooooooorrrrrring
Post by
Wikipedia
Relax, the big boys needs their fun times aswell :>
Post by
pelf
(Really? You don't find people who go "LOOKING FOR 3 MORE TANKS FOR TOC PST ME!" annoying? I don't think there are many people that would find that sentence more appealing than "Looking for 3 tanks for ToC, pst me".)
Some of the abbreviations in WoW are definitely jargon and I'm totally fine with that. I say "LF3M Tanks HToC" myself. I don't, however, say "PST ME" since that means "Please Send Tell me" which is nonsense.
In instant communication I don't capitalize anything (including "i"); I don't use terminating periods but I do use periods between two sentences not separated by a send; and, I use a lot more ellipses. Forums are immortal, or have as much potential as a tree to be immortal, at least. I figure what I write there should stand the test of time and reflect better on myself than instant communication.
This thread is booooooooooooorrrrrring
/giggle
Post by
224056
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Wanderingfox
(Really? You don't find people who go "LOOKING FOR 3 MORE TANKS FOR TOC PST ME!" annoying? I don't think there are many people that would find that sentence more appealing than "Looking for 3 tanks for ToC, pst me".) Not to burst your bubble here, but PST is actually an acronym for "Please Send Tell" so that 'grammatically correct' sentence is not actually grammatically correct. :P
I don't know, for sure ... what do you guys think are good arguments for WHY maintaining linguistic rules and adhering to them and perpetuating them through education is worth doing? Personally? I think the structure is good for society as a whole. I can see the tediousness of it, but written language is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Also, it's almost like a sense of honor. It shows that you're both willing and interested enough in the conversation to take the time to write out your response properly. Would you take someone seriously if they just walked up to you and started to half-ass their side of the conversation? No. It makes them look like they just don't care, regardless of whether or not they actually care or not. I guess what I'm trying to get at here is that if it's worth writing down beyond notes or rushed conversation then it's worth being written down properly.
It's kind of like how a math teacher will make you write out all of the steps when you solve a proplem. Sure, you could get there by skipping some of the steps, but it doesn't necessarily prove that you have a complete grasp on the way to solve the problem. The same thing with language; you can take the shortcuts, but it doesn't mean that you can articulate your point completely.
Post by
495174
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Vlet
You think it's interesting that I wasted two minutes of my life to come say to you that this thread is in my opinion boring? This thread just got even more booooooooooooorrrrrring.
Post by
RedwoodElf
You think it's interesting that I wasted two minutes of my life to come say to you that this thread is in my opinion boring? This thread just got even more booooooooooooorrrrrring.
And yet, you took the time to read what someone said about your comment that the thread was boring, and took even more time to reply to it.
Fascinating.
Post by
Vlet
I keep doing it because apparently it's so 'interesting' and 'fascinating.'
Post by
495174
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Vlet
I'm sorry. This thread had its' head up its' own ass, and I was simply trying to yank it out.
Bye
Post by
Wildhorn
(Really? You don't find people who go "LOOKING FOR 3 MORE TANKS FOR TOC PST ME!" annoying? I don't think there are many people that would find that sentence more appealing than "Looking for 3 tanks for ToC, pst me".)
Some of the abbreviations in WoW are definitely jargon and I'm totally fine with that. I say "LF3M Tanks HToC" myself. I don't, however, say "PST ME" since that means "Please Send Tell me" which is nonsense.
Thats not the worst. That worst is people who use "PST" without knowing what it means. It is very common to see:
"blahblahblah send PST PLZ ". Which is "blahblahblah send Please Send Tell Please ".
And I agree that "PST" is the most useless piece of text someone can add. How the hell do you want the guy to contact you anyway? You will certainly not send him an ingame mail.
Post by
495174
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
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