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-- The degeneration of English
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quote:

Originally posted by RapidFire fuk u lolz

lolz u pwnt him ++good lolol

quote:

Originally posted by neo geo ...its discrimination ...If they are from india they are allowed to .....WHY?

omg, not u again

quote:

Originally posted by Sunsnail ++good

Double-plus good?

I agree with Lira on this one, language changes, even if we don't want it to. I get annoyed at the fact that back in my home country spanish is getting 'anglicized'. A lot of people also think that our variation on the spoken part of spanish is horrid, and it might be true, but it is incredibly efficient and allows for communication to happen faster. I do have a bit of mix feelings on this one, but in theory it is good for language to change. At the same time a feel a bit of nostalgia and sadness because i consider most of the changes to be negative aesthetically.

wtf is "wata"?

People who type like that in something that's obviously supposed to be a professional document are fucking stupid. I've never seen it happen b4 and i hope i nvr will.

quote:

Originally posted by Frenchie Awww no no! No spanking!! lol WHEN PEOPLE TYPE LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME IT MAKES ME FEEL LIKE I AM GETTING YELLED AT. -awaiting Idoru to steal my CAPS button.

*yoink*

ugh
i'm taking an intro to linguistics class this term
in the first week i've been to so far they've been hammering home the difference between a prescriptive linguist and a descriptive linguist, and have prescriptivism is bad and descriptivism is good

basically:
prescriptivism - people who claim there is a set standard for grammar and whatnot and think people who do it any other ways besides their own are wrong
descriptivism - seems to only study the use, not correct it where it doesn't agree wiht you


but so he's trying to tell us shit like 'me and mary went to the movies' can indeed be judged as grmamatically correct. and its fucking not!
and like some regional things i can bite on, but some are just fucking silly
like some southern dialects have double modals: "i might could do something"
sounds fucking uneducated and generally retarded
ugh i wanna to go off in class today, such bullshi

Harry Potter helped get a ton of the newer generations interested in literature .... has it effected their spelling I don't know


but I say make Harry Potter mandatory reading for everyone before they graduate high school

quote:

Originally posted by mezzir but so he's trying to tell us shit like 'me and mary went to the movies' can indeed be judged as grmamatically correct. and its fucking not! and like some regional things i can bite on, but some are just fucking silly like some southern dialects have double modals: "i might could do something" sounds fucking uneducated and generally retarded ugh i wanna to go off in class today, such bullshi

Oi, that's a serious problem in linguistics nowadays.

Grammarians, full of prejudices and biases, created a sense of "the Good Language" based on Latin and Greek, and people incredibly bought it. It's about time we dropped this prescriptivist intolerance and valued our modern spoken language.

We fight for linguistic freedom!!!!

quote:

Originally posted by jdat but I say make Harry Potter mandatory reading for everyone before they graduate high school

The hell with Harry Potter, make 1984 a mandatory read in high school so people can see what the dangers are of newspeak.

Which is all that all this "IM chat" is, it is newspeak with a different name.



MrS

Thats kind of funny cause I actually used some on my exam. here is a question..


Calculate the Sum of Squares (Show work too plz)



hehe. I am alright with people using it on exams, after all this is not an english class i am teaching (thank god!!). BUT!!! if I was asking for a research proposal, an experimental write up, or some other 'official' type of writing I would not accept it at all. I think homework assignments and exams are pretty informal so they can use whatever dialect they are most comfortable with.


as far as prescriptivism / descriptivism....we need both. One so we do not split into 3000 languages (which is kinda what india has done afaik) and the other to evolve. How much of each we embrace is just personal opinion

quote:

Originally posted by Boomer187 One so we do not split into 3000 languages

That's unlikely to happen to the modern literary languages, such as English: Not only there's mass media now, speakers want listeners to understand them, so they will always speak in a way that they know they will be understood (in fact, that's why I'm speaking English right now, and not Portuguese).

quote:

Originally posted by Omega_Blue wtf is "wata"?

+1 Water? I dont get it.

quote:

Originally posted by Omega_Blue wtf is "wata"?

'What the' maybe?

What the fuck --> Wata fuck

quote:

Originally posted by Lira That's unlikely to happen to the modern literary languages, such as English: Not only there's mass media now, speakers want listeners to understand them, so they will always speak in a way that they know they will be understood (in fact, that's why I'm speaking English right now, and not Portuguese).

i don't understand





hehe, i guess I could have said 3000 dialects? but we can still understand most dialects. and you do have a nice point, global media keeps us speaking the same language, whatever it may be.

quote:

Originally posted by Boomer187 hehe, i guess I could have said 3000 dialects? but we can still understand most dialects. and you do have a nice point, global media keeps us speaking the same language, whatever it may be.

The practical difference between a language and a dialect is that you're supposed to understand a different dialect of your language, whereas you probably wouldn't understand someone speaking another language.

The political difference between a language and a dialect is that a language has got an army

quote:

Originally posted by Lira The practical difference between a language and a dialect is that you're supposed to understand a different dialect of your language, whereas you probably wouldn't understand someone speaking another language. The political difference between a language and a dialect is that a language has got an army

lol nice comparison. im writing down this analogy

quote:

Originally posted by venomX lol nice comparison. im writing down this analogy

Hehe, it's a famous one in the field of Linguistics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_lang...n_army_and_navy

I love it too

What is the worth of words?

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles What is the worth of words?

Interesting.

Although didn't the number of students also increase during that period of time? I wonder whether the majority of them are in good institutions and/or whether they really want to learn.

Also, I hear that people don't like to read things on screen. I personally have no trouble with that, but I spend a lot of time reading e-books, so...

Kids today are retarded. I wish that everyday i could steal a schoolbus, pick up all the kids and drive them off a cliff.

"Ain't" IS a word.

quote:

Originally posted by MrJiveBoJingles What is the worth of words?

quote:

It�s time to acknowledge that in a truly multimedia environment of 2025, most Americans don�t need to understand more than a hundred or so words at a time, and certainly will never read anything approaching the length of an old-fashioned book. We need a frank reassessment of where long-form literacy itself lies in the spectrum of skills that a modern nation requires of its workers.

A worry really, especially the lack of reading as it is a slow slide into ignorance which will beset us with a whole heap of other problems when it comes to interacting with other people. Just looking at work at the moment I see bits and pieces of SMS speak turning up in reports and other sundry things which it never would have 10 years ago. Real worry is someone laziness abbreviating things with numbers, which in an economic report stands to be confused with a statistic... think come Monday I'm going to complain about it.
That and I don't really want to pick through someone's half-assed attempt to turn official english into some sort of Cant.

I think the real problem is the gap that is beginning to form between older generations and generation y and even more so with the Silent Generation (2000-present). Wikipedia actually has a nice article on the youngest generation, comparing them and naming after a past generation that shared similar qualities (although it really is a bit early to tell). These qualities include, "withdrawn, cautious, unimaginative, indifferent, unadventurous and silent."

As Lilith brought up, hardly anybody reads in their free time anymore. While it is easy to write the young off as sinful sloths, I feel this is overly simplistic. First, I can only speak for the American generations and am in no way trying to make a global assertion. I believe Generation Y (my generation, 1980-1999), was the first generation that experienced a sort of loss of childhood. There are far more pressures facing our generation than any other. The competition to rise above "averageness" is blinding, and leisure activities such as reading are either eliminated or stripped down to a fashion that is both efficient to the teen's progress, but no longer fun.

Take high school reading for example. In many cases, schools force such works as The Tale of Two Cities, The Odyssey, and other classical works, upon which no foundation for comprehension has been laid. The student is expected to look up whatever words they don't comprehend. This, by itself, is by no means so horrible, the only problem is when you have no foundation to read a difficult classic work, filled with vocabulary that is unfamiliar, taking it at 100 page chunks per every few days, or every week, the experience no longer takes on a pleasurable one, nor one conducive to learning. Society has become obsessed with cramming as much as they can, with quantity rated over quality. This obsession stems from the competition I have mentioned, and has turned reading into a torturous experience for most teen, including myself at that time in my life.

It wasn't until after my freshmen year of college that I began to love reading. This, of course, occurred during the summer, where I was free from the pressure of reading deadlines. In a bit of ironic justice, I read faster and with more comprehension than I ever had for any class.

Unfortunately, I don't feel many people try to discover a love for reading, especially not after their high school experiences. This lack of reading, as Lilith brought up, results in lower vocabularies.

However, I believe publishers are keen to this. A "new literacy", I believe is being formed, where the word bank new authors are pulling from become slimmer and slimmer. I read close to 14 books this summer, all contemporary. I can't remember a single instance where I did not know the meaning of a word. This, however, is not a case of my flexing my intellectual muscles. My vocabulary, while not average, is by no means at a high intellectual level. I struggle with a good deal of words from classical novels.

In essence, you have baby boomer parents, disillusioned with the life they were promised but in most cases failed to achieve, pushing their kids in unhealthy manners. This is reinforced by the school system, which turns reading into an activity that very few associate with pleasure. This lack of experience, and lower reading comprehension is adapted to by new authors have simplified their vocabularies. Teens, of course, shoulder some blame. If I had, perhaps tried to develop a love for reading at an early age, I am sure my vocabulary would have been better and my skills as a writer improved. However, given the obstacles Generation Y and the Silent Generation face, it would be naive to think that reading, and the love for the activity, will not diminish as time goes on.

Language is not static.

Language is just a lesser, more base form of communication.

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