[OT] today's random language gripe

[stevelabny]

ooh, im gonna jump in on this one...

in casual settings, i dont care how you speak or type as long as i can UNDERSTAND you. i only go back and fix a typo if it changes my meaning. i barely ever capitalize words when i type because its pointless and the shift key just slows down typing. i only use apostrophes if theyre necessary. words like dont and theyre and im dont need apostrophes because there is no other word they can be. but i'll try to remember to put the apostrophe in other words so they dont look ill. this is the main reason that the theyre, their, there thing is annoying, because it breaks the flow of the reader as they try to figure out which one they should be using.

just dont type l8r. or sk8r boi. please.

and as for speaking, talking "mtv" only annoys me when i get the idea that they dont realise they arent speaking correct english and when its done on a professional phone call. ugh

i've been told by some that my brooklyn accent makes me sound stupid. although others have told me that because i dont overuse slang and have a passable vocabulary that i sound too smart or too white or too formal or older (when i was still young)
i live in nyc, so i can understand most accents, "mtv", actual english, and whatever pompous caribbean official english that NegZ uses.
when i got dell's technical support guy on the phone i could understand his indian-accented english (as in, dell's late-night service is actually housed in the country of india) better than most of the other people that called him but he couldnt understand my brooklyn accent. go figure.

id actually rather have someone speak to me in ny hip-hop than southern polite drawl because two nyers can have the same conversation as two southerners in about half the time.as i once said to our southern gaming comapnion "the please and thank you are implied" i despise people who sound like they just escaped from an episode of strawberry shortcake. (unless of course, theyre singing "im the purple pieman of porcupine peak, a ra-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. a ra-ta-ta")

ok, this drifted, time to end it

steve

 

[LazarusLong42]

Hrm. OK, I'll bite. I try not to rant about other people's grammar on message boards (and let's face it, it's almost unfair to critique spelling when many of the problems are typos, transpositions, and the like) but there are so many different grammar errors that get my panties in a wad (um.. figuratively). Let's begin:

(1) "Im" is not a word. "ur" is not two words. "plz" is not a word. If you're going to use an acronym to convey a thought, use and capitalize the acronym, but SMS-speak has no place outside text messages and instant messengers... and even then its use annoys me.

(2) Apostrophes. Talk to Bob the Angry Flower. Enough said.

(3) "Exetera." Found only in speech, it comes from laziness, and people not realizing that et cetera is two words... or not even knowing that etc. is an abbreviation.

(4) "The reason is because..." No. The reason is not because anything.

(5) Start sentences with a capital letter, and capitalize the first-person singular pronoun. I do not care if you're trying to type faster; it takes exactly zero extra time to hit the shift key.

(6) Who vs. whom; affect vs. effect; their vs. they're vs. there; and a whole slew of others. See Strunk and White.

(7) The suffix -ency. There are many words which take this ending (clemency, agency) and many which do not (lenience, convenience, difference). Yet I hear "leniency" and several other misplaced -y words all the time.

(N.B.: Some words have a form using both, with different meanings; the -ency form is often the more concrete noun. Thus "dependence" is a state of being in which someone depends on someone/something; "dependency" is a cross-link between two tables in a database.)

Gah. OK, enough steam let off for now.

 

[Speaker]

Ah, the English Language. Some of the best humour in the world pokes fun at the words we speak and the spelling we use. Just why do those morning alarms go 'off' when they go on, anyway?

As for myself, a simple rule suffices:

If you can speak the word you write, you're doing fine. And for crying out loud, use pronunciation. I do not care about capital letters, nor the mild crimes of diction readily committed in haste, but pronunciation is what makes beauty out of written prose.

Now, if you really wanted to annoy me, you would use the word 'it'. Why such a common word was fashioned to sound so ugly is beyond my reckoning. I cannot write the word 'it' without spending the next five minutes going to my wits end trying to wipe 'it' out.

Then, there are those languages worse then English. Take Bahasa Indonesian, which I spent two years learning to master. The word 'belum' can mean all of 'not', 'not yet', and 'never'. Imagine -- and this was a common occurrence on my part -- trying to ask a shopkeeper for a certain brand of something or other and being told that the item was 'belum' in stock.

Cheers,
Speaker

 

[Rune]

"Language (and I'm including music in this argument) is not subjective--although it's interpretation can be."

Uh..."it's" when used with an apostrophe indicates the contraction "it is." If you want the possessive, leave it out, Mr. Objectivist. (Sorry- had to do it)

Good catch, SpiderMonkey!

 

[heggland]

i barely ever capitalize words when i type because its pointless and the shift key just slows down typing. i only use apostrophes if theyre necessary. words like dont and theyre and im dont need apostrophes because there is no other word they can be.

You may save some time dropping capitals and apostrophes, but you waste your readers' time by making your message slightly harder to read. Disregarding the conventions of your audience is bad, not because you are breaking the holy and unchangeable laws of grammar and spelling, but because it is selfish and inconsiderate.

Jon

 

[stevelabny]

. Disregarding the conventions of your audience is bad, not because you are breaking the holy and unchangeable laws of grammar and spelling, but because it is selfish and inconsiderate.

Jon

Well, we ALREADY know im, selfish and incosiderate...didnt you see what i said about annoyingly polite southerners?

i like to keep up the stereotype of the seemingly rude always in a hurry at the expense of common deceny NYer.
am i suceeding?

and i also stand by the opinion that any remotely intelligent individual reads right over most typos, misspelings and some bad grammar and punctuation, correcting it in his head as he reads.

 

[Pooka]

It´s quite funny ... I never thought about capitals in english, my english teacher told us in one of the first lessons in school, there are none !! Maybe except names, I and in the beginnig of a sentence ... it is quite hard not to write every noun with a capital letter anyway! German is there quite different! Just be happy you don´t have to learn that.

The grammar is awful complex, and I`m so happy I don´t have to learn it either, because I just speak it!


Pooka

 

[johnsemlak]

Thought I'd throw in this bit of language wisdom...

quoted originally by William Safire here


William Safire Orders Two Whoppers Junior
NEW YORK--Stopping for lunch at a Manhattan Burger King, New York Times 'On Language' columnist William Safire ordered two "Whoppers Junior" Thursday. "Most Burger King patrons operate under the fallacious assumption that the plural is 'Whopper Juniors,'" Safire told a woman standing in line behind him. "This, of course, is a grievous grammatical blunder, akin to saying 'passerbys' or, worse yet, the dreaded 'attorney generals.'" Last week, Safire patronized a midtown Taco Bell, ordering "two Big Beef Burritos Supreme."

 

[green slime]

It doesn't get to me too much. I sin a fair bit, the odd typing error. Some errors just always occur, I always seem to drop the r off your for some reason.

Cutting some people slack for the non-English speakers, I value their input as well, I think they have just as much to add to the debates.

The most common thing that catches my eye is the "their / they're / there" and "your / you're". Such things I realise can be tough on foreigners. Both to get right, and read.

What really gets my goat is the "Newest". But I lost that battle some time ago. Symptom of the times I guess.

 

[Pielorinho]

Well, we ALREADY know im, selfish and incosiderate...didnt you see what i said about annoyingly polite southerners?

No, actually, I didn't: this annoyingly polite Southerner skipped your first post because it was too frustrating to read. If you can't be bothered to take the time to make it easy to read, I can't be bothered to take the time to read it.

Daniel