I'm okay with misspelled words being added to the dictionary due to common usage. Like, I used to misspell "all right" as "alright" (still do) but it's no longer a misspelling. Apparently.
It should though, because it bugs the hell out of me as well. It's like people not pronouncing letters when they speak. 'fing' instead of 'thing', for example. It's mangling the English language and you should be slapped across the face if you do it. Sadly, you can't do that over the internet - all you can do is correct them, and that gets you labelled as a Grammar Nazi. Bleh.
Also, thanks for resurrecting my thread. Forgot I made it!
All right, it's "general bitching", and I'll serve.
"Spellling" and "grammar" are two completely different things just as spoken and written language are governed by different laws.
First of all, it makes absolutely no sense to "pronounce a letter" in spoken language as if the writing somehow determined how things should be spoken. That's a jumbled logic. It doesn't work that way.
Written language mostly follows the sound rules of spoken language and (almost) never vice versa. But if a change occurs in spoken language - and a language that people use always changes - these changes are not immediately put into writing. In fact, present writing could be regarded as a dated, incomplete and faulty representation of a language's sound rules.
Orthography is an essentially arbitrary system of conventions about how certain words "should" be written. Now written English, mind you, through its varied history (and a lot of foreign early printers, no less) is known for its notoriously broken connection between written and spoken vowels. For such a random attribution of letters to sounds, there really is no need except tradition. If oh so many people spell a word "wrong" in the very same way, maybe present spoken language intuition dictates it and the writing should in fact change.
Spoken language, as I have already written in the Grammar Nazi thread, is an ever changing entity. Some changes are only attempted, stay a fashion for some time, then disappear entirely. Other changes are adapted by more and more speakers and are one day considered a correct form by most speakers of the language. Pedants look in sixty year old grammar books and raise the index finger, but they're looking at completely dated material, because a grammar book is nothing but a desperate attempt to guess and describe the subconscious, changing language rules stored in the mind of the present language speaker.
Now if a change in progress is spotted by so called language guardians, all hell breaks loose. All of a sudden, people who use the variation are supposedly stupid, ruin the language, do not understand its "logic" any more or make it incomprehensible.
But the language guardians are the laughing stock of linguists for several reasons. Their kind is thousands of years old, and those from thousands of years ago who saw the downfall of the Greek language in this or that variation have been proven quite wrong. From an objective standpoint, there's absolutely no reason why /fing/ should not work as a word in the English language alongside or instead of /thing/. The only reason people get enraged is because it differs from their own use, and the "reasons" they make up why their usage is "right" and other usages are "wrong" have led sociolinguists to the sound belief that the central reason for this kind of language critique is the preservation and elevation of one's own social status by insulting other people.
Written language mostly follows the sound rules of spoken language and never vice versa. But if a change occurs in spoken language - and a language that people use always changes - these changes are not immediately put into writing. In fact, present writing could be regarded as a dated, incomplete and faulty representation of a language's sound rules.
Orthography is an essentially arbitrary system of conventions about how certain words "should" be written. Now written English, mind you, through its varied history (and a lot of foreign early printers, no less) is known for its notoriously broken connection between written and spoken vowels. For such an arbitrary attribution of letters to sounds, there really is no need except tradition.
As someone who works in linguistics (and in sociolinguistics specifically) I also feel the need to comment on this. Historically, English orthography is "broken" for a number of reasons. Essentially it is a matter of language planning & standardization. Back in the early days, when written English was just being codified with the invention of the printing press, there was tremendous regional variance in spoken language. Even for a word as simple as "Egg", a printer would often have to choose between two highly distinct forms within a single city. In this sense, it is anything *but* arbitrary, as spoken language change was actually heavily influenced by orthography (i.e. the other form for egg is no longer used because it was standardized away via the writing system).
On the other hand, some aspects of English orthography really are just artifacts of changed pronunciation. For example, all the final 'e's you have in English actually used to be pronounced. i.e. 'House' used to be pronounced 'hoosuh' (in middle English). English also underwent a massive vowel shift which basically rotated the pronunciation of vowels around the articulatory space. English orthography hasn't really been updated much since the late 18th century, so a lot of that silliness remains.
Prescriptive grammar (stuff like don't end a sentence with a preposition), however, is of no interest to linguists. Since linguistics is inherently a descriptive field, we generally laugh off any attempts to prescribe or proscribe language use. Sociolinguistics is probably the only field that seriously examines it, even if it is mostly for the purposes of proving how wrong and horrible language planning can be.
Thanks KuroShiro for stepping in and providing more detail for what I just called a "varied history". My degree is from early 2007 (GOD I AM SO OLD), and I have forgotten far too much to still be lecturing that way.
But maybe we should leave it at that before someone forces us to tell the egges or eyren story.
All right, it's "general bitching", and I'll serve.
"Spellling" and "grammar" are two completely different things just as spoken and written language are governed by different laws.
[...]
Now if a change in progress is spotted by so called language guardians, all hell breaks loose. All of a sudden, people who use the variation are supposedly stupid, ruin the language, do not understand its "logic" any more or make it incomprehensible.
But the language guardians are the laughing stock of linguists [...]
So, you're bitching that people bitch too much/too loudly about inevitable changes in the spellings of words and phrases?
By saying "'Spellling' and 'grammar' are [...] two completely different things," are you saying that your rant is about spelling nazis and not about grammar nazis'? I should hope so. The fact that a language changes over time does not excuse willful and blatant ignorance of how to use it. For example, so very many people can't tell the difference between when to use "I" verses "me" in a sentence, nor does this ever-increasing group of idiots know to phrase others before yourself in a sentence.
ie. Using "me and her" (instead of "she and I") when referring to the subject of a sentence, is so obviously wrong yet used by so many, it's ridiculous.
The fact that a language changes over time does not excuse willful and blatant ignorance of how to use it.
Yes it does, except we prefer the term 'variation' to 'blatant ignorance'. You might be interested (wishful thinking on my part perhaps) in reading some seminal studies by William Labov, or more recent relevant studies by Penelope Eckert. They're actually quite interesting.
For example, so very many people can't tell the difference between when to use "I" verses "me" in a sentence, nor does this ever-increasing group of idiots know to phrase others before yourself in a sentence.
ie. Using "me and her" (instead of "she and I") when referring to the subject of a sentence, is so obviously wrong yet used by so many, it's ridiculous.
If you understand what they are saying, and would not feel a twitch in your head that tells you it is not a valid sentence of your native language, then it does not matter in speech. The concept of 'others before yourself' is a perfect example of prescriptive grammar, which does not apply to spoken language.
Oh, yeah. Now it's both. It's always been both! It says right there in the dictionary entry you just posted: "First known use: before 12th century." Till used as a preposition/conjunction dates back to Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse, possibly even earlier. Until is a more recent formation. It only dates to the 13th century, to Middle English. It's a compound preposition/conjunction, formed from un (meaning "up to," cognate to the Old Norse unz, and the Old High German unt) and the older till.
Why would you post a link to a dictionary entry to prove a point, and then not read it and discover that it contradicts your point?
By saying "'Spellling' and 'grammar' are [...] two completely different things," are you saying that your rant is about spelling nazis and not about grammar nazis'? I should hope so.
You're hoping in vain.
Language changes, so does grammar. Maybe in two hundred years, there's no explicable difference between "I" and "me" or "she" and "her" any more, and it wouldn't be a less understandable or less "logical" language because of that change. Less people today seem to use these words according to the older rules, that might (might!) be a sign that these parts of your language are about to change. In no case is it a sign that some people are less intelligent or negligent than others, and in no case is it a sign of language "decay". The English language would become less complex in this respect (while developing new complexities elsewhere no doubt), no harm done.
If you don't like it, don't use it that way. That is as much power as you have concerning language change - exactly one voice.
In a job interview situation or in conversation with superiors you can expect people to "dress up" their language. Their ability to chose the most accepted language variation is of utmost importance to communicate their social status there. A signal of respect, a signal of their ability to adapt to the situation. In most other cases, in most other conversational circumstances, fuck it. Criticizing other people's language there has no sense but the one mentioned above.
...I still will not accept "till" as a variant form of "until".
How about if it's only got one L? As in "It wasn't til later that he discovered she had stolen his penis".
Or would you require an apostrophe to be sated? So more like "'There was nothing he could do 'til she returned it after her night out with the girls".
I'll agree that till is not acceptable, but mostly because a till is actually a physical thing. As in "He briefly wondering how much the till would ring up if she decided to pawn it in".
Till as an action referring to a point in time yet to come is, to me, bollocks, and should always be until or 'til. For example: "But until she returned later that that brandishing either the member or a receipt, he decided to put the thought out of his head and use one of his spares he'd hidden from her 'til now."
Oh, yeah. Now it's both. It's always been both! It says right there in the dictionary entry you just posted: "First known use: before 12th century." Till used as a preposition/conjunction dates back to Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse, possibly even earlier. Until is a more recent formation. It only dates to the 13th century, to Middle English. It's a compound preposition/conjunction, formed from un (meaning "up to," cognate to the Old Norse unz, and the Old High German unt) and the older till.
Why would you post a link to a dictionary entry to prove a point, and then not read it and discover that it contradicts your point.
Because proponents of standard language ideology are generally more interested in maintaining the current standard than understanding the socio-historical trends that led to it.
In the case of people using 'me' and 'her' as a subject of a sentence... I've never heard that once in my life. Could you provide an example? Like... 'Me am going to the store'? If you understand what they are saying, would not feel a twitch in your head that tells you it is not a valid sentence of your native language, then it does not matter in speech.
You've obviously not watched enough television. There are so many characters in TV shows, litigants on court shows (like The People's Court) and interviews with various people on the news wherein people say things like "me and her went to the store" or something similar.
I can't believe you're basically saying that no one is ever wrong in phrasing how they speak, and that such is a legitimate reason for change in the grammar of a language. The next thing you'll tell me is that "Ebonics" really is a legitimate dialect and not just an excuse to proliferate ignorance of proper use of the English language.
You've obviously not watched enough television. There are so many characters in TV shows, litigants on court shows (like The People's Court) and interviews with various people on the news wherein people say things like "me and her went to the store" or something similar.
Sorry, I misunderstood what you were saying (see the edit to my earlier post).
I can't believe you're basically saying that no one is ever wrong in phrasing how they speak, and that such is a legitimate reason for change in the grammar of a language. The next thing you'll tell me is that "Ebonics" really is a legitimate dialect and not just an excuse to proliferate ignorance of the English language.
Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. And ebonics very much *is* a legitimate dialect, with structural and lexical rules that have been studied and documented. Saying otherwise only proves your ignorance. Do you really want me to take the gloves off on this? Because you are empirically incorrect in the arguments you're making.
You've obviously not watched enough television. There are so many characters in TV shows, litigants on court shows (like The People's Court) and interviews with various people on the news wherein people say things like "me and her went to the store" or something similar.
I can't believe you're basically saying that no one is ever wrong in phrasing how they speak, and that such is a legitimate reason for change in the grammar of a language. The next thing you'll tell me is that "Ebonics" really is a legitimate dialect and not just an excuse to proliferate ignorance of proper use of the English language.
Ebonics is a legitimate dialect, and it even has a more regular and consistent grammar than Standard English.
I can't believe you're basically saying that no one is ever wrong in phrasing how they speak
The concepts of "right" or "wrong" language belong to prescriptive grammar, and linguistics has left that path, what, 60 years ago. Isn't it great how science develops?
If you say so. Don't let me stand in the way of people intentionally sounding like idiots. I'm sure the corporate world really loves for people who are supposed to sound professional in their jobs to speak and write like they only have a 5th grade education.
My parents are Social Security Disability attorneys. Maybe they should start writing all their briefs in leetspeak. I'll bet the courts would find them very knowledgeable if they did.
If you say so. Don't let me stand in the way of people intentionally sounding like idiots. I'm sure the corporate world really loves for people who are supposed to sound professional in their jobs to speak and write like they only have a 5th grade education.
Read my comments again, I have reserved a special place for the "corporate world".
Read my comments again, I have reserved a special place for the "corporate world".
People can't "dress up their language" if they don't even know what the heck they're doing wrong or how to correct it.
And I'm not racially prejudiced, I disapprove of people saying that because someone is ignorant of the rules they are ultimately not wrong when they breaking them.
If you say so. Don't let me stand in the way of people intentionally sounding like idiots.
Don't worry. I don't hold it against you.
Also, since I just like expounding on this topic, (spoken) Standard American English is actually simply upper-midwestern dialect from the 1950s. It was adopted, in rather arbitrary fashion, by the news networks once broadcasting began to become more national rather than local. The written form of American English was (largely) codified by Noah Webster (you know, Webster from Miriam & Webster's Dictionary) as an attempt to separate American English from British, for mainly nationalistic reasons. :: screen goes black :: The more you know...
So, you're basically saying that no one should bother to put any effort at all into learning how to speak their native language properly. In the end no one should give a shit about it anyway, and if they do then they're ultimately the ignorant ones and should pull the stick out their collective asses.
So, you're basically saying that no one should bother to put any effort at all into learning how to speak their native language properly. In the end no one should give a shit about it anyway, and if they do then they're ultimately the ignorant ones and should pull the stick out their collective asses.
No. People are free to speak however they want. If you want to speak in a certain way, then by all means do. It's just that the type of language you learn in school, while perfectly valid, is simply a style and register of speech. There's nothing about it that's inherently more correct than any other way of speaking that is understood. If you're actually interested in learning more about this, (particularly in light of your comments on style-shifting in a corporate environment) you can read some of Allan Bell's work, such as this (a bit out of date, but still relevant).
People can't "dress up their language" if they don't even know what the heck they're doing wrong or how to correct it.
And I'm not racially prejudiced, I disapprove of people saying that because someone is ignorant of the rules they are ultimately not wrong when they breaking them.
You unfortunately fail to see that language varieties that are accepted in some social groups, complex varieties of English that fully function to convey even the most complicated meanings, are not accepted and thought of as stupid by speakers of other language varieties.
You are correct to assume that speakers used to a certain variety are not necessarily able to use another at will, which they are simply less familiar with. We all know that there is a language barrier in social rise. These people might learn what is acceptable in the English "standard" language and what isn't. They would learn new rules, arbitrary language rules which happen to communicate a different social status. But damn, that doesn't make their own way of speaking "wrong" or "broken".
If your parents tried to write their briefs in leetspeak (a WRITTEN language convention, not SPOKEN!!), the court would deem it inappropriate because they would insist on their own written language conventions, and they would deem it insulting because of the failure to adhere to their own written language conventions. The example is a bad one, but you might see leetspeak as a sociolect used by a certain group to identify and socialise with members of the same group. Adressing the court in leetspeak would be like speaking German on this forum. I'd use a fully functional language, but it just would not be appropriate and not necessarily understood.
I'm just ignoring them until this whole mess blows over.
Here's a genuine bitch - there's too many Indie Bundles! I'd be happy to support one or two, but there's so gaddamn many that I'm getting turned off to the whole idea. I mean come on! I just gave a bunch to Double Fine, and now there's another Music Bundle? Jesus! And in a couple of days the Valentines Bundle'll be up and gah! I AM NOT MADE OF MONEY.
Studying Language makes people rather open-minded towards and interested in other people's way of speaking, while language critique seldom strikes a chord.
You pretty much think that after your studies, you understand how language works (a rather foolish assumption, come to think of it), while the "general public" just dares to retain their opportunist misconception that their language is right and that of others is wrong. People from a hundred years ago would undoubtedly call THEIR language decayed and perverted.
I'll put in my oar and say that I want everyone to learn proper spelling and grammar because I was forced to learn it. It really grinds my gears when other people can get away without spending all the time and effort that I spent learning and (even worse!) don't find it worthy of putting in the time and effort to learn.
Also, reading chat-speak on facebook gives me a headache and a compulsion to delete seventy-five percent of my friends list.
In short, evolution is one thing, laziness is another. Changing "all right" to "alright", adding "meh" to the dictionary, allowing use of prepositions at the end of sentences...that's all well and good. But "your" and "you're" mean very different things and shouldn't be used interchangeably since they obscure the meaning of a sentence.
But "your" and "you're" mean very different things and shouldn't be used interchangeably since they obscure the meaning of a sentence.
Let me address this to KuroShiro, because (a) I don't want to enrage people even more and (b) I just don't have the history at hand to back up my hypothesis. Maybe he can help.
"you're" is a shortened form of "you are". As far as I know, shortened forms are the red button for language guardians as they pop up, so I will assume that at some time in the English language history, people have protested their lungs out against people saying "you're" instead of "you are" (= stupid, lazy, incomprehensible, yadda yadda yadda).
For such a shortened form to even reach writing, I would assume a second wave of protest to have occurred. One that hasn't necessarily ebbed out by today (you'd write "you're" on the Internet, but would you do it in rather formal texts?).
Meanwhile, English spoken language has fully wiped out the sound differences between "you're" and "your". This is very widely accepted today, even among the highest educated classes. I would assume that this means the English language works just as well (or comprehensible, logical, formal, complex, right, yadda yadda yadda) without the explicit distinction.
Now I like the written difference between your and you're. It helps me to interpret a written sentence as someone whose Native language is NOT English. And I do feel the occasional irrational language guardian anger when I see that mistake, as I feel as if my undoubtedly high learning was insulted. But as spoken English got rid of the difference completely, and therewith proves that the necessity for distinction doesn't really exist, the question should be natural whether English writing should reflect this as well.
That said, of course no one who types "your" instead of the correct "you're" wants to make a stand in that matter. You would of course find these writing "mistakes" primarily in the messages of lower educated classes, those of very young people or in the writings of foreigners; and I see another reason in the Internet's natural tendency to save typing time by developing shortened forms (since time in memorial or at least since normal, non-computer-nerds took their first steps in the net; you may thank Apple, Facebook or the ordinary SMS for establishing dire need for ever-shortened orthography).
And that is why you won't see me wasting letters in here just because coolsome doesn't get it.
Firstly, sorry if I got a bit rude before. We all have our pet peeves, and this thread happened to touch on mine. In terms of the your/you're distinction... well, people have always liked to make spoken language shorter and easier to pronounce, and sometimes if it becomes entirely pervasive it translated into orthography. Contractions in English are pretty long standing though, going back a few centuries.
Anyway, if I somehow came across as being against proper education, then I didn't express myself very well. I *am* a teacher after all, that would be pretty silly of me. As I said, written language is very different from spoken. It's codified, and planned, and when you screw up in writing, it very much *is* incorrect. It always makes me chuckle (with rage) when some English teachers say that there's no wrong way stylistically to write English, while correcting how students speak.
Anyway, I agree with you, messing up your/you're and their/they're makes you look stupid, and 'chatspeak' makes you look even worse.
Honestly, when I speak, there is definitely a difference between between "your" and 'you're". "You're" ends up being slightly more "oo"-like than the broader "your". Maybe this is why it bugs me so much.
And I'm one of those weird people who tend to write more grammatically accurate texts. I may not always be up to finding the apostrophe, and in that case I end up writing the shortened version: "youre".
I hate lip syncing and phoned in sound. Friend of mine went off on Eurovision for this and that';s just garbage. I've seen some bad performances, I've been to venues with horrible sound, but I would still prefer that to listening to a track.
For instance, KISS' ALIVE was half rerecorded in the studio because of mistakes(and general performance issues) and when this was revealed in an interview(in the 90s I think), a whole lot of fans I know instantly hated that record.
Meanwhile, English spoken language has fully wiped out the sound differences between "you're" and "your". This is very widely accepted today, even among the highest educated classes. I would assume that this means the English language works just as well (or comprehensible, logical, formal, complex, right, yadda yadda yadda) without the explicit distinction.
Now I like the written difference between your and you're. It helps me to interpret a written sentence as someone whose Native language is NOT English. And I do feel the occasional irrational language guardian anger when I see that mistake, as I feel as if my undoubtedly high learning was insulted. But as spoken English got rid of the difference completely, and therewith proves that the necessity for distinction doesn't really exist, the question should be natural whether English writing should reflect this as well.
Given that this is a written internet forum, I would speculate that most "language guardians'" anger in this context, (including my own) is largely referring to written language. For myself, I admit to have recently fixated on the verbally incorrect usage and order when referring to oneself ("me and him" instead of "he and I") but improper usage of the written word is a more prevalent problem concerning conversation on the net.
They're, their and there; no and know; too and to... are not incorrect written usages that warrant one day becoming interchangeable, and they (among other similar things) do greatly annoy me.
And I do see that. Homophones are always difficult to spell for less educated people.
Concerning the "me and him" word order - I'm not that sure if I'd attribute the question to actual grammar. This is a politeness concept. The exact same word order idea is prevalent in German, including the harsh correction by one's mother.
The idea is, of course, that naming oneself first would be a self-serving thing to do. But if the question was "Who wants a good beating?", would we object to the answer "Me... and my brother"?
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Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu--
All right, it's "general bitching", and I'll serve.
"Spellling" and "grammar" are two completely different things just as spoken and written language are governed by different laws.
First of all, it makes absolutely no sense to "pronounce a letter" in spoken language as if the writing somehow determined how things should be spoken. That's a jumbled logic. It doesn't work that way.
Written language mostly follows the sound rules of spoken language and (almost) never vice versa. But if a change occurs in spoken language - and a language that people use always changes - these changes are not immediately put into writing. In fact, present writing could be regarded as a dated, incomplete and faulty representation of a language's sound rules.
Orthography is an essentially arbitrary system of conventions about how certain words "should" be written. Now written English, mind you, through its varied history (and a lot of foreign early printers, no less) is known for its notoriously broken connection between written and spoken vowels. For such a random attribution of letters to sounds, there really is no need except tradition. If oh so many people spell a word "wrong" in the very same way, maybe present spoken language intuition dictates it and the writing should in fact change.
Spoken language, as I have already written in the Grammar Nazi thread, is an ever changing entity. Some changes are only attempted, stay a fashion for some time, then disappear entirely. Other changes are adapted by more and more speakers and are one day considered a correct form by most speakers of the language. Pedants look in sixty year old grammar books and raise the index finger, but they're looking at completely dated material, because a grammar book is nothing but a desperate attempt to guess and describe the subconscious, changing language rules stored in the mind of the present language speaker.
Now if a change in progress is spotted by so called language guardians, all hell breaks loose. All of a sudden, people who use the variation are supposedly stupid, ruin the language, do not understand its "logic" any more or make it incomprehensible.
But the language guardians are the laughing stock of linguists for several reasons. Their kind is thousands of years old, and those from thousands of years ago who saw the downfall of the Greek language in this or that variation have been proven quite wrong. From an objective standpoint, there's absolutely no reason why /fing/ should not work as a word in the English language alongside or instead of /thing/. The only reason people get enraged is because it differs from their own use, and the "reasons" they make up why their usage is "right" and other usages are "wrong" have led sociolinguists to the sound belief that the central reason for this kind of language critique is the preservation and elevation of one's own social status by insulting other people.
Sorry... I studied Language for too long.
As someone who works in linguistics (and in sociolinguistics specifically) I also feel the need to comment on this. Historically, English orthography is "broken" for a number of reasons. Essentially it is a matter of language planning & standardization. Back in the early days, when written English was just being codified with the invention of the printing press, there was tremendous regional variance in spoken language. Even for a word as simple as "Egg", a printer would often have to choose between two highly distinct forms within a single city. In this sense, it is anything *but* arbitrary, as spoken language change was actually heavily influenced by orthography (i.e. the other form for egg is no longer used because it was standardized away via the writing system).
On the other hand, some aspects of English orthography really are just artifacts of changed pronunciation. For example, all the final 'e's you have in English actually used to be pronounced. i.e. 'House' used to be pronounced 'hoosuh' (in middle English). English also underwent a massive vowel shift which basically rotated the pronunciation of vowels around the articulatory space. English orthography hasn't really been updated much since the late 18th century, so a lot of that silliness remains.
Prescriptive grammar (stuff like don't end a sentence with a preposition), however, is of no interest to linguists. Since linguistics is inherently a descriptive field, we generally laugh off any attempts to prescribe or proscribe language use. Sociolinguistics is probably the only field that seriously examines it, even if it is mostly for the purposes of proving how wrong and horrible language planning can be.
A linguistics seminar! :eek:
Thanks KuroShiro for stepping in and providing more detail for what I just called a "varied history". My degree is from early 2007 (GOD I AM SO OLD), and I have forgotten far too much to still be lecturing that way.
But maybe we should leave it at that before someone forces us to tell the egges or eyren story.
So, you're bitching that people bitch too much/too loudly about inevitable changes in the spellings of words and phrases?
By saying "'Spellling' and 'grammar' are [...] two completely different things," are you saying that your rant is about spelling nazis and not about grammar nazis'? I should hope so. The fact that a language changes over time does not excuse willful and blatant ignorance of how to use it. For example, so very many people can't tell the difference between when to use "I" verses "me" in a sentence, nor does this ever-increasing group of idiots know to phrase others before yourself in a sentence.
ie. Using "me and her" (instead of "she and I") when referring to the subject of a sentence, is so obviously wrong yet used by so many, it's ridiculous.
If you understand what they are saying, and would not feel a twitch in your head that tells you it is not a valid sentence of your native language, then it does not matter in speech. The concept of 'others before yourself' is a perfect example of prescriptive grammar, which does not apply to spoken language.
Writing is another matter altogether.
Oh, yeah. Now it's both. It's always been both! It says right there in the dictionary entry you just posted: "First known use: before 12th century." Till used as a preposition/conjunction dates back to Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse, possibly even earlier. Until is a more recent formation. It only dates to the 13th century, to Middle English. It's a compound preposition/conjunction, formed from un (meaning "up to," cognate to the Old Norse unz, and the Old High German unt) and the older till.
Why would you post a link to a dictionary entry to prove a point, and then not read it and discover that it contradicts your point?
You're hoping in vain.
Language changes, so does grammar. Maybe in two hundred years, there's no explicable difference between "I" and "me" or "she" and "her" any more, and it wouldn't be a less understandable or less "logical" language because of that change. Less people today seem to use these words according to the older rules, that might (might!) be a sign that these parts of your language are about to change. In no case is it a sign that some people are less intelligent or negligent than others, and in no case is it a sign of language "decay". The English language would become less complex in this respect (while developing new complexities elsewhere no doubt), no harm done.
If you don't like it, don't use it that way. That is as much power as you have concerning language change - exactly one voice.
In a job interview situation or in conversation with superiors you can expect people to "dress up" their language. Their ability to chose the most accepted language variation is of utmost importance to communicate their social status there. A signal of respect, a signal of their ability to adapt to the situation. In most other cases, in most other conversational circumstances, fuck it. Criticizing other people's language there has no sense but the one mentioned above.
Or would you require an apostrophe to be sated? So more like "'There was nothing he could do 'til she returned it after her night out with the girls".
I'll agree that till is not acceptable, but mostly because a till is actually a physical thing. As in "He briefly wondering how much the till would ring up if she decided to pawn it in".
Till as an action referring to a point in time yet to come is, to me, bollocks, and should always be until or 'til. For example: "But until she returned later that that brandishing either the member or a receipt, he decided to put the thought out of his head and use one of his spares he'd hidden from her 'til now."
Because proponents of standard language ideology are generally more interested in maintaining the current standard than understanding the socio-historical trends that led to it.
You've obviously not watched enough television. There are so many characters in TV shows, litigants on court shows (like The People's Court) and interviews with various people on the news wherein people say things like "me and her went to the store" or something similar.
I can't believe you're basically saying that no one is ever wrong in phrasing how they speak, and that such is a legitimate reason for change in the grammar of a language. The next thing you'll tell me is that "Ebonics" really is a legitimate dialect and not just an excuse to proliferate ignorance of proper use of the English language.
Sorry, I misunderstood what you were saying (see the edit to my earlier post).
Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. And ebonics very much *is* a legitimate dialect, with structural and lexical rules that have been studied and documented. Saying otherwise only proves your ignorance. Do you really want me to take the gloves off on this? Because you are empirically incorrect in the arguments you're making.
Ebonics is a legitimate dialect, and it even has a more regular and consistent grammar than Standard English.
The concepts of "right" or "wrong" language belong to prescriptive grammar, and linguistics has left that path, what, 60 years ago. Isn't it great how science develops?
My parents are Social Security Disability attorneys. Maybe they should start writing all their briefs in leetspeak. I'll bet the courts would find them very knowledgeable if they did.
Read my comments again, I have reserved a special place for the "corporate world".
Also, read.
People can't "dress up their language" if they don't even know what the heck they're doing wrong or how to correct it.
And I'm not racially prejudiced, I disapprove of people saying that because someone is ignorant of the rules they are ultimately not wrong when they breaking them.
Don't worry. I don't hold it against you.
Also, since I just like expounding on this topic, (spoken) Standard American English is actually simply upper-midwestern dialect from the 1950s. It was adopted, in rather arbitrary fashion, by the news networks once broadcasting began to become more national rather than local. The written form of American English was (largely) codified by Noah Webster (you know, Webster from Miriam & Webster's Dictionary) as an attempt to separate American English from British, for mainly nationalistic reasons. :: screen goes black :: The more you know...
No. People are free to speak however they want. If you want to speak in a certain way, then by all means do. It's just that the type of language you learn in school, while perfectly valid, is simply a style and register of speech. There's nothing about it that's inherently more correct than any other way of speaking that is understood. If you're actually interested in learning more about this, (particularly in light of your comments on style-shifting in a corporate environment) you can read some of Allan Bell's work, such as this (a bit out of date, but still relevant).
You unfortunately fail to see that language varieties that are accepted in some social groups, complex varieties of English that fully function to convey even the most complicated meanings, are not accepted and thought of as stupid by speakers of other language varieties.
You are correct to assume that speakers used to a certain variety are not necessarily able to use another at will, which they are simply less familiar with. We all know that there is a language barrier in social rise. These people might learn what is acceptable in the English "standard" language and what isn't. They would learn new rules, arbitrary language rules which happen to communicate a different social status. But damn, that doesn't make their own way of speaking "wrong" or "broken".
If your parents tried to write their briefs in leetspeak (a WRITTEN language convention, not SPOKEN!!), the court would deem it inappropriate because they would insist on their own written language conventions, and they would deem it insulting because of the failure to adhere to their own written language conventions. The example is a bad one, but you might see leetspeak as a sociolect used by a certain group to identify and socialise with members of the same group. Adressing the court in leetspeak would be like speaking German on this forum. I'd use a fully functional language, but it just would not be appropriate and not necessarily understood.
"Wrong" or "stupid"? Comes in nowhere here.
I think we're basically saying that "their native language" can mean a whole lot of things. Especially when it's a form of English.
Here's a genuine bitch - there's too many Indie Bundles! I'd be happy to support one or two, but there's so gaddamn many that I'm getting turned off to the whole idea. I mean come on! I just gave a bunch to Double Fine, and now there's another Music Bundle? Jesus! And in a couple of days the Valentines Bundle'll be up and gah! I AM NOT MADE OF MONEY.
Studying Language makes people rather open-minded towards and interested in other people's way of speaking, while language critique seldom strikes a chord.
Being confronted with the ocean of mostly arbitrary changes the English language has experienced in its past, present battlefields of usage can just be interesting things to observe and record for us. The linguist knows full well that language change can hardly be stopped, and he also knows that it doesn't harm (or really advances) a spoken language as a whole.
You pretty much think that after your studies, you understand how language works (a rather foolish assumption, come to think of it), while the "general public" just dares to retain their opportunist misconception that their language is right and that of others is wrong. People from a hundred years ago would undoubtedly call THEIR language decayed and perverted.
But I can stop here.
Gust as ik met mui süms üawareine kuommen was, dat wui niu oll Platt kuiern sollen ...
Also, reading chat-speak on facebook gives me a headache and a compulsion to delete seventy-five percent of my friends list.
In short, evolution is one thing, laziness is another. Changing "all right" to "alright", adding "meh" to the dictionary, allowing use of prepositions at the end of sentences...that's all well and good. But "your" and "you're" mean very different things and shouldn't be used interchangeably since they obscure the meaning of a sentence.
Let me address this to KuroShiro, because (a) I don't want to enrage people even more and (b) I just don't have the history at hand to back up my hypothesis. Maybe he can help.
"you're" is a shortened form of "you are". As far as I know, shortened forms are the red button for language guardians as they pop up, so I will assume that at some time in the English language history, people have protested their lungs out against people saying "you're" instead of "you are" (= stupid, lazy, incomprehensible, yadda yadda yadda).
For such a shortened form to even reach writing, I would assume a second wave of protest to have occurred. One that hasn't necessarily ebbed out by today (you'd write "you're" on the Internet, but would you do it in rather formal texts?).
Meanwhile, English spoken language has fully wiped out the sound differences between "you're" and "your". This is very widely accepted today, even among the highest educated classes. I would assume that this means the English language works just as well (or comprehensible, logical, formal, complex, right, yadda yadda yadda) without the explicit distinction.
Now I like the written difference between your and you're. It helps me to interpret a written sentence as someone whose Native language is NOT English. And I do feel the occasional irrational language guardian anger when I see that mistake, as I feel as if my undoubtedly high learning was insulted. But as spoken English got rid of the difference completely, and therewith proves that the necessity for distinction doesn't really exist, the question should be natural whether English writing should reflect this as well.
That said, of course no one who types "your" instead of the correct "you're" wants to make a stand in that matter. You would of course find these writing "mistakes" primarily in the messages of lower educated classes, those of very young people or in the writings of foreigners; and I see another reason in the Internet's natural tendency to save typing time by developing shortened forms (since time in memorial or at least since normal, non-computer-nerds took their first steps in the net; you may thank Apple, Facebook or the ordinary SMS for establishing dire need for ever-shortened orthography).
And that is why you won't see me wasting letters in here just because coolsome doesn't get it.
Anyway, if I somehow came across as being against proper education, then I didn't express myself very well. I *am* a teacher after all, that would be pretty silly of me. As I said, written language is very different from spoken. It's codified, and planned, and when you screw up in writing, it very much *is* incorrect. It always makes me chuckle (with rage) when some English teachers say that there's no wrong way stylistically to write English, while correcting how students speak.
Anyway, I agree with you, messing up your/you're and their/they're makes you look stupid, and 'chatspeak' makes you look even worse.
And I'm one of those weird people who tend to write more grammatically accurate texts. I may not always be up to finding the apostrophe, and in that case I end up writing the shortened version: "youre".
Because I like the difference to still be there.
For instance, KISS' ALIVE was half rerecorded in the studio because of mistakes(and general performance issues) and when this was revealed in an interview(in the 90s I think), a whole lot of fans I know instantly hated that record.
Given that this is a written internet forum, I would speculate that most "language guardians'" anger in this context, (including my own) is largely referring to written language. For myself, I admit to have recently fixated on the verbally incorrect usage and order when referring to oneself ("me and him" instead of "he and I") but improper usage of the written word is a more prevalent problem concerning conversation on the net.
They're, their and there; no and know; too and to... are not incorrect written usages that warrant one day becoming interchangeable, and they (among other similar things) do greatly annoy me.
Concerning the "me and him" word order - I'm not that sure if I'd attribute the question to actual grammar. This is a politeness concept. The exact same word order idea is prevalent in German, including the harsh correction by one's mother.
The idea is, of course, that naming oneself first would be a self-serving thing to do. But if the question was "Who wants a good beating?", would we object to the answer "Me... and my brother"?