Grammar/Vocabulary ??? (1 Viewer)

[KurtEP]

While I fully understand your point, and even sympathize with it to some extent, I think that there is a more important issue at hand. Languages evolve with usage and exposure to outside influences (among other things). Compare the language of Shakespeare (or even Beowulf to go further back, which was apparently written in the English vernacular of the time) to see very obvious changes.

If we stick to a specific set of "correct" grammar and word usage, the world will eventually pass us by. The grammar that is "correct" now is probably out of date by 50 years, or at least the grammar I learned in the 70s and 80s certainly was. If we maintain this path, we'll have something as idiotic as when all church and legal documents were in Latin, and everyone spoke English/French/German or whatever.

 

[Holadem]

Yet the simple fact is that the language did evolve despite the presence and enforcement of rules. So what makes you think that enforcing them now will make the "world eventually pass us by"?

--
H

 

[KurtEP]

Easy, the fact that a dead language like Latin was the language of law, politics, and church for hundreds of years after it had died out in common usage. Latin evolved into all of the other European languages (apparently excluding the Basque languages). It was strictly taught and still remains in the same form as it was a thousand years ago (so far as I know). The rest of the world passed it by. If it happened once, it certainly can happen again (or more severely "those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it").

(for the record, I doubt that it will happen)

 

[JeremyErwin]

At work? How much do your interoffice memos retail for at the local news stand? Do you work among acknowledged masters of the written word, or do they resort to jargon? Would any of the reports flying across your desk impress a English professor?

 

[BrianW]

These discussions almost invariably come down to a disagreement between the "Language Should Be Free to Evolve" camp, and the "Language Should Be Nailed Down" camp. I am one hundred percent in BOTH camps. Part of the beauty of written and spoken language is due to the way it has evolved. I wouldn't change that for anything. In fact, I remain convinced that language will continue to evolve no matter what we do. That's just its nature.

But at the same time, we need to adopt, agree upon, and consistently use a standard set of rules for written and oral communication. Without any standards, our communication would be reduced to charades. Because of the manner in which conflicting common usages arise in local communities (communities today not being geographically constrained), there does need to be a distinction between correct and common usage. And correct usage should be dominantly adhered to, particularly in cross-community communication. Without standards, we also cannot teach children and non-native-speakers how to communicate, which is vitally important. So I believe it is best to nail down and define the rules of language as much as possible. I don't understand why some would find this extreme. The alternative -- trying to communicate without any standards -- is far more extreme. Along with rules of usage, we get standardized spelling and even a standardized alphabet. If you object to being held to standard rules of usage, then you may as well start making up new letters in the alphabet. After all, who's to say that the twenty six letters in the English alphabet are enforceably correct? When did usage of those letters become some sort of law?

Keep in mind that the notion of what is correct usage isn't there to criminalize nonstandard language. It's there to foster more effective communication. And the concept of "effective enough" certainly comes into play here. As long as you follow the rules sufficiently well enough to get your point across to your audience, that's really all that matters. But if you think you can ignore the rules entirely and are still entitled to be understood, you need to pull your head out. Language will continue to adapt, evolve, and change, no matter what we do. No amount of standardization we enforce today will ever stop that from happening. But we do have an obligation to communicate effectively with our fellow humans, so we should accept and abide by standardized rules of usage to the extent necessary to communicate effectively, even if those rules aren't in the Magna Carta.

 

[Holadem]

It stands to reason that a minimum of formality is required in written reports produced in most office jobs. I therefore used material produced in that environment as an alternative benchmark of formal communication (comparable IMO to that of a news article), in order to evaluate the appropriateness of "broke". I am a bit perplexed by your questions -- am I missing something?

--
H

 

[David Von Pein]

I agree with you here, Joe. But grammar expert Jane Straus and Lawrance Bernabo definitely disagree (check out the hundreds of such examples within Lawrance's 6,600+ reviews at Amazon).*

* = BTW (and off-topic) -- Lawrance used to have more than 13,000 reviews posted at Amazon's website, but he deleted thousands of them back in late 2006 because of a dispute over Amazon allowing people to post "comments" on every single review there. Lawrance hated the idea, so he deleted a bunch of very, very good reviews. A shame, too.

I'm not wild about the "comments" feature there either....but many times people leave some really nice comments about your reviews (sometimes utilizing by-the-book grammar; sometimes not). So, you've got to take the bad with the good, I guess.

With respect to "grammar", in general, the author of the grammar book featured in the above video says:

"Anything that helps the reader is a good thing."

I think that's a good general rule. Although, like anything, I suppose that generalization can be taken to absurd extremes as well, which wouldn't be too good either.

E.G.: The Grammar Police would probably lock you up and throw away the key if you did this very often:

U R 2 good 2 B true.

 

[KurtEP]

The point is that Latin, as a strict form, lived on quite a long time, in an absurd sort of higher language taught only to those who grew up in privilege (at least privilege enough to study a second language). The vernacular Latin changed dramatically, to what we now know as English/German/French etc. So we ended up with two languages in any given area. One for general usage, and a second "proper" language for formal doings. This second language was probably not accessible to anyone outside of the gentry.

My point is that if we strictly construe grammar and vocabulary in a manner that is probably already 50 years out of date (by my admittedly loose definition), it won't be long before we constructively have two languages. First, we'll have a formal English, and second, we'll have a vernacular English. If we cling to this arbitrary distinction, we'll eventually have two essentially separate languages. As an example, how many people with a working class background could read something written by the late William Buckley and actually follow his vocabulary? That sort of formal language has already left a lot of people behind.

 

[Mike Frezon]

I agree with Holadem. I don't think adhering to the rules means we do not allow language and its rules to evolve. As the language changes (picking up new words all the time) so do the rules of composition and so do the rules of punctuation & grammar.

I would argue that ignoring the rules as they stand now would cause the language to devolve into a chaotic mess--worse than it is now!

Massteria! (Meredith Willson, "The Music Man")

 

[KurtEP]

I'll soon be moving to a place where a type of creole is quite widespread. It is ever changing, and should be quite entertaining. Still, people manage to communicate. Creole is good for that sort of thing.

 

[Mike Frezon]

I think of grammarians as the keepers of the flame.

Most people know the rules to a certain extent and follow them as much as they desire. Some more, some less. So, the grammarians are around to keep things (read: deviant language behavior) in check...to avoid that chaos I referenced earlier.

I don't think that all "strict grammarians" in the world could prevent the evolution of grammar. It is a work-in-progress. Always has been, always will be. Like fashion. The rules change. But there always needs to be someone there to enforce them...to remind others of the "right way"...to keep things in line to avoid the inevitable breakdown that would occur in their absence.

Above all else, grammar is fun. It is a challenge to use words with as much care and respect as possible. It is a challenge that inspires. To those who don't agree, there is sloppiness of words and punctuation and expression of thought. And that's okay, for them. It is all a matter of degree--as it is for most things in life.

 

[BrianW]

This just isn't true. Strict grammarians come and go, but languages live for centuries or millini... millenni... milen... thousands of years. The rules grammarians seek to enforce are only the rules for today, a snapshot of the language at a very specific point in time. Strictly adhering to today's rules doesn't preclude change in the future. It only standardizes today's rules so that a broader group of people can have access to effective communication.

That's a very good thing.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Exactly. It's not as if the Oxford Dictionary and the Little Brown Handbook are only on edition number one, and the fact there will be more editions to come in the future does not mean you can just ignore the current ones.

 

[Bob McLaughlin]

We just won free tickets to a local children's festival. The title of the email: "YOUR A WINNER".

 

[Mike Frezon]

In his introduction to the first edition of The Elements of Style (Strunk & White), E.B. White writes of his old professor (Strunk) that "although one of the most inflexible and choosy of men, (he) was quick to acknowledge the fallacy of inflexibility and the danger of doctrine.

"It is an old observation," he wrote, "that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules."

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And it should be noted that when Strunk first had the original book privately printed in 1918 at Cornell University, the final chapter was one on spelling. It was discarded by White and replaced with the "Approach to Style" section.

The section on spelling included, among other things, the following rule:


The loss of this once-prevalent device within just the past 100 years, I believe, shows how the rules of grammar continue to evolve from generation to generation.

 

[KurtEP]

Nice.

 

[Jeff Gatie]

Kurt, I can shed a little light on it (and this lights up a lot of other things) with one of my favorite quotes - "If everyone knows that nobody is perfect, why do so many people go out of their way to demonstrate it."

There is a fine line between calling for rules to adapt to an ever changing use of language . . . and making excuses for being a shitty writer.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Here, from Strunk's original work, is another example of a convention no more:


Again, this is one of those rules which just gave way over the last hundred years or so--even with the strictest of all grammarians, William Strunk, Jr. advising his Ivy League students against the dangers.

 

[andrew markworthy]

As far as English-speakers are concerned, a basic answer is 'the Romans'. A lot of formal rules of English grammar are an attempt to emulate Latin, seen as the pure 'mother tongue' (strange how various Germanic languages get conveniently forgotten). This leads to anomalous rules like 'don't split an infinitive' which whilst having validity in Latin (where a split infinitive sounds plain wrong) is plain capricious in English. We aren't aware of these rules in the form of a formal written document, because custom and practice have taken the place of books of grammar. However, if you really want a book on good grammatical practice, take a look in any decent bookstore and you will find there are many publications on the subject.

I can never decide which side I support in the grammar debate. I wince when I hear really bad grammatical errors such as data is, none are, ten items or less etc, but I equally have no sympathy with petty obsessions such as never ending a sentence with a preposition. Nor do I find regional variants of grammar offensive; it's not as if someone with a regional dialect is being lazy in their speech, they're simply consistently following the rules of their regional dialect.

Linked to this last point - I imagine that a lot of Americans find the Brit habit of saying e.g. 'got' rather than 'gotten' annoying. Certainly to a lot of Brits 'gotten' sounds ungrammatical (which it isn't - and Brits will quite happily say 'ill-gotten gains' without pausing to think about it).

 

[Diallo B]

way to bring this thread back from the grave...