For English to evolve, grammarians must die
Consider these three word pairs:
- Choose vs. chose
- Loose vs. lose
- Noose vs. nose
Loose and noose rhyme, but they don’t rhyme with choose. Chose and nose rhyme, but they don’t rhyme with lose.
There are lists of frequent grammatical errors; mistaken use of choose/chose and loose/lose are commonly found on such lists.
I could pick on hundreds of other English irregularities, but these ones happened to set me off today.
My son Sammy is nearly four and we’re teaching him to read. The irregularities of English are sufficiently common that I spend more time teaching the exceptions rather than the rules.
Simultaneously, as use of cell phones for texting proliferates (along with other communication typed in real-time, such as game chat or status updates, where character limits apply), there’s an emphasis on brevity that favors abbreviations, slang, acronyms and intentional misspelling.
In the early grades, as English is taught, correct spelling is the least important skill, taught last. The lesson plans emphasize vocabulary and the more common sounds for letters, even if it means young kids create sentences that don’t have a single correctly spelled word. The exceptions are cleaned up in the later grades.
English is a difficult language for non-native speakers to learn, because of the pervasive exceptions. But that flies in the face of English’s growth as a worldwide universal langauge.
English does evolve over time — just look at how many new words are added each year to various dictionaries. Novel forms of speech are created constantly, and are adopted based on an evolutionary model: If it’s simple, readily understood, and fills a gap in our forms of expression (or more efficiently gets an idea across in one or two syllables compared to a lengthier, traditional construction), then it will be spread from group to group, and eventually be considered “standard.” In general, this evolution makes English simpler, since complex or non-standard constructions are not spread as readily. So, evolution of English is “good” in the sense that it makes English easier for non-native speakers or young learners.
However, standing in the way of English’s evolution is prescriptionism. Linguists (those that study language) are generally either descriptivists (who observe and describe how language is actually used) or prescriptionists, who dictate how language should and shouldn’t be used.
No one has enjoyed a quick spelling or grammar flame more than me, but today I’ve come to the conclusion that English needs to evolve faster, and armchair grammarians (even ones with linguistics degrees, like me) must stop what they’re doing in discouraging novel forms of expression.
For everyday communication online, from now on, my only consideration is if I understood the other person. Instead of, “Is every word spelled and used correctly?”, my standard will now be, “Is the intent clear?”
Starting today, I resolve to never make another spelling or grammar flame. For informal forums, I may gently encourage others to stop making such corrections as well.
I’ll still apply higher standards for business communications, especially for my own e-mails and from prospective employees . Bad spelling as a signifier for low intelligence is a deeply-ingrained bias in our culture, and misspelling a few words in a widespread corporate e-mail is still a career-limiting maneuver.
The next barrier will be lowering my standards for my own informal writing, such as here on this blog. It’ll take a while before I’m ready for that leap.
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:10 am
[my standard will now be, “Is the intent clear?”]
I approve.
…as someone with no “journalism” training, no linguistics degree, who likes random hyphens, ellipses, and starting sentences with “And”. 
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:57 am
Sounds like a loosing proposition.
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:38 pm
As a linguist, there are a few points I agree with in your post. I would argue, though, that the inconsistencies you point out in English stem from just the kind of inevitable evolution you are encouraging. The differences between “choose,” “lose,” and “nose” stem from the fact that they come from different languages in the first place.
The evolution that goes on will stem from more mixing, not less. There are now more non-native speakers of English than native speakers (non-native in that English is not their first language). Control of the evolution of the language is out of our hands. In the future, what you and I consider English will be a quaint dialect of something bigger–and by “future,” I don’t necessarily mean after we’re dead.
So, what happens to the grammarians? I can only speak for myself. I think it’s important to know how things are “supposed to be,” and to try to figure out the rules–which are based on usage, after all (for example, it’s now okay to wantonly split infinitives). Your supposition that grammarians are against linguistic evolution is false. But evolution is slow and heavy, and language has history and weight too. Remember that language is really an agreement among all the people who speak it. It takes time to change that agreement, because it takes time for those changes to propagate. It also takes tremendous momentum. So if you start pronouncing “lose” to rhyme with “nose,” you’ll get a lot of “huh?” in response. And if everyone in California started pronouncing “lose” that way, it still might take a hundred years for people in New York to do the same, so say nothing of the billion English speakers elsewhere.
Now, to your point about clarity being paramount. I agree. The language is flexible enough to preserve meaning through the “mistakes” that are really evolution. It’s really fault-tolerant. But remember that some “mistakes” are just, well, mistakes. Not all “mistakes” end up changing the language for the better (if at all). It’s true that “presently,” which means “in a moment,” is changing to mean “now” because so many people make that mistake. But what about the use of the apostrophe in plurals? This is a mistake that people make all the time. There’s no consistency. So, you let this evolution happen, and what is the benefit? What’s the rule that’s evolving here? Doesn’t that particular evolution contribute to the inconsistency that frustrates you so? And why not use apostrophes or “presently” correctly, for now, among people who know what it means? In the future, if its meaning changes, the grammarians will document that fact, not try to keep the dinosaur alive.
The grammarian is your friend–trying to discover order in a tremendously challenging language, and preserve that order where it relates to meaning. Grammarians are not just arbitrary self-appointed police. And by the way, those of us who are interested in grammar, etymology, spelling, etc. have extra tools of meaning at our disposal when talking to other people who pay attention to these things. I would argue that without caring about this stuff the English language is a great tool–but caring about it makes it into music and poetry too. I didn’t choose the word ‘wantonly’ above by accident, but because I hoped that someone, somewhere, would enjoy it and all its little ripples of meaning, and the little implied joke there with the word ’split.’
I think what you are really railing against is the kind of grammarian who flames. Well, that kind of person is just in it for the attention. It’s okay to teach your children to use English correctly–they’ll learn the real English anyway, and they’ll have more tools at their disposal when they do. And it’s okay to strive to be not just an efficient practitioner of the language, but an excellent one.
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:51 pm
I need to get that FF comment plug-in working — intense discussion also going on here:
http://friendfeed.com/zeigen/eff48bff/for-english-to-evolve-grammarians-must-die
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:54 pm
Peter, you have made a wonderful post, and I agree with far more than I disagree with.
You’re right to pounce on the weakest point of my argument, which is the assumption that language evolution is always towards regularity, rather than more irregularity.
In a sense I’ve made a circular argument, because I define spelling simplification as evolution, and I define evolution as simplification and regularity.
I need a lot more evidence to back up my claim that language evolution favors simplicity and regularity. But that’s my claim.
I will indeed teach my children to use English correctly (a shifting set of rules if ever there was one), but it certainly would be much easier if the exceptions didn’t outnumber the rules.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Well I think linguistic evolution favors complexity, if anything! Language defines distinctions among things in the world. When you need more distinctions, you get more language. As the world becomes more complex, so does language. I think new words spring up faster than old ones wither away. And with more cultures influencing the direction of evolution, etymology will become an even branchier tree.
How can evolution favor simplicity and regularity? There are no predators, so where’s the pruning process?
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:13 pm
The complexity is happening in other places, like technical language.
There are predators all around. There are memes that are displacing other memes. If a meme shows that one usage is more useful than a different usage, that old usage will fall to the side and become arcane.
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:11 pm
I agree with Rich.
Peter, by the way, I’m not suggesting people change how they pronounce lose or loose. But if someone spelled it looz and loos, no complaints from me.
July 9th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
A language wil becum mor complex as mor distinctions ar made. It wil becum mor simple as distinctions ar dropd. It may also becum simpler ware an adjectiv plus a simple root noun is uzed insted of a distinct unrelated-sounding root. Amung indigenus languages in western Canada, ware I hav livd, the word /raven/ includes ravens & their smaller rellativs, crows. Insted of saying the unknoen word cro, one can say /small raven/ . If one dusnt eeven kno the word raven but only the generic word /bird/, one can stil describe the cro with adjectivs: small blak bird. A raven may be /big blak bird/, and a vulture /very big blak bird/. A biologist wil prefer to hav & uze the 3 root words & wil further subdivide them into latin subspeecies, but the simpler root wil du for moast tribal peeple and for children, supplemented with adjectivs wen needed. [The spelling I uze is explaind & demonstrated in my website].
September 22nd, 2009 at 10:08 am
Steve,
You may want to check this out. I highly recommend this Web site to anyone who is interested in the subject of grammar, and also to those who are incapable or unwilling to punctuate, capitalize, or otherwise attend to the needs of their sad, broken sentences.
http://www.grammaruntied.com/blog/?p=88
July 1st, 2009 at 7:32 pm
From my post: "Starting today, I resolve to never make another spelling or grammar flame. For informal forums, I may gently encourage others to stop making such corrections as well."
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July 1st, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Sweet. As I’m a terrible speller. And generally have bad grammer (and yes I’m misspelling that on purpose. grammar just doesn’t seem right to me. Let the evolution begin).
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July 2nd, 2009 at 8:37 am
Dario, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you misspell a word prior to that, so you’re far from a terrible speller. I agree "grammar" looks weird. There aren’t nearly as many words ending in -ar in English as -er. Kelsey Grammer also has a lot to answer for. But I certainly can get behind your proposal that "grammer" should be a valid substitute for "grammar" from now on. For English to evolve we’ll also need to get the spell checks on board.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 8:38 am
I don’t think I have the patients for this.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 8:38 am
If by ‘evolve’ you mean ‘dumb down for the un- and miseducated’, I’ll take an unevolved English any day of the weak.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 8:40 am
Certainly took me a while to get past that point of view, Akiva. But to take the first example of my post, why do we put up with irregularities? Why make it so hard for new learners and non-native speakers to learn? WHY do you feel the way you feel beyond wanting others to have to go through the hurdles you went through?
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July 2nd, 2009 at 8:46 am
That’s precisely it, though, Stephen. Flattening the learning curve doesn’t make it better and it isn’t that I want people to have to go through what I went through: this isn’t about me; it’s about being educated. Taking this to its horrifying conclusion, you might as well champion for the dismissal of complex words. Why use ‘extrapolate’ instead of ‘explain’ or ‘loathe’ instead of ‘hate’? Because these more difficult/advanced/complex words are more apropos (oh, is that word too complex? how about ’succinct’? oh damn.). You’d be robbing the language of all of its beauty and utility. I, for one, refuse to ‘idiot-proof’ a language by changing the language to make it easy for ‘idiots’. Instead, let’s work toward better education: higher-paid teachers, smaller classrooms, easier and cheaper access to learning resources.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 8:56 am
If English is so hard to learn, why do I hear many Polish adults speaking better English here in the UK than British children in schools? Simply because the kids aren’t being taught well enough and the resources are too few and too late. The problem lies within the education, not the language itself.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 9:04 am
Akiva, I’m not advocating the removal of words. I’m advocating simpler spelling — similar to Benjamin Franklin’s original proposal, which I’ll link in separately. English evolves over time whether you want it to or not ("Doughnut" to "donut" in American English, for example). Is someone "less educated" for wanting spelling to be simpler, so that learners can acquire the language faster? I don’t want to rob the language of anything except pointless irregularity.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 9:05 am
I dated a linguistics major once who was pretty adamant about language needing to be allowed to evolve, and was NOT the type to constantly correct others. However, I think that there’s a difference between "letting grammarians die" and having them "loosen up" (losen up? lol) a bit. The bigger question, I think, is how organic we let the evolution be. For example, if we let lolcats-speak gain too much inflooense [sic], we’ve let the reigns go too much.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 9:05 am
I dated a linguistics major once who was pretty adamant about language needing to be allowed to evolve, and did was NOT the type to constantly correct others. However, I think that there’s a difference between "letting grammarians die" and having them "loosen up" (losen up? lol) a bit. The bigger question, I think, is how organic we let the evolution be. For example, if we let lolcats-speak gain too much inflooense [sic], we’ve let the reigns go too much.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 9:05 am
I dated a linguistics major once who was pretty adamant about language needing to be allowed to evolve, and did was NOT the type to constantly correct others. However, I think that there’s a difference between "letting grammarians die" and having them "loosen up" (losen up? lol) a bit. The bigger question, I think, is how organic we let the evolution be. For example, if we let lolcats-speak gain too much inflooense, we
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July 2nd, 2009 at 9:05 am
Charlotte, English is objectively more irregular than, say, Spanish or Polish, and is therefore harder to learn. Of course non-native speakers learn English successfully all the time. But for those who learned several languages, ask them which was easier to learn. English has notably higher barriers than many languages because of the pervasive irregularities. We could reduce the amount of time by simplifying, that’s all I’m saying.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 9:12 am
Re: "Bad spelling as a signifier for low intelligence is a deeply-ingrained bias in our culture", It’s interesting because my dad is an intellectual, but a terrible speller – [anecdotally] it seems has more to do with personality than actual intelligence. He just has other people (i.e. my mom, a grammarian) proof-read anything he sends out there. That said, in this age of computer-communication, even my web-browser, IM clients, and my iPhone have spell-checking, the red-squiggles appear under my misspelled words.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 9:13 am
I have to go with Akiva on this one. English is hard to learn? Practice. When you practice something it gets "easier" not because the nature if the thing changes but that your capacity to do thing has increased.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 9:17 am
English seems to have done OK despite the grammarians: It’s use continues to embiggen.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 9:18 am
Personally I like my education/intelligence to shine through. Although, I do type "slang" in conversational posts.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 10:55 am
Let’s look at what rational reason there is to NOT reform and and simplify English spelling. If you’ve spent any time teaching reading to a young child you know how many irregularities there are. It adds complexity and difficulty, so there are costs, but with what benefit? We have: 1. Tradition. "But we’ve always spelled things this irregularly." Not true, and not rational. Spelling in the 1800s was much looser. And conserving things solely for the sake of inertia and historical preservation is not a rational reason to prevent useful change. 2. Elitism. Those who can spell/write correctly and have mastered the irregularities are part of a select club, and recognizing who else is in that club by their writing is sometimes useful. But that’s not enough of a rational basis to give up the benefits of spelling reform. The benefits including not just easier learning for children and non-native speakers, but faster typing and ease of implementation for things like cell-phone predictive typing.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 11:02 am
Perfect case in point: Josh’s comment. FF helpfully marks it as coming from the iPhone. His two typos ("if" instead of "of" and the missing "that") are clearly artifacts of that communication device. But did I understand him? Perfectly (even if I disagree). Why get hung up on that? As long as communication was achieved, that’s my new standard of acceptance. Josh is correct that practice makes perfect, but WHY should we inflict all that extra effort on new learners of English? What’s the DRAWBACK to spelling/grammar reform?
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July 2nd, 2009 at 11:02 am
And Andy, I love love love that comment.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 11:10 am
Perhaps the reason you understood Josh’s comment despite the errors is because of context. If you were reading it centuries later in isolation there would be room for doubt as to what he really meant.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 11:13 am
Trish, true, but let centuries go by and suddenly you’re reading Chaucer: "Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote / The droghte of March hath perced to the roote" (http://www.canterburytales.org/canterbury_tales.html) What a perfect illustration of how spelling changes over time. ("When April with its showers sweet / has pierced the drought of March to the root")
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July 2nd, 2009 at 11:13 am
Trish, true, but let centuries go by and suddenly you’re reading Chaucer: "Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote / The droghte of March hath perced to the roote" (http://www.canterburytales.org/canterbury_tales.html) What a perfect illustration of how spelling changes over time.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 11:16 am
Now we have to take into account accents and pronunciations to decipher that.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 11:24 am
Chaucer wasn’t just about spelling differences. Take it down the absolute basics and you have phonics, blending the sounds to make a full pronunciation of that word. If simplifying words is the way forward, then the phonics are changed and in turn, so is the word.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 11:26 am
Charlotte, I agree — and think that’s a good thing, with many advantages, and no disadvantages beyond "that’s the way we’ve done it for a while now."
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July 2nd, 2009 at 11:47 am
A friend with a linguistics background who uses it practically in his day-to-day life explained the ebb and flow of language (which is mostly an unplanned phenomenon) like this: Language trends toward simplicity if sufficient comprehension is conserved. It moves toward more complexity when ambiguity interferes too greatly. So my theory is there will always be grammarians and anti-grammarians, it’s just that their number and degree of influence will also ebb and flow.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 11:55 am
Sorry but if I have to trust a Ste[ph|v]en on this, I’m going to trust Pinker over Mack.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 11:56 am
Also, well put, Micah.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 11:57 am
No one show this thread to Mignon.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:00 pm
I haven’t blogged much, so I keep going to this well, but dammit, read my post! http://dariusmdev.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/how-bill-gates-would-repair-our-schools-stolen-from-a-friendfeed-thread/
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Wow, Bruce. That’s just… wow. You’re comparing people who care about the English language with people who don’t believe in evolution because of a belief in a creator deity? That’s such a wild comparison that my monitors just degaussed themselves. And they’re LCD monitors. Are you going to lump mathematicians in here as well? They’re bigger sticklers than grammarians are.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Wow, Bruce. That’s just… wow. You’re comparing people who care about the English language with people who don’t believe in evolution because of a belief in a creator deity? That’s such a wild comparison that my monitors just degaussed themselves. And they’re LCD monitors? Are you going to lump mathematicians in here as well? They’re bigger sticklers than grammarians are.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Spellings I’m not too bothered about, but grammar is an essential part of the written form. Without it the entire meaning of prose gets screwed up. Still, regardless of this and irrespective of how many rules you put into place, a language will change and evolve along with the people that speak it. Imagine how things will change once we take to the stars.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Akiva, Pinker is a nativist — very very far from a prescriptivist. He describes the evolutionary models of language in great detail. I cannot recall him writing about spelling reform one way or the other. How is he relevant to this discussion?
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:09 pm
Wait, I’m proposing unnatural predation on irregularities! Brain hurts, must consider.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:09 pm
I don’t see spelling as independent of syntax.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Fine, Akiva, so let’s take a few spelling examples. Suppose I’m elected supreme dictator of the universe, and I issue a decree that says from now on, all the "-ight" words in English that rhyme with "night" (might, right, sight, etc.) are to be spelled "-ite" instead. ADVANTAGES: Consistency, ease of learning, fewer letters to type. DISADVANTAGES: Spell checkers, dictionaries, grammarians must change. People who resist change get upset. Where would you weigh in? It’s been centuries since we pronounced the g as a g in these words. Why not excise, simplify, reform?
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Fine, Akiva, so let’s take a few spelling examples. Suppose I’m elected supreme dictator of the universe, and I issue a decree that says from now on, all the "-ight" words in English that rhyme with "night" (might, right, sigh, etc.) are now to be spelled "-ite" instead. ADVANTAGES: Consistency, ease of learning, fewer letters to type. DISADVANTAGES: Spell checkers, dictionaries, grammarians must change. People who resist change get upset. Where would you weigh in? It’s been centuries since we pronounced the g as a g in these words. Why not excise, simplify, reform?
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Akiva, no. I’m being a stickler about English usage myself. The word "evolve" is being misused here.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Bruce, ah, sorry. Totally went right over my head.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Bruce, I disagree. The "doughnut" to "donut" change is a perfect example of evolution in action. Look at that Chaucer excerpt earlier. All of the changes follow an evolutionary model — things get simpler over time, due to survival of the fittest. Even Pinker, evoked earlier, describes the evolutionary model of language change similar to what we’re discussing here.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Matthew, I read your post but I’m too dense to see the point you’re making, sorry.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I find it ironic that Akiva misused weak when he meant week.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Stephen, sorry, but this discussion is slowly edging its way off the rails. The hypothetical you invoke is just way too unlikely to even be worth addressing, if you ask me. I might as well say, ‘what if as the supreme dictator of the universe, I made red into blue’?
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
@Bruce the collectivised mutations of something (language in this case) that eventually give rise to the formation of a distinct and new entity. The changes to our languages are organic in nature and certainly paralelle that of species in the natural world via many different evolutionary pressures (technology, interbreeding, random mutations as a result of generational change….)
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
There’s no advantage to turning red into blue. There are numerous advantages to simplifying and regularizing spelling. My main point is to get you to consider WHY you want spelling to stay the same illogical way it is now, when it has no advantages beyond preserving (a fairly recent, in the scale of things) tradition.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
There’s no advantage to making red into blue. There are numerous advantages to simplifying and regularizing spelling.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Stephen, evolution creates as many irregularities as it eliminates. Why are there two correct spellings of harassment, for example. English will only get simpler by deliberate planning.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:20 pm
I do think the prescriptivists are fighting a futile war. But spelling reform is just another form of prescriptivism. I say, tolerate diversity and let natural selection hone orthography. If more people favor nite over night or the single word loose instead of the two words loose/lose, then that’s the way the language will go. Nothing you or I can do is going to stop it.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:20 pm
Stephen, the point is, you can’t regulate either spelling nor grammar. They can and will change over time.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Liked “For English to evolve, grammarians must die” http://ff.im/-4GYkX
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:21 pm
(Gah, three excellent comments within seconds of each other, and I want to respond to all three. Want threaded comments.)
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Too much pretty would never have happened in Stephen’s world.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Threaded comments are hideous. Take the time, read slow and read it all. Compose your thoughts and say what you need to. You have no where important to be.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:24 pm
Matthew, I’m missing the "too much pretty" reference.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:25 pm
(Pounces, claws extended, on the either/nor pairing in alphaxion’s comment.).
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Well Eye’d explane it beter, but sea, yu’ve removed all werds I need to make my point. I’m left with nuthing to rephyne my thawts.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Let me be clear: The dictator example is a hypothetical, and I’m not actually advocating we force wholesale spelling reform down anyone’s throat. Instead, I’m asking people to examine their biases and beliefs. Previously I was a spelling snob. I made spelling flames. Despite believing in the abstract that I was a descriptionist, I was actually behaving as a prescriptivist. However, in the course of teaching my son to read, I have become disgusted with how irregular and complex English spelling is. It adds tremendous difficulty — but for what purpose? There’s no advantage to it. I believe that language evolves to a simpler form over time (which Bruce refutes, but I’ll discuss that separately). In the past, I acted as a barrier to that evolution. But as of today, I resolve to not act that way, and to help foster the simplification that takes place naturally. That’s my argument.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:32 pm
It’s a legacy language, like Windows. It has to maintain backwards compatibility. People with your ideas tried that Esperanto movement way back when, because to get to where you want to be requires a full rebuild from the kernel up. Unfortunately language isn’t an if you build it they will come sort of thing, so how bout we just leave it as it and let it evolve like it’s supposed to, with proper pressures from where ever they come from and not advocate just taking the brakes off. Go watch an episode of Firefly.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:33 pm
For English spelling reform, we may have to look to other languages to lead the way. Filipino, the official language of the Philippines (which is really just a standardized dialect of Tagalog) basically incorporates tons of English words, but has changed the orthography to match the conventions of written Filipino, which is close to being completely phonetic. I understand Japanese kind of does a similar transformation to English borrowings. Someday, I won’t be surprised to see English borrowing words back from other languages, resulting in variants with significant nuanced differences.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Matthew, the Chaucer excerpt refutes the backwards-compatibility notion. I find Esperanto ridiculous, because it was mandated, not evolved. Almost no one wants to learn a whole new language just because they find English too complex or irregular. I agree with the rest of your comment. You illustrate the point I’m making perfectly. Before, I was acting as an agent resisting language evolution — fighting off useful mutations by mocking them. But no more. That’s what my post is about — about a change I’m making in my own behavior. (And I love Firefly.)
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Matthew, the Chaucer excerpt refutes the backwards-compatibility notion. I find Esperanto ridiculous, because it was mandated, not evolved. Almost no one wants to learn a whole new language just because they find English too complex or irregular. I agree with the rest of your comment. Before I was acting as an agent resisting language evolution — fighting off useful mutations by mocking them. And I love Firefly.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
My point, though, is that there have never been any brakes, and anyone who thinks otherwise is fooling themselves.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:34 pm
Victor, we’ve done that already and continue to every day/year.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Stephen, the Chaucer excerpt doesn’t refute anything at all. It can’t. It’s inanimate, and kind of meta.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:36 pm
It shows that language changes and doesn’t have to be backwards-compatible.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Matthew, true. I just think it’ll be more dramatic when we start borrowing back from languages that are completely outside the Indo-European family of languages.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:38 pm
Victor: English borrowing words from other languages is a fait accompli.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Victor: Suppose someone says to you, "Good nite!" and you say back to them, "You miseducated nincompoop, don’t say ‘nite,’ it’s spelled ‘night.’" You are acting as a "brake" as you say. Right?
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Stephen, No it doesn’t. It’s inanimate. It doesn’t refute anything. It’s can’t. It doesn’t possess the intelligence.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:39 pm
A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and proceeds to fire it at the other patrons. ‘Why?’ asks the confused, surviving waiter amidst the carnage, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder. ‘Well, I’m a panda’, he says, at the door. ‘Look it up.’ The waiter turns to the relevant entry in the manual and, sure enough, finds an explanation. ‘Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.’
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Stephen start your sentence, "The Chaucer excerpt that I quoted illustrates….." At least I think that is what you are attempting to convey.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Stephen start your sentence, "The Chaucer expert that I quoted illustrates….." At least I think that is what you are attempting to convey.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Matthew, yes, that’s what I mean — apologies for use of metonymy as a grammatical shortcut. (And thank you for the literalist Panda joke.)
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:41 pm
Matthew, yes, that’s what I mean — apologies for use of metonymy as a grammatical shortcut.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Matthew, that’s one usage crusade you’ll have to give up on. Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Well played, Bruce.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Yeah, well played……
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:51 pm
On a more serious note, I think Stephen is making a good move by loosening up on spelling as his son starts to read and write. That fits the methodology I’ve seen work really well in Montessori schools.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Yes, he should be well suited to a twitter dominant world. Make sure he takes AP LOLcat in highschool as well.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Twitter’s ability to influence language is probably substantial.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Stephen, yeah, I see your point. On the other hand, such a response might actually act as a accelerator, if the person I said it to thought I was someone not worth listening to.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Andy, true. I was specifically thinking of English borrowing words back from languages that had originally borrowed from English, which, yeah, we’ve already been doing.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Kids are good at unlearning. Empower them first. Tighten up spelling later.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 1:57 pm
If I started ‘loosening up on spelling’, I’d never get a job because I’m a writer and am expected to produce literate and correct copy.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Bruce L., you’re exactly right, and it’s very interesting to me that proper spelling is now hardly emphasized at all in the early grades.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Charlotte, I’m not suggesting all literate and correct copy be discarded wholesale. As I mention in the blog post, business communications are one venue where we place a huge emphasis on proper spelling and grammar, and that’s not going to change for generations if at all. Really I’m trying to explain why for informal discussions (such as the ones here on FF) I’m interested in personally being less of a stickler.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Charlotte, I’m not suggesting all literate and correct copy be discarded wholesale. As I mention in the blog post, business communications are one place where we place a huge emphasis on proper spelling and grammar, and that’s not going to change for generations if at all. Really I’m trying to explain why for informal discussions (such as the ones here on FF) I’m interested in personally being less of a stickler.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Charlotte, I’m not suggesting all literate and correct copy be thrown out of the window. As I mention in the blog post, business communications are one place where we place a huge emphasis on proper spelling and grammar, and that’s not going to change for generations if at all. Really I’m trying to explain why for informal discussions (such as the ones here on FF) I’m interested in personally being less of a stickler.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Clearly spelling bees are corruptors of teh youth. Won’t someone please think of the children?
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July 2nd, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Andy, did you see Spellbound? Freaky how much work is involved, for obscure words that most people have never heard of. I am all for intellectual competition, but the value of the top level of competition like that really escapes me. It seems to turn the kids into stress cases.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Stephen, I have not, but spelling bees are the intellectual equivalent of beauty contests. Memorization != rational thinking
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July 2nd, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Ah, good, then your previous comment was sarcastic. (I approve.)
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July 2nd, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Ah, good, your last comment was sarcastic.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 2:06 pm
I think there’s enough nails in the coffin of this premise. I’m off to start my long weekend.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Enjoy your weekend, Matthew! Don’t worry, the zombie of this premise will dig its way out of the coffin over time.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Yes, there’s a greasy red spot where the dead horse used to be.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Is there? I missed it. Better keep on kicking to be sure.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Amusingly, this is quite possibly the most grammatically- and syntactically-correct comment stream I have ever seen.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 2:13 pm
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July 2nd, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Language will as language always has. It is a plastic, mutable thing, that changes from place to place, from generation to generation, from one media form to another. Old grammarians don’t die, they get abbreviated.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 2:25 pm
For English to evolve, grammarians must die – http://tr.im/qFVV ( via http://ff.im/4GYkX )
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July 2nd, 2009 at 2:35 pm
A few years ago there was a news story that tracked the rate of decrease for irregular verbs. They predicted that in another 100 years only the most important irregular verbs will be around. That is kind of strange to predict where the language will go.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Slippy, I just dislike the people who hold on to the set or rules they learned like it is set in stone.
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July 2nd, 2009 at 3:29 pm
I think we all have a tendency to hold on to the rules we learned like they’re set in stone. Otherwise, they’d just be guidelines
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