Posted on 06/20/2012 6:30:54 AM PDT by Constitutionalist Conservative
So. What.
I don't deny I've made some pointed comments, but I haven't intended any rudeness toward you.
Maybe I should not call "between you and I" barbaric, because even barbarians are not irrational. Better to call it decadent -- because such usage signifies not incomplete civilization but a pathology of an elderly and exhausted civilization. That pathology is snobbish social aspiration, in which the speaker, conscious of his inadequacies, desperately tries to pass for someone of greater refinement, inevitably straying into howling solecisms with hilarious results. There's a rich vein of comic material in this, memorably mined by Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Today I suppose no one gets the joke anymore.
I think the disconnect we have is that you seem to take a reductionist view of language that is purely utilitarian and mechanistic. For you, language is only communication -- am I right? The way that communication's accomplished is therefore unimportant, right? My own view of language is more complex. To me, it's an essential way of being human. As such it draws deeply on the human attachment to logic, order, and beauty. Language is what we use in our relations with others, in the way we regard ourselves, and has much to do with our spiritual lives also.
The thing is, human beings care about order and beauty. A sword or gun needn't be a work of art, but often is. There is no utility in a nicely landscaped yard or in wildflowers by the side of the road, but most of us prefer these over dirt or eminently useful concrete.
I suggest you re-examine your assumptions and beliefs about what language is.
See my post 26. Yeah ....I absolutely HATE that. And people all over the place do it ... TV, radio, news programs......
It’s not so what, that’s the whole point. People are acting like it’s something new that normal people normally talking or writing in non-formal circumstances are using non-formal grammatically incorrect language, it’s not. It’s the norm. The grammar rules, the prescriptives, have always been top end communication. There’s nothing new about the idea that the people not in societies ruling tier using more casual and technically improper language.
The correct label for something like “between you and I” is colloquial, it’s natural language which probably doesn’t follow the strict rules. It’s not a pathology of anything, and it probably isn’t somebody desperate for anything. They’re just talking and probably they had the “he and I” thing beaten into them a little too hard so now they err to “and I”. I tend to err the other way, especially when talking, I know when “he and I” is right, but it never sounds right, I don’t like how it feels.
Language IS only communication. Actually at its deeper core its manipulation, which is the purpose of communication.
Actually there’s a lot of utility in a nicely landscaped yard. Lawns provide temperature control, and they crowd out plants you might be allergic too. Concrete on the other hand spawns heat islands, something desert dwellers have learned is bad. Beauty has a purpose, we’ve learned the human mind needs relaxation, beauty is a regular source of it.
There’s nothing to re-examine, languages exist to communicate, that’s why we made them. What they communicate can be many and varied and can range from the concrete to the spiritual but it’s still communication. You’re still trying to get an idea from your head into somebody else’s. I think you should read less into stuff. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, sometimes people say “between you and I” because that’s not the important part of what they’re saying and they didn’t feel like stopping to remember some archaic rule they just wanna make sure you don’t go putting what they’re about to say on Facebook.
126 posts in, and there it is ... "could of". Dang, I hate that. I see it everywhere. Don't those idiots get it?!
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
Language evolves. That's not even Old English, but Middle English. It's vanity to assume that our language, with it's grammar, syntax, spelling, et al, will remain intact as time moves forward. No generation speaks exactly as the generation before it, and that's just a fact.
Exactly! :D
You obviously do not understand the need to keep the language precise and clear, keeping it free of any need for obscure interpretation.
Imagine trying to apply your method to coding a computer application; the device would need to scan every possible option of every possible language, each time it attempted to execute an instruction.
I understand it perfectly well, in fact had you bothered to pay attention you’d see the constant conditional I put on language was that it achieved the communication goal, successful and correct transmition of the idea without additional effort by the listeners is what matters. You can make perfectly clear grammatically incorrect statements, and you can make undecipherable grammatically correct statements. My statement over and over is that if it’s clear the grammar doesn’t matter.
That would be called natural language programming, the holy grail. I’ve always found it instructive that this dream is called “natural language” ie how people actually talk not “grammatical language” which would follow all the rules. Even there they understand the difference between the rules and the usage.
Grammar is just one problem.
You should see the graphics on channel 8 KOLO in Reno0 an ABC affiliate.
I have given up calling them & telling them that they have ANOTHER spelling error.
They are embarassing themselves & they don’t even seem to care.
One example:
A story about a local soldier who was killed in the Far east:
SOLIDER
Disgusting...
I sure wish I knew how much $$$ they pay for such.
Reno0-—
Reno-—sorry fingers are too fat sometimes.
KOLO also doesn’t seem to have a single person who knows anything about geography.
When the large material hauler truck hit the Amtrak train at a crossing north of Fallon on US HWY 95 last year-—the story kept running for over 10 days, calling the location US HIGHWAY 95-A.
95-A is an alternate highway, sort of parallel to US 95, but more than 35 miles apart at that northern portion, eventually merging near Shurz.
I called them 3 times & they could not get it straight.
mark
yeah, right?
Remember that Kennedy daughter who tried to run for office a couple of years ago?:
“During a discussion with New York Times reporters which was recorded and transcribed, Caroline Kennedy inserted the verbal tic “you know” 142 times. As in: “So I think in many ways, you know, we want to have all kinds of different voices, you know, representing us, and I think what I bring to it is, you know, my experience as a mother, as a woman, as a lawyer, you know....””
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/local/politics/2008/12/speaking_styles_mean_caroline.html
There are many...
There is a lot...
If I would have been a carpenter, and you would have been a lady...
While public schools are certainly to blame, the fact is that a growing number of adults don’t read...at all. This had been common in some ethnic communities, and has now spread to the white mainstream.
It is postmodern, and claiming that language “evolves” hardly settles the matter. Yes, language changes, and many of the changes represent intellectual and social degeneration. Ebonics, for example.
Hope you enjoy the “change”.
It’s not post modern to recognize normal occurrences that can neither be stopped nor steered. It’s refusing to spit in the wind. Languages evolve, that matter IS settled. Good, bad, evolving happens.
I don’t think it’s necessarily stupidity, but it still bothers the heck out of me.
Per say LOL!!!
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