Random Thread - Anything Goes
-
@Obsolesce said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
Another reason English lacks behind other languages.
This is still a very clear sentence, it's the author who has failed.
If the intent is to state that the 'mother beat up her drunk daughter' it could be explained in different ways. But this is still a correct way of stating so.
If the intent was to state that the mother was drunk and decided to beat up her daughter, well then the author fails at being an author.
-
@Obsolesce said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
Another reason English lacks behind other languages.
I don't think that's a good demonstration of how English "lacks behind" other languages, considering even most other Germanic languages alone the reflexive pronoun(s) tend to be the same word no matter what making certain sentences very ambiguous. I think one of English's neatest things is the possessive pseudo-case of 's, which works a bit easier than genitive case in many languages because you can chain them, but is a hell of a lot more clear than a reverse list of "de", which at least in the case of Indo-European languages is the opposite direction of how speech tends to run.
Plus also the -ing ending is one of the best aspects that almost every other Indo-European language lacks or has to achieve in a complex manner which itself is also potentially vague. One of the problems is that -ing is also the ending for gerunds and some other things.
English's biggest problems are:
- The spelling system is one of the worst in the entire world, certainly worst in the western world, even beyond French. Funnily a lot of people who speak only English will say "but things are spelled the way they sound." No. At least French has a consistent way to "decode" (read) sounds and know what they are even if they can be hard to "encode" (write). /u/ may be written u, ou, et al but it still is essentially always pronounced /u/. English is broken both with encoding and decoding, though it's rough to write out all the reasons why.
- The dropping of singular familiar "thou" leaving only "you" and there's several historical reasons for this, but it's a pain in the ass anyway. Which ironic is that new plurals like "y'all" have been created but they make you sound like a hick or like you're pretending to be endearing and you assume everyone else doesn't see through it. The exception of course is if you speak AAVE (ebonics) and it's apparent, or you speak some version of English from the South East.
Languages don't tend to lack or gain a whole lot of features, they make up with them with syntax, grammatical forms, stress, all sorts of things. Sort of like how people tend to view AAVE as a simplified or dumbed down version of General American where in fact it may not have some of the same grammatical properties GA has but it gains its own which in turn are sometimes ambiguous to whitey.
-
@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
- The dropping of singular familiar "thou" leaving only "you" and there's several historical reasons for this, but it's a pain in the ass anyway. Which ironic is that new plurals like "y'all" have been created but they make you sound like a hick or like you're pretending to be endearing and you assume everyone else doesn't see through it. The exception of course is if you speak AAVE (ebonics) and it's apparent, or you speak some version of English from the South East.
thou v you is tu v usted; not usted v ustedes.
y'all is because ye was dropped as the plural of you.
-
One of the problems with English is that informal slang usage is commonly accepted as proper over time. All languages do this some, but English has really embraced it like no other language. So what is wrong today is right tomorrow. And the language just expands and gets murky. So while to some, thou and ye are dropped, they aren't completely. And while y'all is weird and improper, it's considered proper to many.
-
-
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
thou v you is tu v usted; not usted v ustedes.
y'all is because ye was dropped as the plural of you.I didn't disagree with that though.
thou / þu = second person familiar, singular.
you / ye = second person formal, pluralWhat you said is a common misconception, a similar one is how some people think "thou" is formal now or at least that it has some sort of reverence when spoken because of its use in the Bible.
Ye is a bit more weird, because it's an issue of two things.
In Old English, ye was the nominative form of you-plural and you-formal. However the accusative of þu (thou) was þec. When the printing press came, by that point it became þe, and they began using the letter "y" in place of "þ". Which is also how you get Ye Olde Shoppe, it's actually "The". In the former though this was cleared up in print when they began writing "thee".
You-plural as "ye" in nominative stayed, but in other cases, dative, accusative, and instrumental they became "eow", which by Middle English has changed into "you." So by Early Modern English you ended up with thou and you (Norman French spellings) as singular/familiar and plural/formal, and "ye" as a variation of "you" only in nominative case.
What happened next was that in the South, primarily London, the usage of "thou" was seen as impolite, though it was still used elsewhere. When widespread public education came in early forms in the 17th century, it began to really hammer down. Shakespeare is interesting because he actually used thou a lot in his plays but even at that time it began to fall out of use. He likely did not say it in every day speech, but it wasn't as strange to hear as it is now. There are even isolated dialects of English that still use it.
Certainly though "ye" over "you" for plural specifically was already isolated by 1611 when the King James Bible was written and was one of the many things that made it archaic even at the time it came out. I like "ye" though.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
One of the problems with English is that informal slang usage is commonly accepted as proper over time. All languages do this some, but English has really embraced it like no other language. So what is wrong today is right tomorrow. And the language just expands and gets murky. So while to some, thou and ye are dropped, they aren't completely. And while y'all is weird and improper, it's considered proper to many.
That's what happens when there is no regulatory academy.
-
@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
What you said is a common misconception, a similar one is how some people think "thou" is formal now or at least that it has some sort of reverence when spoken because of its use in the Bible.
That's mostly because of its near exclusive use in seemingly formal settings like the Bible (as you said.) What's funny additionally, of course, is that this changes the tone of the Bible significantly (God talking informally) and that people feel that Shakespeare is somehow formal just because it is old, when in fact it was anything but formal. It was closer to fart jokes of the time.
-
@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
That's what happens when there is no regulatory academy.
I'd be more willing to bet that language changes occur because of a centralized / standardized school system. Masses of students being taught by someone who is marginally better educated than the rest of the community. But that person also has their own mannerisms and speech patterns and changes things to match what they are used to.
-
@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
Certainly though "ye" over "you" for plural specifically was already isolated by 1611 when the King James Bible was written and was one of the many things that made it archaic even at the time it came out. I like "ye" though.
KJV took years to make, though, so they were probably trying to provide some consistency from both earlier translations like Geneva, and also just internal consistency during a time when the language was in flux.
-
@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
One of the problems with English is that informal slang usage is commonly accepted as proper over time. All languages do this some, but English has really embraced it like no other language. So what is wrong today is right tomorrow. And the language just expands and gets murky. So while to some, thou and ye are dropped, they aren't completely. And while y'all is weird and improper, it's considered proper to many.
That's what happens when there is no regulatory academy.
I think that makes it worse. Look at French, for example. Global French is not very much like the French academy. The largest French nation, the DRC, doesn't follow the academy. But because of the academy, France doesn't track French globally. But because France isn't the main focal point of the language, the academy has caused France to no longer speak standard French!
-
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
What you said is a common misconception, a similar one is how some people think "thou" is formal now or at least that it has some sort of reverence when spoken because of its use in the Bible.
That's mostly because of its near exclusive use in seemingly formal settings like the Bible (as you said.) What's funny additionally, of course, is that this changes the tone of the Bible significantly (God talking informally) and that people feel that Shakespeare is somehow formal just because it is old, when in fact it was anything but formal. It was closer to fart jokes of the time.
Haha, yes. I've had to tell people this a lot more than I'd hope to have to especially as someone who is not a native English speaker: God is "thou" in the Bible because you're supposed to have a close relationship with him, and in the reverse God says "thou" in singular to everyone beneath him because, well, everyone is. Same thing with Shakespeare: friends, lovers, people speaking down to those below them, or people speaking down to their enemies he used "thou."
Speaking of Shakespeare farts, I love to point out how A rose by any other name would smell as sweet is almost certainly a poop joke because of the open sewer right outside the Rose Theatre.
-
@DustinB3403 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
I'd be more willing to bet that language changes occur because of a centralized / standardized school system.
Not generally, no. That isn't to say it has no impact at all, but children don't spend most of their time in schools and language changes still happen with adults, just accent changes are far more rare.
-
@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
Speaking of Shakespeare farts, I love to point out how A rose by any other name would smell as sweet is almost certainly a poop joke because of the open sewer right outside the Rose Theatre.
I know, people who actually know Shakespeare know how freaking hilarious he was. His comedies are classics for a reason.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
One of the problems with English is that informal slang usage is commonly accepted as proper over time. All languages do this some, but English has really embraced it like no other language. So what is wrong today is right tomorrow. And the language just expands and gets murky. So while to some, thou and ye are dropped, they aren't completely. And while y'all is weird and improper, it's considered proper to many.
That's what happens when there is no regulatory academy.
I think that makes it worse. Look at French, for example. Global French is not very much like the French academy. The largest French nation, the DRC, doesn't follow the academy. But because of the academy, France doesn't track French globally. But because France isn't the main focal point of the language, the academy has caused France to no longer speak standard French!
French is just crazy, but look at German, Italian, or even Spanish. Spanish does have regulation and despite even sometimes major differences such as LL pronounced /Z/ in places in Chile, it's still fairly internally consistent. It cannot be perfect, but it's vastly better than English despite wide dialect and accent differences and it's regulated by the Spanish crown
-
@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@DustinB3403 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
I'd be more willing to bet that language changes occur because of a centralized / standardized school system.
Not generally, no. That isn't to say it has no impact at all, but children don't spend most of their time in schools and language changes still happen with adults, just accent changes are far more rare.
Only if the centralization or school system are complete. Very few languages have that. Only tiny ones.
-
@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
Not generally, no. That isn't to say it has no impact at all, but children don't spend most of their time in schools and language changes still happen with adults, just accent changes are far more rare.
Children spend over 50 percent of their youth in school and as school became mandated that time rose sharply across every demographic.
Masses of young people being taught by a few people who likely all have the same or similar mannerism and speech patterns definitely affect speech.
-
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@DustinB3403 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
I'd be more willing to bet that language changes occur because of a centralized / standardized school system.
Not generally, no. That isn't to say it has no impact at all, but children don't spend most of their time in schools and language changes still happen with adults, just accent changes are far more rare.
Only if the centralization or school system are complete. Very few languages have that. Only tiny ones.
It was attempted in the US at one time, a standardised accent which can still be heard as recordings of radio English, by the end of WWII this largely had stopped though because of population boom and teachers being educated faster who were using their own accents.
-
@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
One of the problems with English is that informal slang usage is commonly accepted as proper over time. All languages do this some, but English has really embraced it like no other language. So what is wrong today is right tomorrow. And the language just expands and gets murky. So while to some, thou and ye are dropped, they aren't completely. And while y'all is weird and improper, it's considered proper to many.
That's what happens when there is no regulatory academy.
I think that makes it worse. Look at French, for example. Global French is not very much like the French academy. The largest French nation, the DRC, doesn't follow the academy. But because of the academy, France doesn't track French globally. But because France isn't the main focal point of the language, the academy has caused France to no longer speak standard French!
French is just crazy, but look at German, Italian, or even Spanish. Spanish does have regulation and despite even sometimes major differences such as LL pronounced /Z/ in places in Chile, it's still fairly internally consistent. It cannot be perfect, but it's vastly better than English despite wide dialect and accent differences and it's regulated by the Spanish crown
Spanish is one of the most standard, but definitely doesn't have a central authority. And the language skews like crazy.
For example: In the two largest Spanish speaking countries (Mexico and the US), the term "elote" means conflicting things. In Mexico it is "corn on the cob", a few miles north it means "corn in a cup instead of on the cob." Not going to cause a war over corn food names, but the lack of any oversight means that the differences can get really big, really quickly. Neither the US nor Mexico have any real language oversight. And in the US, the largest educator of the language is Guatemalan and teaches one standard, and the second largest body is semi-formal and teaches something considered wrong to the entire rest of the Spanish speaking world.
-
@DustinB3403 said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
Children spend over 50 percent of their youth in school and as school became mandated that time rose sharply across every demographic.
You're talking about since the rise of of education since the industrial era, and in fact fewer language changes have happened between 1800 and 2000 than happened between 1500 and 1700. So there's little evidence that is has much impact, rather it has the purpose of standardising things and slowing changes down. Slang has changed and moved around, but sounds and over all usage largely haven't.
