Random Thread - Anything Goes
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@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!
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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@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
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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@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.
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@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@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.
America still has it, but not for accents (outside of Disney.) The "Webster" system refers to it. Anything with the name Webster or Webster's in it is a reference to the informal US language academy.
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@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
Spanish is one of the most standard, but definitely doesn't have a central authority. And the language skews like crazy.
It most certainly does.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Spanish_Academy
And it basically works with and regulates the language along with the academies of 22 other Spanish speaking countries. That's why when the digraphs CH, LL, and RR were removed as individual letters within the alphabet a few years ago, all countries went along with it. That'd never happen in an unregulated language like English at all.
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@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
Spanish is one of the most standard, but definitely doesn't have a central authority. And the language skews like crazy.
It most certainly does.
As a pretty bad Spanish speaker in the second largest Spanish speaking country, I can tell you, it isn't centralized. The US has an informal Spanish academy too that does things very differently from that one.
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The point is unregulated languages are vastly worse than regulated ones. English is an example of it when it comes to both grammar and spelling, where you can even have idiotic teachers spit out grammar books in the 50s claiming "no split infinitives" and some people say "of course, that's totally true!"
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@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
The point is unregulated languages are vastly worse than regulated ones. English is an example of it when it comes to both grammar and spelling, where you can even have idiotic teachers spit out grammar books in the 50s claiming "no split infinitives" and some people say "of course, that's totally true!"
But English DOES have an academy, and it caused many of those problems because it was the source of many.
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@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
Spanish is one of the most standard, but definitely doesn't have a central authority. And the language skews like crazy.
It most certainly does.
As a pretty bad Spanish speaker in the second largest Spanish speaking country, I can tell you, it isn't centralized. The US has an informal Spanish academy too that does things very differently from that one.
I misread what you said, I thought you said regulatory authority. You're right it isn't totally centralised but certainly at least more consistent than in English. Chile has even gone off the map a few times itself by trying to introduce totally different spellings to clear up usage of C vs Q
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And, like Spanish, the academy has no authority. Conceptually language academies doesn't really make sense, because they have no authority. So they state what they want a language to be, but have no control over what it is.
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@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
The point is unregulated languages are vastly worse than regulated ones. English is an example of it when it comes to both grammar and spelling, where you can even have idiotic teachers spit out grammar books in the 50s claiming "no split infinitives" and some people say "of course, that's totally true!"
But English DOES have an academy, and it caused many of those problems because it was the source of many.
No it does not. What is it?
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@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
The point is unregulated languages are vastly worse than regulated ones. English is an example of it when it comes to both grammar and spelling, where you can even have idiotic teachers spit out grammar books in the 50s claiming "no split infinitives" and some people say "of course, that's totally true!"
But English DOES have an academy, and it caused many of those problems because it was the source of many.
No it does not.
It does, the US founded one in the 1700s.
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@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@scottalanmiller said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
@tonyshowoff said in Random Thread - Anything Goes:
The point is unregulated languages are vastly worse than regulated ones. English is an example of it when it comes to both grammar and spelling, where you can even have idiotic teachers spit out grammar books in the 50s claiming "no split infinitives" and some people say "of course, that's totally true!"
But English DOES have an academy, and it caused many of those problems because it was the source of many.
No it does not.
It does, the US founded one in the 1700s.
Are you talking about American Academy of Language and Belles Lettres? That hasn't been operational since the late 1700s.
