Forum / Goodbye, Cruel Words --

• 
  Ramon Collins

  Sep 22, 05:56pm

  From the WASHINGTON POST:

  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/13/AR2010091304476.html

• 
  Matt Dennison

  Sep 22, 07:47pm

  I noticed an advanced English course for an online college:

  Eng 5400 The Mystery of Their/There/They're Explained!

  (English died for me in the mid-to-late 80s when "they" started using "impact" as an intransitive verb.)

• 
  David Ackley

  Sep 22, 08:30pm

  Sports writers for the Boston Globe--one of the recidivist offenders mentioned in the article--have apparently interred the past tense of the word "grind" (Football: to grind out yardage)-- nominally, "ground"-- in favor of the more regular, but vile, coinage "grinded"--as in " He grinded out another five yards." This is so revolting it makes my teeth itch.

• 
  Matt Dennison

  Sep 22, 09:10pm

  Shirley you jest...

• 
  Matt Dennison

  Sep 22, 09:13pm

  Man on the street:
  "This is so revolting it makes my teeth itch."

  Reporter:
  "Interesting. And how will this impact your dental-care program?"

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Sep 22, 11:14pm

  Language is not sacred. If t'were, if t'was not meant to change, would we not all sound like Chaucerian scholars in their cups? And moanin' incoherently, I might add. ("I have, God woot, a large feeld to ere, and wayke been the oxen in my plough.")

  Woot indeed.

  English is, after all, derived from many tongues and influences. Considering all the Latin roots therein, one might say its purest form sounds more like ... Estne volumen in toga, an solum tibi libet me videre?

  If I cannot be an agent of subversion in language, where's the fun of it?

• 
  Matt Dennison

  Sep 22, 11:21pm

  James (et alia).

  Serious question:

  Do you think the agent of change over time in English was in most part ignorance, laziness, foreign influx, or, well, what?

  Perhaps "laziness" being defined as efficiency.

  For example: "Goodbye" deriving from "God be with ye"

  Can't you just imagine some person of a certain age in the year 1873 saying when THEY were a child it was "God be with ye!" none of this lazy, disrespectful "Goodbye" nonsense!

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Sep 23, 09:07am

  Duuuh?

  (sic)

• 
  David Ackley

  Sep 23, 09:33am

  Of course, James, language changes. But would you rather the changes be at the hands of Shakespeare or the louts at the Boston Globe who would bury the irregular verb because it's well, hard, to remember all those different forms?

• 
  James Lloyd Davis

  Sep 23, 03:47pm

  David, good news, bad news.

  The good news is that, as inheritors of the Shakespeare mantle, (which may have been his, or Bacon's, or Marlowe, or Stanley, or ... etc.) writers ultimately are in control of the way language evolves. So far, despite the interesting deviations of post-modernists, the richness of our tongue seems to have survived.

  The bad news is that every jaybird with a desire to expound, who possesses a keyboard and access to the internet, is now a 'writer.' But is that a bad thing? Language, ultimately, is a tool. Like all tools, it can be altered to suit other uses than that for which it was originally intended, to whit: Ice picks and hammers can be effectively applied as instruments of social interaction. It is the genius of humanity that recognizes possibility. And is this not art?

  But seriously, if language communicates well within the limits of a smaller vocabulary, what is the loss? Consider the art work, in various media, of the minimalists. Do they communicate the rapture of a moment, a vision, any less for their paucity of detail?

  And actors are not necessarily 'louts.' Besides, they never have to learn the forms, only the script. As many actors have proven over the years, they don't really have to understand the words to perform well. It's all smiles and pancake, after all, cheesecake for some.

  But I digress .... often, and with the vigor permitted the aged and uninformed.

• 
  Matt Dennison

  Sep 23, 06:38pm

  As much as I despise it, I'm afraid "alot" is here to stay.

  What words similar to "alot" are currently in place==having undergone a similar evolution?

  Heck, maybe even "undergone" had to work its way into the language. I bet it did.

  Double-heck, maybe even "maybe."

  And what the hell does *heck* mean?!

• 
  Ramon Collins

  Sep 24, 03:14pm

  I fear English is due another dastardly assault with the current Texting & Sexting craze: R U wth me?

  Our grandchildren may be English-spelling ignorant, but they'll have very fast thumbs.To quote the Great Buddha, "All nature is a balance."

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