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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jul 3, 2023 14:08:53 GMT
From time to time contributors to this forum have complained about what they regard as the misuse of words like "epicentre" and "decimate" and have criticised formulations like “very unique”. This raises the question as to how often and over what period of time an error has to be perpetrated before it can be regarded as acceptable though informal, or a new standard usage. There is an interesting article here:
www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/list-of-words-you-love-to-hate/incentivize
Perhaps this might generate some discussion here — or will this forum finally die?
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 4, 2023 9:06:25 GMT
LJH: Your periodic predictions or concerns about the impending death of this discussion board seem a tad OTT, n’est-ce pas? Over the past 24 hours (according to the board’s stats), there have been 107 guests visit the site. Those may not have posted, but they’ve been here and read something – for what that’s worth. It certainly doesn’t suggest to me impending death of the board.
For better or worse, online forums like this one appear to be dying because their users and content have migrated to the (anti)social media, away from web forums.
I’ve observed this in another of my spheres of interest: classic cars and, in particular, Mercedes-Benz vehicles. Although I’ve been a moderator on three such forums for about 20 years, I’ve no interest in following them onto the social media platforms. Similarly, there are many language-discussion threads/accounts/channels on the likes of Fakebook that I could involve myself in, but I eschew them because of the cost (i.e. the cost of being flooded by spam storms generated by the users of such platforms).
And as for the words in your linked article, Merriam-Webster’s Great Big List of Words You Love to Hate: Nothing new to see there. The arguments for and against are stale, hardly inspiring comment (from yours truly).
While words such as irregardless, impact (verb), comprise, enormity … are frequent irritants, if dictionaries choose to include them in their lexicon that’s okay with me – but it does not oblige me to accept them or (mis)use them. Entry into a dictionary does not endorse the ‘correctness’ of a word, merely its existence and reasonably frequent use. However, should a client ask me to edit / proofread a manuscript, I’ll certainly suggest amendments in such instances as I find suboptimal. And I reserve the right to (a) not use them myself and (b) criticise their use by others.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jul 5, 2023 0:07:11 GMT
I have no doubt, Vv, that you are familiar with all the examples in the link I sent but not everyone is so well-informed as are you. Maybe some of the hundred and something folk you mention that visited the site but have not contributed will have found something new and should not feel inhibited by the erudition of long-tiime contributors. I am really interested in the principle I suggested regarding how long and how often a solecism has to be repeated before it is acceptable. I think it is well-known that many words have acceptably changed their meanings over time and I assume that this process is continuing. And since we have no English Language Academy, it seems that one rule of thumb might be that a "misuse" become acceptable when more people employ it than use the "correct" usage. I think most lexicographers take the view dictionaries should be descriptive rather than prescriptive. I am prescriptive by nature but as I become older I've become more tolerant. I feel sure that examining bodies would accept fir a pass mark many of these misuses by a learner of English as a second language.
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 5, 2023 1:18:10 GMT
[…] I am prescriptive by nature but as I become older I've become more tolerant. I feel sure that examining bodies would accept fir a pass mark many of these misuses by a learner of English as a second language. I am with you, LJH, on being prescriptive by nature (or nurture?). As for examining bodies accepting solecisms, I’m unconvinced that such bodies are necessarily adequately skilled / knowledgeable / caring to down-mark on ‘mere’ language use. In my long experience as an academic editor, I came to the conclusion that anything outside their specialist field/s of knowledge was beyond the ken of many examiners and other academics. Many of them – particularly those in the cream-brick * institutions – couldn’t string together two words to form a sentence such as Jesus wept. * In AU, universities are informally rated thus: • sandstone = long-established and held in high regard • red brick = newer academic institutions, often with a vocational focus such as teaching or nursing • cream brick = those now called universities but which originated as colleges of advanced education or even technical colleges. About four decades ago, AU had a federal education minister ( Dawkins – see here) who, controversially, decided to call many lower institutions universities. The teaching staff in those institutions were industry ‘experts’ (often with reference to The Goons’ definition of ‘expert’ ^) who, while they might have known their specialities, were poor communicators. Some were even failed ‘experts’ who couldn’t find any other job after being sacked for incompetence. ^ "X is the unknown quantity and a spurt is a drip under pressure." |
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jul 5, 2023 15:38:36 GMT
I am not sure that X is an unknown quantity. I rather think the x should be a lowercase letter in italics. At least, that is what I was taught at school. But as I have said before on this forum, I prefer to regard the ex in expert as as "formerly or a has-been". Thus, an expert is "a has-been under pressure" !
Leaving that aside, I would welcome some comments from the hundred or so alleged other readers of this forum regarding my thoughts on for how long and how frequently an error has to be continued before it ceases to be an error. In the absence of any legal authority, it seems to me that as language evolves one must eventually prefer the most frequently used version.
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Post by Dave Miller on Jul 6, 2023 16:03:00 GMT
I think it may be a subtler process than a new usage being accepted once it's the more (or a reasonably) common version. We use words which we know and recognise and for many of those it feels to us as though they've always been there in that way.
For example, I have no qualms over "commentate" (and recognise that the action of commentating is quite different from the action of merely commenting), and have this lack of qualm because, for me, it's always been like that.
I suspect, then, that a novel form arises, for whatever reason, and only a few (I'm tempted to think less literate) people accept it and use it. It won't be taken up by grumbling old fusspots like us, but as new learners come along (young people or foreigners) they see it as normal, and take it up quite happily. For them (though not for us) it is normal - and therefore "correct". Just one generation will do that.
On the particular examples given in the original post, I'll vote entirely against "commentate" being a problem (as explained above) and say that the use of "ize" suffixes does make real words ... but those words do not necessarily make for good style. (The difference between style and whether a word exists or not seems to have been skipped over in the article.)
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 13, 2023 23:26:27 GMT
I received an electricity bill yesterday.
In light of the recent increases in charges (from 25% to 50%), I found it amusing that the accompanying letter commenced with “Your current Electrocity bill is […]”.
I shall henceforth refer to my power bills as “electrocity” bills.
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Post by Twoddle on Jul 14, 2023 10:02:39 GMT
I received an electricity bill yesterday. In light of the recent increases in charges (from 25% to 50%), I found it amusing that the accompanying letter commenced with “Your current Electrocity bill is […]”. I shall henceforth refer to my power bills as “electrocity” bills. Shocking! (Someone had to do it.) |
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 16, 2023 8:02:44 GMT
A subject close to my heart: the dilution of our [here my AU] culture via the aural/vocal re-conditioning effect of imported, often homogenised and sanitised mass media or, as I’ve often called it: technocultural imperialism.
Australian veteran actor and producer Bryan Brown was recently talking of a “fight for Australian culture”.
Brown had just finished filming a Netflix adaptation of Australian author Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe in Brisbane. “… There’s a new game on the block for our industry: streaming.
“… a few billion dollars in revenue is handed over by us each year to the streaming companies.
“We need some of that revenue put back into Australian stories.
“And I mean Australian stories. Not stories filmed in Australia with American accents. That’s a cultural death. We’ve been there,” Brown said.
“If our ability to present ourselves on film is taken away, we will become unsure of ourselves, in awe of others and less as a people,” he told his audience.
Well hear! hear! BB.
The increasing international cross-fertilisation (and some of it really is fertiliser!) of language (and culture) is inevitable now with the telecoms options in everyone’s pocket. Will there evolve a new truly international omnibus English comprising lols, btws, idks, iircs, omgs, lmfaos …; where sentences mandatorily begin with so; like has become the indispensable multi-use space-filler for vacuousness; and … oh, never mind.
We’ll have our robots and AIs to do all those irksome tasks that exercise our brains. We’ll engage ’bots, then they’ll stealthily but surely take away our ability to figure things out for ourselves when the batteries go flat.
I’ll watch films of any culture, but I want cultures to retain their richness of difference and resist the tendency to homogenise.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jul 16, 2023 21:57:48 GMT
I am afraid it is inevitable, Vv, but it was always thus. There are probably more words in the English language that come from "foreign fields" than originate in Old English. But you know that as well as I do. I expect that Old English came from somewhere alien.
And it isn't just English. Think of all the things that the British have exported over the centuries: football, rugby, cricket, the Westminster system of government and so on. Even you Aussies have exported elements of your culture. Think of slang words like uni for university, think of popular music, think of Neighbours, think of actors, think of television celebrities.
Some of it is no doubt welcome and some not – but there you go.
I have no segue for this but how do you feel about the extra letter in our alphabet soup?
www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-17/asexual-people-officially-recognised-by-tasmanian-government/102605830
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 16, 2023 23:17:57 GMT
LJH: I find the whole alphabet-soup labelling a bit of a bore. A few years ago when the initialism began to expand, I decided to take the mickey by adding (to the then-limited LGBT) ACDC: LGBTQIACDC, in the hope of including all. Taswegia is behind the times. When people ask (yes, they still bother) if I’m LGBTIQ… , my response is along the lines “The G and the Q, but certainly not the other letters”. |
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 17, 2023 9:18:16 GMT
Found in a YouTube comment: meloncolic.
Can one assume that’s a bellyache from eating too much melon?
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Post by Verbivore on Jul 27, 2023 22:37:58 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jul 28, 2023 21:05:30 GMT
Thank you for that link, Vv. I am enjoying browsing in it. Most similar sites that I have looked at seem to claim that many words which I have used all my life are Australian in origin. This one has the merit of not doing that. Good stuff.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jul 29, 2023 16:05:37 GMT
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