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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jan 1, 2024 12:20:51 GMT
I can’t think of anything clever or amusing to say so, Happy New Year to everyone.
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Post by Trevor on Jan 1, 2024 23:45:22 GMT
I can’t think of anything clever or amusing to say so, Happy New Year to everyone. Thanks LJH, and the same to you.
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Post by Verbivore on Jan 2, 2024 0:19:46 GMT
LJH: Thank you for opening our year. A happy, healthy, and prosperous 2024 to all!
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Post by Twoddle on Jan 2, 2024 10:37:07 GMT
A Happy and Healthy New Year, everyone!
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jan 11, 2024 17:03:36 GMT
I have recently joined a debating group which comprises predominantly retired people. The topic at our next meeting will be “the decline (or not) of the English Language”. Despite my well-known pedantry, I have committed myself to speak to the idea that the English language has not declined. As members of this forum will know, I abhor the use of split infinitives and the practice of ending sentences with prepositions (but I’m happy to start sentences with conjunctions). I regret the hijacking of words, like “gay” and the habit of inserting random, redundant words such as “like” into alternating sentences. I try to use “beg the question” correctly and I know what “literally“ means.
So (!) how do you think I should approach the topic? My view is that the language is changing, as it always has, but that is no reason to say that it is also declining. Are there some persuasive arguments?
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Post by Dave Miller on Jan 11, 2024 22:45:00 GMT
Well, one route would be not to worry about the detail of tiny patterns within the language and to look instead at how the language is used as a whole.
I suspect that we think language skills are dropping because we see so many more examples of poor English than we (think we) once did. But modern life means that we see daily the written output of all manner of people, whereas, say, fifty years ago we read the output of lawyers and bank managers, of doctors and copy editors.
So, a much greater percentage of what we read is nowadays “poorly” written. But the language is now doing its job so much more - allowing people to communicate.
__________
I note your objection to the change in meaning of “gay”. Even in my own life, I’ve seen it change 3 times (there may be more - I’m not much in touch with young people):
0. Colourful, light-hearted, carefree (now hardly ever used, because it may be taken to mean one of the more modern things).
1. Homosexual, “out” about that in public, and living happily, comfortable in that.
2. Merely “homosexual”. (So now it became possible, for example, to say that a man was gay, but hid that from his wife and family, never managed to hook up with any man, and committed suicide because he felt such a misfit.)
3. (Usually of a thing) lame, unimpressive, stupid. (“He’s still using that backpack? It’s so gay!”)
I got stuck at “1” - as (finally!) a gay man happy to be a not-particularly campaigning bloke who gets on with life feeling no need to hide the direction of my life and love, I object to having the calm, wholesome, fulfilling aspects of the word stripped away by “2”, into a focus ONLY on my sexuality.
I wonder, ljh, what word you would prefer to use for “1”?
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jan 15, 2024 21:09:01 GMT
Thank you, Dave. I think you are correct. The proliferation of social media has provided much more opportunity for people to write publicly. Your comment is well-made.
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Post by Verbivore on Jan 15, 2024 23:01:26 GMT
A collective noun that I don’t recall having previously encountered or reported: a fever of rays.
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jan 16, 2024 16:08:09 GMT
A drivel of collective nouns.
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Post by Verbivore on Jan 18, 2024 7:12:30 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jan 19, 2024 14:58:05 GMT
I am always glad to hear about moribund languages which are being saved but I wonder why this is important? If they were "useful" they would not be dying. Of course, our museums are full of the artefacts of ancient civilisations and we enjoy looking at them and, perhaps, trying to understand the minds and cultures of the civilisations responsible for their creation. So, with any other human artefact, languages should be preserved in some way; in recordings, vocabularies and grammars. This is particularly important if their preservation allows us to research otherwise lost history. But I am not sure that it is worthwhile learning to speak such a language.
The article suggests that the language was not originally written. If it was written, surely there must be more documentation than the few words mentioned in the missionary's notebook. If it was not written, it's preservation will be all the more challenging. Moreover, if it was not written, the commitment mentioned regarding correct spelling must be problematical. Surely, unless the international phonetic alphabet is used, the "correct" spelling must depend on the usual language of the recorder?
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Post by Verbivore on Jan 19, 2024 15:30:35 GMT
[…] I am not sure that it is worthwhile learning to speak such a language. […] From my reading of the article, I inferred that it was primarily the people whose language it had been who were keen to (re)learn it. That might be a route to their better understanding of their history and culture. In AU there has similarly been a resurgence of interest in indigenous languages – both from academic and lay Indigenous. Those people claim a consequential improvement in their culture’s survival, something that was seriously jeopardised by Whitey once we’d colonised the place and almost annihilated its first peoples. (Thank the colonising missionaries for evangelising the native beliefs out of the Indigenes. Those missionaries were a major means of implementing the ‘whitening’ of the Indigenous folk.)
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Post by Verbivore on Jan 25, 2024 0:34:02 GMT
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Post by Little Jack Horner on Jan 28, 2024 22:03:08 GMT
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Post by Dave Miller on Jan 29, 2024 5:39:26 GMT
(The link didn’t work for me, but) I’d say that here - like tear, year, spare, there, yore and spore - has one syllable, while pants and aunts do rhyme, in everyday speech.
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