...My grade schools of the Fifties still taught grammar and required the diagramming of sentences, now regarded with horror as a sort of linguistic water-boarding. We learned tense, mood, voice, subjunctives and parallelism and appositives. Equally important, we learned to listen to the language as well as its content, without which decent writing is nigh impossible.
With us, the written language was primary, the spoken derived from the written. In Spanish, if I know how “ajolote”? is spelled, the word is mine. Otherwise it never quite is. Today among the literarily unwashed, the spoken language becomes primary. Note how “iced tea”? becomes “ice tea,”? ”?boxed set”? becomes “box set,“ presumably a set of boxes. The people who use these confusions don’t read, perhaps barely can, and do not know how the words are spelled. Participles? Huh? Wha’?
English once had its equivalents of Lecciones de Castellana. There were Fowler’s The King’s English and American English Usage, and of course Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. These today are as well known to our gilded peasantry as the Gilgamesh Epic.
An attention to meaning existed. We knew that “sensuous”? does not mean “sensual,”? nor bellicose, belligerent; nor alternate, alternative; nor uninterested, disinterested; nor envious, jealous; nor historic, historical; nor philosophic, philosophical; nor it’s, its.
From The Elements of Style we learned the all-important “Omit needless words”?, from Fowler:
Prefer the familiar word to the far-fetched.
Prefer the concrete word to the abstract.
Prefer the single word to the circumlocution.
Prefer the short word to the long.
Prefer the Saxon word to the Romance.
But that was then. Today usage nose-dives from the merely infelicitous to the downright annoying. Note the increasing penetration of language by that form of mispronunciation, once the marker of the lower middle class and below, in which emphasis falls on the first syllable of words. HOtel, INsurance, DEEfense, REEsources, DEEtail. It is the linguistic parallel of a facial tattoo.
The "iced tea" and "boxed set" examples are interesting cases, because I tend to think this is actually a flaw of English that was bound to be corrected popularly, rather than some kind of evidence of the coming linguistic dark ages.
In French, for example, words that don't sound good when placed together get extra letters added on! The words "ce avion" (this plane) would sound bad because of the two different vowel sounds, so it becomes "cet avion." English didn't solve this problem, so people solved it on their own.
Last edited by Pointedstick on Thu Nov 22, 2012 11:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Human behavior is economic behavior. The particulars may vary, but competition for limited resources remains a constant.
- CEO Nwabudike Morgan
I would have to dissent from brother Fred in one respect...
"Long long ago, in a far galaxy, the United States was bringing democracy to Viet Nam, which had barely heard of it and didn't want it anyway"
I would suggest that the Vietnamese, both in the North and South were well acquainted with the concept of democracy thanks mostly to the efforts of Ho Chi Minh. A vote was to have taken place according to the Geneva accords of 1954 and it was estimated by the American CIA that if it had taken place, Ho Chi Minh would have received 80 percent of the vote.
That, essentially, was the reason for the war in Vietnam. You can look it up.
I agree that literacy standards have slipped so far as to cause problems. Most (!) college graduates can't write themselves out of a bag, which causes very real communication and productivity problems. I treasure my copy of Strunk & White and shill it extensively.
However, I keep seeing these arguments that the written word is dying, none of which acknowledge the Internet in any way. I spend a lot more time reading and writing text now than I did ten years ago. This whole forum, including this discussion thread, and also Fred's own website, seem to repudiate the idea that no one cares about language any more.
Last edited by KevinW on Sat Nov 24, 2012 10:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
KevinW wrote:
I am of two minds on this one.
However, I keep seeing these arguments that the written word is dying, none of which acknowledge the Internet it any way.
I'm also of two minds. Does that make four minds?
I have only a high-school diploma but in the past 15-20 years I have become autodidactic due to the internet. I can't get enough information. Yes, it is true that I don't have enough information on any single subject to consider myself an expert on any thing but I have enough information on a multitude of subjects to know very well that I am NOT an expert on any thing. Yet I DO have knowledge. Sorting through all of it I'm pretty confident that I have become some sort of knowledgeable human being that has never before existed in all of human history.
(Damn that sounded nuts when I re-read it. I don't mean to say that I am the only one. I mean I think there are probably MANY like me).
Last edited by notsheigetz on Sat Nov 24, 2012 10:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
