How long it took for you to reach 5000 points? - Lounge

Silver

sp4cetiger wrote:

When I was in college, I took a Spring Break trip to Jamaica. The official language is English and they even have their own official standard for how the language should be spoken there, but what the natives actually speak is barely discernible as English. The preponderance of slang made conversations difficult, but I have to admit that the mish-mash of West African and English influences created something beautiful. Some of this slang can be heard in reggae music, but even that is usually much more recognizable as English than what they speak on the streets. It's hard for me to understand how someone could claim to value the beauty of language while simultaneously insisting that it have a strict form -- I can think of few things uglier than one of us trying to correct the langauge of a Jamaican native just because it doesn't follow our idea of the way English should be spoken.

I just want to point out again there's a strong difference between dialects (which are just differing forms of language that are only given designation as "dialects" because they aren't spoken by the most powerful or privileged people who speak that language) and basic grammatical rules. They're issues of cultural analysis and linguistic analysis respectively, which are incredibly different. Correcting someone's shitty grammar isn't cutting off their means to express, it's giving them better tools with which to do so. If someone has a purpose in morphing and subverting traditional meanings of words to imply something with depth and if the person does it with eloquence, more power to them, but letting someone know they aren't saying what they think they're saying is a completely different issue. Most of the time I'm too lazy to correct people for their grammar, but if someone is using a word wrong I'll try to let them know without hammering them about it, because I think it's useful to know what you're attempting to say.

Wombi

SquishypuffDave wrote:

Has anyone ever said this?
.

SquishypuffDave wrote:

the education system failed her friend so badly.

is that not what this is implying?

SquishypuffDave

Gender: Male

Age: 33

Wombi wrote:

SquishypuffDave wrote:

the education system failed her friend so badly.

is that not what this is implying?

Didn't mean in a general sense. Not saying "I could care less" is in my top 10 most important things a school is responsible for teaching.

Saoirse

The woman who bore me corrected my grammer incessantly and that's how I turned into an omnisexual deviant.

Anyways, interesting point about mathematics cause I think while it's meant to explain something supposedly concrete and objective, the interpretation of how it actually works and what it tries to achieve is completely open up to discussion (and should be discussed thoroughly, from all possible angles). And how do we really know for sure 1+1 doesn't equal the infinite void of sadness and bing-bong?

And who proofread Adolf Hitler's speeches? A Grammer Nazi. (everything you think is being implied there... isn't. Sorry, is not).

sp4cetiger

Silver wrote:

I just want to point out again there's a strong difference between dialects (which are just differing forms of language that are only given designation as "dialects" because they aren't spoken by the most powerful or privileged people who speak that language) and basic grammatical rules. They're issues of cultural analysis and linguistic analysis respectively, which are incredibly different. Correcting someone's shitty grammar isn't cutting off their means to express, it's giving them better tools with which to do so.

"Irregardless" and "I could care less" are very common expressions that are widely understood, so you're not really improving their ability to communicate by correcting them. While I probably couldn't claim that these expressions arose from a distinct subculture (or maybe they did, I have no idea), the idea that we can make clear black/white distinctions between what's the domain of grammarians and what's the domain of "cultural analysts" seems very silly to me, especially on an internet forum that features users from around the globe.

But again, it depends on context. If one of my buddies is constantly using a word in a way that's different from normal and he's not aware of it, then yeah I'll point it out to him. I'm not saying that all grammatical corrections are ethnocentric, I'm just saying that demanding a particular form of language is.

Satie

Silver wrote:

They're issues of cultural analysis and linguistic analysis respectively, which are incredibly different.

have you ever talked to a linguist? linguistics is a subdiscipline of anthropology by some definitions (my institution's, for example), and when it isn't, it's at the very least regarded as a social science. there is no way to separate the formal systems humans create from the cultural conditions that spawn them.

sp4cetiger

Quote:

This hasn't been my experience at all, maybe because my friends and family are all linguistics nerds. Correcting or being corrected has never been confrontational or personal or anything to do with superiority. Interpreting it that way is 100% the listener's decision.

I'm not referring to anything that's determined by a conscious decision, but rather an emotional response. It may be that some of your friends and family do react emotionally to being corrected, but just don't say so.

I have a friend at work who is widely labelled as "pretentious" for constantly correcting people, but I doubt this has ever been said to his face. I really like him, to be honest, because his zealousness seems to come from a love of learning, but I admit that he can be a bit overbearing at times.

Muslim-Bigfoot

Gender: Male

Age: 33

Location: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

People's reaction to "I could care less" doesn't have much to do with grammar Nazism or actually linguistic prescription, I think. It's a situation like this: suppose "We know yogurt isn't black" was a common expression in a language. Suppose the point of this expression was to convey limpidity. From a linguistic point of view using it in the form of "We know yogurt is black" would be no problem inasmuch as it is common and communication is made possible by it. But people who know what this obvious expression in its original form is meant to do wouldn't be able to help but see the over-your-head aspect of using it in its new form.
_________________
"I feel like for the last two years there’s been sort of a sonic evolution happening and I’ve been experimenting more and more."

Silver

permafrost wrote:

have you ever talked to a linguist? linguistics is a subdiscipline of anthropology by some definitions (my institution's, for example), and when it isn't, it's at the very least regarded as a social science. there is no way to separate the formal systems humans create from the cultural conditions that spawn them.

Of course formal human systems all come from anthropological frames of reference and everything comes back to culture at some point, but the actual depth of meaning in something like semiotics compared to how dialects develop are two pretty distinct things, at least in my mind.

WindowAbove

Gender: Male

Age: 25

Location: Iowa

I could care less about grammar, in fact I care a lot if you say something wrong while being intelligent. Invalidating someone's argument due to a conventional mistake is just as bad though. I'm with both sides in this thread.