Support for 'itcher

[Sully60]

Oh dear, this thread does seem to represent a very creationist viewpoint of the English language.
Some amongst us must believe that the English language was created in seven days by God and has been sitting around in the garden of Eden staying away from serpents ever since.

Good thing the English (and all them other nations who thought they were the only people capable of navigating great distances at sea) got out and explored the world and meet new cultures and experience new things.

And isn’t it funny how many of the slang words/colloquialisms used by many of the people of lower class on sailing ships are now part of the English language as we know it.

Don’t get me wrong I believe in standards and would like to see a better standard of English used but the times they are a changing, they always have and they always will as are the expectations/intentions of the people who use it.

[Jantar]

Language does change, but that doesn't mean standards should drop as a result. The english language is rich in the variety of its vocabulary. We can chose a particular word because it has a slightly different meaning or emphasis to to another similar word. But we cannot replace words of totally different meaning and expect to be understood.

Misspelling through a typing error, or because we think faster than we write, is excusable. Deliberate missppelling is an insult to the reader. Like Hitcher, I do not like to be insulted in this way.

[James Deuce]

The written and spoken are diverging, and there's very little to "being done" to keep them close. The Magic Genie Mushrooms who plan our educational syllabi these days seem to think that "Knowledge Workers" dont knead too no what spilling is.

Try writing a script and positing a mispelled statement or query. Your script won't work. The word "standard" indicates a framework for keeping something, either physical, virtual, or implied within useful parameters for many people approaching the standardised object from many different perspectives.

The "English" language is on the move in a substantial fashion, and developing many dialects. The real language is emerging from the dialectic inherent in any systemic change and has the potential to cause a great deal of damage as adherents to particular dialects become isolated. Isolation is a very bad thing indeed in a developing communication scope that edges closer to Global. Smug linguistics and anthropology professors seldom acknowledge that the rate of change is many times what it was even 20 years ago.

It will soon be that non-native English speakers read and write English far better than the native English "speakers", thanks to lazy educational standards. Change is inevitable. Unmanaged change in communications frameworks is a dangerously deluded approach.

[Daffyd]

The thing that guts me is the appalling standard of the TV Newscasters. I get sick of hearing about the Japanese hunting Wales in our part of the ocean.
I would have thought that the Japanese would hunt WHALES and leave the hunting of Wales to the All Blacks!

[Hitcher]

I didn't learn much english in NZ schools.
I found it hard enough to learn the Maori

There is a double standard afoot here too. It's OK to mangle English but a capital crime to say *Towerpo* instead of the the politically correct *Toepaw*.

[avgas]

There is a double standard afoot here too. It's OK to mangle English but a capital crime to say *Towerpo* instead of the the politically correct *Toepaw*.

A E I O U
messes up all the spellin of stuff when you consider mari aye.
Besides english is overated bastardized latin. The sheer fact of that means that as long as it is not pronounced incorrectly everywhere...it is international.
Kinda like that toilet symbol, green go, red stop, man walking, sign language, math, clapping, hugs and also money.
All languages that failed to change never made it as far.
However i do fear that in future
al spkn/wrtn wil lk lke dis tks 2 evo

[steveb64]

And we have a chain store called Luving and Guving.

New Zealand's trademark flat vowels are a key component in what passes for our accent. The only people who are troubled by that are West Islanders across the dutch -- the land of feesh and cheeps; where children have dards and put rubbish in bargs; and where only fewels break two-second rewels.

(That should get Bug Dave of the can...)

You reckon?!? Try a bit of good Kiwi on some 'Merkins sometime... You may need to find an interpreter... I know I did. Used to get comments like "I love hearing Steve talk - I just can't understand most of what he's saying..."


Russians tended to have similar problems as well:

Receptionist: "Hello, Centre for Business Information."

Me: "Yeah, Hi, Can I speak with Janine in the IT department please?"

Receptionist: "Errr, one moment please..."

Janine: "Hello?"

Me: "Hi Janine..."

Janine: "Bwahahahaha"

Me: "?"

Janine: "The receptionist that put you through said 'There's someone on the phone, I can't tell what language they're speaking, but I think he's asking to speak with you'..."

Me: "Bwhahahaha!"



I also used to get laughs from the Russians, when I'd be speaking with them in my mangled Kiwi english, then I'd say something in Russian - and they'd crack up. Then, when I asked what I'd said wrong in Russian - they'd go "No - it wasn't your Russian that's the problem - we were laughing because we couldn't understand your ENGLISH - then you switched to Russian, and out came this pure Moscow accent, with not a trace of an accent!".

The REALLY annoying thing - was there was an Aussie on the same project, with a really good strine accent - and neither the Americans or Russians had any problem understanding her...

[Number One]

tee hee hee this will get all you purists going...

The TV 3 weather man just said the weather was "Good and getting Gooder" then he said please forgive the illiteration....what about the word mate?! That's the shocker

[Hitcher]

al spkn/wrtn wil lk lke dis tks 2 evo

A quick death is overrated.

[James Deuce]

"His eyes were of the blue of the forget-me-not, and of a profound melancholy, save when he was plunging his hook into you, at which time two red spots appeared in them and lit them up horribly. In manner, something of the grand seigneur still clung to him, so that he even ripped you up with an air, and I have been told that he was a raconteur of repute. He was never more sinister than when he was most polite, which is probably the truest test of breeding; and the elegance of his diction, even when he was swearing, no less than the distinction of his demeanour, showed him one of a different caste from his crew."

For a start, this would be deemed too violent today for most under-10s at whom the book is aimed. Indeed it casually mentions boys dying or being killed if they dared to get too old, killed by one of the protagonists, who, thanks to Disney, we all think of as a slightly effete flying Robin Hood.

Let's not mention the fact that there are at least four words in that paragraph that are NOT in the vocabulary of anyone under 30, at least not there until encountered and investigated on www.dictionary.com. Once upon a time, Under-10s were expected to be able to spell those four words and understand what they meant.

This book frequently alludes to the sexual nature of women, and what is required to produce babies; that is, it requires two people, one of each gender, to produce the aforementioned baby. Behaviour within marital relationships is examined quite closely and gender roles analysed closely, pointing out the frailty (and humiliating ridiculousness) of the male ego, and the yearning of the suffragette combined with the conflicts that creates for a devoted mother, deliberately denied the skills of "life" by a society that doesn't want educated women. Sex education, Sexual Politics education, and flat out Politics. In a book for Under-10s.

I rather suspect that a modern representation of the above quoted paragraph would be reduced thusly:

This mutha fucka
With hook for a hand

will cut you up good
if you fuck wid da man.

People groan, whinge, pout, and actually threaten violence, but beauty is draining from written expression every time someone butchers something written. Everything you write from insurance forms to the tearful rejoinders of those abused by Officer Mikey say something about you. Yes, there are people who genuinely struggle, not through willful ignorance but unhappy accident of neurological arrangement, to write clearly, but most of these people have the guts to say they have a real reason for it and you have to admire them for participating with vigor and zeal in a written medium.

I like my language. It does poetry and music without clumsiness, thanks to syllabic variety of choice. You usually have three or four words that you can use in a given circumstance, unlike those bloody Germans who will use one HUGE word to describe the cultural inclinations of small village in Croatia.

Have fun with it, stop shying away from the possibilities and try to open up your minds.

If I can go from ATGATT Nazi, vociferous defender of righteous and safe riding (reflective Sam Browne belt compulsory. Nurse!), to enjoying seeing someone riding a Xinghuoxat Q170i wearing little more than 17 square centimetres of stretchy fabric and a smile, then you guys can lighten up about feeling persecuted about someone passionately trying to gift you muscle for your vocabulary and syntax.

[Ixion]

Bloody thing won't let me bling you

I used to have books like that when I was a kid. They were cool, interesting, exciting. Boys loved them wanted to learn to read. Reading opened whole vistas of excitement and novelty. Magic casements, opening upon the foam of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn. And we explored them all. With hearts thudding at the plight of the hero, as we sneaked an extra chapter, hidden with torch beneath the blankets.

Now we give kids linguistic pap, PC and deadly boring.

I wouldn't read the crap that schools put in front of small boys nowdays , why should they. And the codswallop they do dish up teaches them nothing. There is no such thing as too difficult a word for a 10 year old boy.