wot? no upper case... and other annoyances

[njee20]

I watched an interesting TED talk some while back around the evolution of language. The basic premise was that the dictionary is held up as the definitive source of truth for language, and yet they're constantly out of date and trying to keep up with reality.

 

That said, a significant part of me died when the OED was amended last year to include 'figuratively' as a definition for "literally": "I literally died". Hanging's too good for them.

 

I get annoyed by people saying "sorry about spelling errors, posting on a phone", it's no bloody harder, 99% of my posts are on a phone too. I know we've done that already, just reiterating.

 

Less and fewer is a massive annoyance too. Disinterested and uninterested isn't much better.

[HeeleyBridge]

hi sup? txt bk tnx

[Pacific231G]

I watched an interesting TED talk some while back around the evolution of language. The basic premise was that the dictionary is held up as the definitive source of truth for language, and yet they're constantly out of date and trying to keep up with reality.

 

That said, a significant part of me died when the OED was amended last year to include 'figuratively' as a definition for "literally": "I literally died". Hanging's too good for them.

 

I get annoyed by people saying "sorry about spelling errors, posting on a phone", it's no bloody harder, 99% of my posts are on a phone too. I know we've done that already, just reiterating.

 

Less and fewer is a massive annoyance too. Disinterested and uninterested isn't much better.

Disinterested and uninterested do have very different meanings; I would be worried if a judge were uninterested in a trial but alarmed if she were not disinterested in the outcome.

However, the difference between less and fewer is not so certain. I use fewer for countable quantities and less for other quantities as in "there are fewer triangles of chocolate in the new Toblerone bar" but "there is less chocolate in the new Toblerone bar". and that's what advocates of "correct" English will say is correct. However, my 1990 OED defines less as "smaller in extent, degree, duration, number etc." so it would be within accepted usage to say "There are less train spotters now than there were in the 1950s." I prefer fewer in that sentence and I'm sure you do as well but it doesnt make "less" wrong.  

 

Lexicographers will always make it clear that their job is to map the language as it is, not to define how people ought to use it. Many people do use "literally" in a figurative way so the compilers of the OED would not be doing their job if they failed to record that. I don't like "I literally died laughing" either but it can't be taken literally except perhaps in a seance. Similarly if an actor says "The audience was dead tonight" we all know they weren't in a theare full of corpses. 

 

Some people seem to be very adept at  typing on the phone (sadly including some drivers). Personally I find it infinitely more difficult than using a proper keyboard and I don't think I've ever posted here from my phone. 

(That figurative misuse of infinitely is one of my own pet peeves; if it were infinitely more difficult then it really wouid be literally impossible. I do though find it a bloody sight harder) 

Edited November 19, 2016 by Pacific231G

[stewartingram]

I've seen it spelt center in London and it was "correctly" spelt.

 

What's wrong with "gotten"? It's a past participle of "get" with a slightly different meaning from "got" and used to be in everyday use in Britain. Though it has largely died out here, it still appears in phrases such as "ill gotten gains".  In American English it seems to have been seen as rather rustic but that may have just been snobbery and it is still a living word. I don't see anything wrong with a word we've lost returning. I also don't know whether gotten remained in other English dialects such as Australia or New Zealand but it wouldn't surprise me.

 

It was NEVER in use when I went to school in the '50s. My Grammar school taught "got".

[Edwardian]

I get annoyed by people saying "sorry about spelling errors, posting on a phone", it's no bloody harder, 99% of my posts are on a phone too. I know we've done that already, just reiterating.

 

 

I agree, but then, I only send or respond to text messages at direst need, usually when my son needs to tell me when to pick him up after an away fixture.  I reconcile myself to this distasteful duty by failing to abbreviate and by being as punctilious about grammar and punctuation as I would be in any written communication. 

 

The only exception is when I end a message "DROLL" instead of "LOL", which I do because it annoys him. Obviously.

 

Your humble and obedient servant,

 

Absurdly Residing in the Nineteenth Century, Esq.

[dhjgreen]

 

Absurdly Residing in the Nineteenth Century, Esq.

I thought you were early 20th century?

[HeeleyBridge]

I get annoyed by people saying "sorry about spelling errors, posting on a phone", it's no bloody harder, 99% of my posts are on a phone too. I know we've done that already, just reiterating.

 

That would depend on your fingers being capable of using the tiny on screen keyboard. Mine aren't and trying to edit only makes things worse. I've just endured a week without my broadband, I gave up trying to use my phone within the first half hour.

[Pacific231G]

It was NEVER in use when I went to school in the '50s. My Grammar school taught "got".

"Used to" meant rather further back than the 1950s; several hundred years further back!  "Gotten" seems to have largely died out from mainstream British English by about the 1700s but it had been used in England since the fourth century so long before most Europeans even knew that the Americas existed.

 

Presumably because it had died out before they were being colonsed, gotten doesn't seem to be part of the Australian or New Zealand dialects of English so may only be widely used in N. America.

Edited November 19, 2016 by Pacific231G

[HeeleyBridge]

"Used to" meant rather further back than the 1950s; several hundred years further back!  "Gotten" seems to have largely died out from mainstream British English by about the 1700s but it had been used in England since the fourth century so long before many Europeans even knew that the Americas existed. Presumably because it had died out before they were being colonsed it doesn't seem to appear in Australian or New Zealand dialects of English so may now be widely used only in N. America.

 

It never died out around here. Yorkshire has never been colonised though, perish the thought.

[Pacific231G]

It never died out around here. Yorkshire has never been colonised though, perish the thought.

Thanks Dave.

I suspected it might still be used in other British dialects but couldn't find any references to that. Clearly the 1990 OED was wrong and it should have been "US, Canadian, Yorkshire, and.....past part. of GET   

[Guest]

That would depend on your fingers being capable of using the tiny on screen keyboard. Mine aren't and trying to edit only makes things worse. I've just endured a week without my broadband, I gave up trying to use my phone within the first half hour.

 

Same here. 17 days abroad and I really thought I could do without RMWeb. Well, that lasted 5 days... sad, eh? With only a smartphone to hand, posting was an absolute nightmare using a phone. Having posted, I then (horror) noticed a raft of spelling mistakes. Like others, that bothers me immensely so I had to edit. Took me an hour. An hour I could have spent in the pool or at the bar. NEVER again.

[Fenman]

"Centre" never made onto Noah Websters' ark. "Center" did in it's place. Most of the "ou"s drowned too in the anti-British sentiments of the Federal period and were replaced with color, neighbor, labor, etc.

 

"Center" is quite correct as an American English spelling, though not of course in British English spelling.

 

There's a nice quote from somewhere (can't find it at the moment), by a professor of linguistics, who describes twenty-first century English spelling as being an almost exactly correct rendition of sixteenth century pronunciations. The fact that we say "sea" and "see" the same shows that we have all adopted those evolutionary pronunciations: they were spelled differently because originally they were said differently. Similarly all those silent "k"s used to be pronounced. And "an apple" was, originally, "a napple", but we all gradually changed the way we said it, and invented a new indefinite article while doing so.

 

In that context, I find it hard to be critical of modern changes. Anything that grates is likely just to be a demonstration that I am, in fact, an old fart who has failed to keep up with the times. Or perhaps I actually mean that it is a demonstration that I am literally an old fart.

 

Paul

 

 

Much later post script: as corrected below, for "apple" read "adder". Apologies for the Freudian, er, cock-up.

Edited November 20, 2016 by Fenman

[Killybegs]

It was NEVER in use when I went to school in the '50s. My Grammar school taught "got".

 

At my Grammar School (and at home) we were discouraged from using 'got' at all.

[dhjgreen]

That would depend on your fingers being capable of using the tiny on screen keyboard. Mine aren't and trying to edit only makes things worse. I've just endured a week without my broadband, I gave up trying to use my phone within the first half hour.

You were using the phone held in landscape mode?

[HeeleyBridge]

You were using the phone held in landscape mode?

 

Yes thanks. I have trouble typing on a full sized keyboard.

Edited November 19, 2016 by HeeleyBridge

[Horsetan]

At my Grammar School (and at home) we were discouraged from using 'got' at all.

Also the word "nice".

[HeeleyBridge]

Also the word "nice".

 

I remember that detention was freely available to anyone including the words "more efficient" in any essay.

Edited November 19, 2016 by HeeleyBridge

[cb900f]

My English Master said there was no such word as nice.

 

Pete

[Colin_McLeod]

I was going to describe one of my old English masters but then I remembered the RMweb censoring software.

[njee20]

Fair enough, I'm not quite as quick on a phone, although I find the autocorrect function picks up errors as I go, but I've put about 25,000 posts on forums on my phone!

 

I'm only 30 though, perhaps younger eyes and fingers helps!

 

I was also taught in primary school that "nice" was forbidden in creative writing, as was "said".

[Horsetan]

I was going to describe one of my old English masters but then I remembered the RMweb censoring software.

 

Was he a priest? That would make it even more terrible.

[teaky]

Over use of "very" e.g. very unique. 

[BG John]

Over use of "very" e.g. very unique. 

Each of us 7 billion humans is unique, but some are uniquer than others, and some really are very unique .

[BG John]

cAN sSOMEONE pLEASE bORROW mE a dICTIONARY sO i cAN uNDERSTAND tHE cONTENT'S oF tHIS tHREAD pLS?

I don't need to borrow a dictionary in order to lend it to you, as I already own one .

[Jongudmund]

"Used to" meant rather further back than the 1950s; several hundred years further back!  "Gotten" seems to have largely died out from mainstream British English by about the 1700s but it had been used in England since the fourth century so long before most Europeans even knew that the Americas existed.

 

Presumably because it had died out before they were being colonsed, gotten doesn't seem to be part of the Australian or New Zealand dialects of English so may only be widely used in N. America.

 

'Gotten' also lived on in a galaxy far, far away. Any word that appears in The Empire Strikes Back is fine by me.

 

On the mobile phone thing, for a long time the only person who used text speak when she texted me was my Mum. All my friends used proper words, sentences etc. Now Mum has a smartphone she sends properly worded messages as well, thank goodness.

 

My niece is 5 and is learning to write in school. They have this 'phonics' thing which I don't understand but it does mean she tries to write things that I probably wouldn't have because I didn't know how to spell the words I wanted to use. The philosophy seems to be 'write it how it sounds' and get kids to start writing. We had a great line on a picture she gave us in the summer "Mum jrord the jragn I clud it in."  (Mum drawed the dragon. I coloured it in.) It took us a while to work that out, but on the other hand, she's 5 and she's giving it a go. Her spelling has improved immensely in the last couple of months. She wrote a poem for my wife (her Auntie) and the words are pretty much there. But she is a bright kid and I do wonder if some of her classmates will take the 'write it as it's said' philosophy into later schooling and beyond.

 

If you ever want to kick off a pedantry debate just ask what the plural of web forum would be, as in "I post on many web [what goes here]". There is a correct answer and it's not fora.

Edited November 19, 2016 by Jongudmund