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Emm Eight or M8 or Mate?


Guest M8tom8atom9

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It's clearly not the problem of the English teachers -- it's the students who are the problem.

 

My eleventh-grade English teacher very carefully explained to us that the crux of the matter is communication. In the midst of beating us up for not using "were" when the subjective was called for, he said we should think of the problem of communicating with a stranger from Mars. We should think: how can we understand each other.

 

I was never able to work out the puzzle he was giving us, because he always demanded the correct syntax -- however, I have learned on this forum not to use slang or Orwellian spellings. The first time I posted and said I have bot (bought) something, one of the other members of the forum made me explain what I was writing. My bad.

 

So, the problem is not one of using some archaic word practice to differentiate between different uses/spellings of the word "there," but one of using slang that can't be understood by some guy not from my neighborhood. As expected, even my wife doesn't understand me....

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In the midst of beating us up for not using "were" when the subjective was called for...

 

Were I to have been in your situation, I would have tried to remember that it's the 'subjunctive' . Subjective is when someone says that the ASPH lenses have bad bokeh <grin>.

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I think Andreas was thinking of Newspeak in 1984

 

Newspeak - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Regards,

 

Bill

 

Yeah, I remember, but didn't he actually have a similar, non fictional idea for the English language? I think he even donated some money into a fund dedicated to re-spell English...

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The fact that I've looked through this thread suggests that I have much too much time on my hands. However, given that I've done it already, I'll mention a couple of points which I believe are worth emphasizing.

 

The first, which has been touched on already, is the fascinating fact that a rather high percentage of people who are fluent in English, yet learned it as a second (or third) language, use the language more correctly than most native speakers. i have noticed exactly the same thing, time and time again. As just one, small, anecdotal example, a friend of mine of Lebanese origin speaks English in the most fluid, poetic manner of anyone I have ever met! (As an aside, I speculate that this is partly because of the poetic nature of Arabic languages, though I'm no expert.)

 

Secondly, I believe that the tremendous change in forms of communication which our societies have undergone plays a major role in the degradation of language usage. I am referring primarily to the change from letter writing to speaking on telephones, and my point is that many people who can and do speak relatively clearly, often have difficulty translating their verbal communication to written form. This is particularly the case with examples such as the ones used by the original poster (i.e. were, we're, etc.).

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Welcome to "Babel Forum"; is this supposed to be about photography or semantics? Anyway, what comes to my mind to help with this topic is not Robert Frost (he would have made it into a nice poem), but popular songs:

 

"There must be some kind of way out of here... there is too much confusion" (Bobbie Dylan)

 

"It's only words..." (BeeGees)

 

"Now I know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall" (Lennon)

 

"Start the bubble machine" (Frank Zappa)

 

"Jonny B. Gone" (deliberately abusing Chuck B.)

 

P.S. That would be a thread: making poems by Frost into photographs; maybe my topic for the next weeks ("So much depends....")

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........The doppleganger has been banned permanently, and the original registrant has had a yellow card for winding people up unnecessarily.......

 

Gadzooks Sir. Unmask the bounder. The cad doth merit a forum spank for being very very naughty.

 

Good wind-up though.

 

................... Chris

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Eye halve a spelling chequer

It came with my pea sea

It plainly marques four my revue

Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

 

Eye strike a key and type a word

And weight four it two say

Weather eye am wrong oar write

It shows me strait a weigh.

 

As soon as a mist ache is maid

It nose bee fore two long

And eye can put the error rite

Its rare lea ever wrong.

 

Eye have run this poem threw it

I am shore your pleased two no

Its letter perfect awl the weigh

My chequer tolled me sew.

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The first, which has been touched on already, is the fascinating fact that a rather high percentage of people who are fluent in English, yet learned it as a second (or third) language, use the language more correctly than most native speakers.

 

"Correctly" may be the right word for a questionable point. Non-English speakers who are fluent in English are often very correct in it (especially northern Europeans, it seems to me), without being especially facile. The language of hip-hop, when written down, would horrify any proper teacher of English, but the hip-hoppers are doing something with the language that I find quite interesting, and it's not something that you would likely get from a well-taught German using English as a second language.

 

I suspect that there's something in the need for "correctness" in the German language that causes German speakers, who learn English, to be quite correct in their usage. I was once guided around Germany by a young woman who learned her English in Edinburgh, and in addition to *absolutely* correct English, she'd picked up a delightful Scottish burr.

 

One of the problems with the concept of a "correct" English, especially in the US, is the heavy impact of immigrants -- many Americans now routinely incorporate a few Spanish words in their everyday language, and they'll probably stay. And for years, of course, we've incorporated dozens of Yiddish words, and not a few French. Also, if you come to the US from almost anywhere in the world, with very limited English, you'll probably be able to communicate with most Americans of reasonable intelligence, simply because we're accustomed to hearing the language fractured and twisted and reworked. As long as you've got a noun, and some kind of a verb, we'll usually get it -- but it's not a system that really puts a high emphasis on "correctness."

 

A certain moving core of "correctness" may make a language easier to learn, but flexibility is also a great asset.

 

JC

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John, we have different languages for different purposes. The English I write here is different from the English I speak, which in turn is different from the English I use when I'm writing a program specification.

 

Hip hop may be interesting, but would you want to have to fill in a tax return using it? Then again it could be interesting <grin>

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Yeah, seems a lot of great men, did not really approve of the spelling of the english language.

 

I have always been keen on learning English, I think it's close to a "perfect" language.

 

It's what we could call the language of the earth. We could discuss the reasons for this by trashing British colony politics, or the US influence in pop culture, but let's put these things aside.

 

As most of you know I live in Finland. I was born here, and feel very "finnish".

 

However, my first language is swedish. I'm part of the minority in Finland called, directly translated, "Finnish-Swedes". I will not go deeper into this, but it is a pretty interesting phenomenon we have in Finland, and it is qiute unique. The minority is only 5% strong, however Finland has by law two languages. Finnish and Swedish, now this is great! However, Sweden and Finland as always been as two brothers. We love and hate eachother (specially in Icehockey), but very few swedes know that we have 2 official languages, and Swedish being one of them.

 

To my point, from all this babbling. I as a Finnish-Swede, have benefitted greatly from my 1st language (Swedish), to learn my 3rd language, English. (Second language is Finnish) Swedish and English is as grammar goes pretty similar. Finnish on the otherhand, very different from Swedish and English.

 

When you hear Kimi Räikkönen speak English, you can easily hear the Finnish accent, but when you listen to a Finnish-Swede, the Finnish accent is not as audible. And I benefit from my first language grammar and my first language pronunciation.

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