Pronunciation watch

[french frank]

ff: do you by any chance mean that the Sybil didn't know the answer and was therefore covering her bets??

Cannot comment on Mrs Fawlty's ambiguities, but it neatly undermined my bold claim that endings indicated grammatical function

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I don't think that's quite how I would look at it Where I d' come from, it were:
I be, you be, he be, she be, we be, you be, they be.

Now that does make sense. Why didn't the rest of us follow the West Country English?

The only language I know that has a regular verb "to be" is Esperanto:

"mi estas; ti estas; li estas..." etc.

Getting back to adverbs, most people who replace them with adjectives only do so because they are too lazy to add two extra letters. Yet many people will happily instersperse their nouns, pronouns verbs, adjectives and adverbs with unlimited numbers of "like"s, "yer know"s and swear words.

[french frank]

Getting back to adverbs, most people who replace them with adjectives only do so because they are too lazy to add two extra letters. Yet many people will happily instersperse their nouns, pronouns verbs, adjectives and adverbs with unlimited numbers of "like"s, "yer know"s and swear words.

I think there's something of a toggled argument there. You consider using an adj as an adverb 'lazy'. Therefore you explain the reason behind it as the 'laziness' of 'people'.

But language is fluid and changeable. Usage doesn't stand still. Rules observed at one time are overturned later.

When I was at primary school I was told it was "wrong" to split infinitives, end a sentence with a preposition and begin a sentence wiith 'And' or 'but'. Our headteacher told me so. But where did that rule come from, and why? I am careful (on the whole) about my use of language and I regularly break all those rules. And I have good reasons for doing so.

Where did these rules come from? Or rather, from where did these rules come? Or, whence came these rules? From Mt Olympus, descending on tablets of stone? I will tell you: from a venerable unnamed person of a bygone age.

"I thought of that old gentleman, who is dead now, but was a bishop, I think, who declared that it was impossible for any woman, past, present, or to come, to have the genius of Shakespeare. He wrote to the papers about it. He also told a lady who applied to him for information that cats do not as a matter of fact go to heaven, though they have, he added, souls of a sort. How much thinking those old gentlemen used to save one! How the borders of ignorance shrank back at their approach! Cats do not go to heaven. Women cannot write the plays of Shakespeare."

Such a person, I think, laid down these unchangeable rules of grammar.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I think there's something of a toggled argument there. You consider using an adj as an adverb 'lazy'. Therefore you explain the reason behind it as the 'laziness' of 'people'.

But language is fluid and changeable. Usage doesn't stand still. Rules observed at one time are overturned later.

When I was at primary school I was told it was "wrong" to split infinitives, end a sentence with a preposition and begin a sentence wiith 'And' or 'but'. Our headteacher told me so. But where did that rule come from, and why? I am careful (on the whole) about my use of language and I regularly break all those rules. And I have good reasons for doing so.

Where did these rules come from? Or rather, from where did these rules come? Or, whence came these rules? From Mt Olympus, descending on tablets of stone? I will tell you: from a venerable unnamed person of a bygone age.

"I thought of that old gentleman, who is dead now, but was a bishop, I think, who declared that it was impossible for any woman, past, present, or to come, to have the genius of Shakespeare. He wrote to the papers about it. He also told a lady who applied to him for information that cats do not as a matter of fact go to heaven, though they have, he added, souls of a sort. How much thinking those old gentlemen used to save one! How the borders of ignorance shrank back at their approach! Cats do not go to heaven. Women cannot write the plays of Shakespeare."

Such a person, I think, laid down these unchangeable rules of grammar.

There is little logic in the split infinitive rule. Why not ban a split indicative?
As you say, you are careful with the use of language. It seems strange that those like yourself, Jean and Vinteuil, all of whom write (and presumably speak) good English, are so ready to defend those whose usage is doubtful at best. Those who write without regard to grammar, punctuation, capital letters, syntax or spelling are not defending their use of language, possible for many reasons.
The evolution of language is now being dictated by people who are too lazy to press a shift key.

[gurnemanz]

Getting back to adverbs, most people who replace them with adjectives only do so because they are too lazy to add two extra letters.

I also don't put it down to laziness but pragmatism. I agree about having a standard language and more or less keeping to it but as pointed out by others, language usage has to be flexible otherwise it cannot change. If you can be understood just as well by saying, as they do in the US, "He spoke real slow", then pragmatism will lead a lot of people to do so. Incidentally, when they paint SLOW on the road they are telling you how to drive, which makes it an adverb, so by rules of grammar it should say SLOWLY.

[jean]

Short for 'easy in my mind'?

That's the meaning, yes; but easy used to be used for persons with that meaning all by itself - so not 'short for' anything.

For some reason, we still use uneasy, by itself, to mean uneasy (in my mind).

So

In other words, lazy speech.

No. Absolutely not.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

If you can be understood just as well by saying, as they do in the US, "He spoke real slow", then pragmatism will lead a lot of people to do so.

This would be (and is) frowned upon by many Americans, who themselves demand a higher standard of English.

[jean]

Like: "I sit; you sit (thou sitteth); he/she sits"

Did you mean I sit, thou sittest, he/she sitteth?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Did you mean I sit, thou sittest, he/she sitteth?

If you prefer. I stand corrected.

[jean]

Getting back to adverbs, most people who replace them with adjectives only do so because they are too lazy to add two extra letters.

But what of the people who are so convinced that adverbs must end in -ly that they hypercorrect every adverb that doesn't?

Look at some of the examples here.

They've found actual instances of seldomly and longly, and someone who claims to have known a dentist who invited his patients to open widely.

The quite unnecessary overly isn't mentioned - perhaps it hadn't caught on by the time the artiocle was written.

[french frank]

There is little logic in the split infinitive rule. Why not ban a split indicative?
As you say, you are careful with the use of language. It seems strange that those like yourself, Jean and Vinteuil, all of whom write (and presumably speak) good English, are so ready to defend those whose usage is doubtful at best. Those who write without regard to grammar, punctuation, capital letters, syntax or spelling are not defending their use of language, possible for many reasons.
The evolution of language is now being dictated by people who are too lazy to press a shift key.

But that ignores the question: who made up these 'rules', and when? Ban the split infinitive? But even Fowler (2nd ed) is unkind to those who slavishly insist that split infinitives must be avoided as a point of grammar. It isn't. Sometimes they are better split. And beginning a sentence with 'and' is not grammar, but punctuation which serves a specific semantic function.

Then, there is the question of 'register': what is appropriate and acceptable in one context is not in another - hence no iron rule. Spelling, on the whole, is fixed and observing accepted spellings is therefore recommended. Not to do so is deliberate eccentricity, calculated to confuse, in those who have been taught how to spell. Punctuation is partly personal: a friend commented on my use of colons and semicolons recently. I tend to litter my writing with them because I know what they are intended to convey and I enjoy their subtleties: they probably escape most people . However, just as Radio 3 feels it can dispense with diacritics on the internet, others dispense with punctuation - on the internet in particular. That habit is likely to insinuate itself into other contexts. That isn't simply laziness: it's the natural spread of personal habits. Autres temps, autres mœurs - or moeurs .

The (possibly apocryphal) story of King Canute and the waves was to demonstrate that natural forces could not be held back. Language and tide ...

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

One of those examples was an adverb being used as an adjective, so obviously the hypercorrection was wrong.

[jean]

This [ie "he spoke real slow" would be (and is) frowned upon by many Americans, who themselves demand a higher standard of English.

Oh dear...hypercorrection raises its head again:

1513 G. Douglas tr. Virgil Æneid viii. vii. 105 The mychty God of fyr..als tyte, And no slawer,..Furth of his bed startis.

1600 Shakespeare Midsummer Night's Dream i. i. 3 But oh, me thinks, how slow This old Moone waues.

1645 Milton Il Penseroso in Poems 40, I hear the far-off Curfeu sound,..Swinging slow with sullen roar.

1680 J. Moxon Mech. Exercises I. xii. 209 In large and heavy Work the Tread comes slow and heavily down.

1812 Byron Childe Harold ii. xli, As the stately vessel glided slow Beneath the shadow.

1848 Thackeray Vanity Fair viii. 66 We drove very slow for the last two stages on the road.

[JFLL]

... when they paint SLOW on the road they are telling you how to drive, which makes it an adverb, so by rules of grammar it should say SLOWLY.

I wonder whether the use of ‘slow’ as an adverb is a bit marginal or circumscribed in standard English. You can possibly say ‘to go slow’ with the particular sense ‘to work slowly’, but even then the noun ‘go-slow’ is more common, I think, at least in my own usage: ‘the bus drivers are on a go-slow’ or ‘the bus drivers are having a go-slow’ rather than ‘the bus drivers are going slow’. Also, even if you can say ‘to go slow’, can you (or would you) say, for example, ‘Would you mind talking slow, please?’ or ‘I wish you’d drive slow round these bends’? To me that sounds unidiomatic/colloquial/uneducated, but maybe young people would say that – in which case I’d probably blame it on texting

Incidentally, Welsh roads have ARAF painted on them, and that can only be an adjective ‘slow’; the adverb would be yn araf.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

The (possibly apocryphal) story of King Canute and the waves was to demonstrate that natural forces could not be held back. Language and tide ...

Almost certainly apocryphal, and pulled out of the cupboard whenever it would be easier to give in.
I am heartened by the number of young people I meet who really care about the English language.
Similarly, I was impressed by a chance meeting with a French teacher of French in SE France. She was passionate about her language and worried about the effect English was having on French. She had some very convincing arguments.