Pronunciation watch

[Lateralthinking1]

One question which has not so far been asked is, if changes to our language are to be accepted at the present rate, how will non-English speaking peoples ever be able to learn it?

That is a very good point. Incidentally, you write very well. I often feel quite lacking when I read some of your writing. You are academically inclined. For good and ill, I display the 1960s/1970s emphasis on creative writing which left us all largely to our own devices. But I have two O'Levels in English, including Language, and an A'Level in English Literature plus the other thing from York.

Imagination can make up for problems with brevity but class difference had a bearing. Those of us who started with quite low expectations of eloquence had a tendency to be elaborate. One can see it in the learning of some foreign people. The current trend is the journalistic sound bite. I get the point of it but can find the succinctness offhand in business and trite elsewhere.

I don't like "they thought up".

On other points raised, particularly common sense and adaptability, there is a question about where we draw the line. Here are some comments on You Tube about the 1812 -

- i turned up the volume, stone room Xonar effects, stuff was falling of my desk.

- how many people listen to this song for Farscape and or Smokey and the Bandit 3? heh i watch for both of em, first for Farscape and the loveable craziness of John Crichton, then also for seeing Buford T Justice almost get blown up hehheheheeh.

- Americans steal everything and claim they own it they landed on the moon fist but that doesnt mean its bloody theirs.. :)

- oh. my. god. this comment made my week :'D

- This is amazing.

- I love this peice of music, is very sutiable for blowing things up though wierdly

- ya know, it's gunna suck that eventually music like this WILL be forgotten one of these days. People in the future will be looking at OUR music as classical (which is obsured don't get me wrong) and the classic rock we listen to will be regared as "the classics". I doubt that with a strong fanbase, these types of symphonies and sonatas will ever die. LONG LIVE THE CLASSICS!!

[Lateralthinking1]

I don't think '...were amazed by the number of which they thought' has gained much in gainliness!

Well, I would seek a different word - 'mentioned', 'recalled'?

On split infinitives, people tend to say "I will meet you at 8pm" rather than "I will at 8pm meet you". "To boldly go" is an "I will at 8pm meet you". Wasn't it verb, time, manner, place?

And that is what you can teach them to use

Thank you. Possibly.

I think some analogies are useful.

Do you want to see Permitted Development Rights in language or is there scope for a planning system? What can prevent the English language becoming Torremolinos?

Does anything go if it can be attached to a peg from Chaucer to the latest hip-hop record? How are accuracy and permissiveness to be weighted?

Should we look at very distant history as a means of reinforcing norms or accommodating change?

If we are to rely on writers, which ones? Byron or Barstow? Kerouac or Cummings? Motion or Cooper Clarke?

How long a time is sufficiently long to establish that something isn't simply modish?

[kernelbogey]

Lat - as a teacher (you), there are some points that require judgement. Spelling mistakes like Brittania or devestate (to mention two I've seen lately, uncorrected ) require quiet correction (google corrects them automatically). But other cases have to be considered carefully, and in context. Where there is hesitation or different uses, I would leave well alone. Ending a sentence with 'of'? What are you thinking of? I might offer alternatives for students to think about themselves, or to discuss with the remark that 'I would say ...', rather marking something wrong.

I like a phrase which appeared in early editions of Collins English Dictionary - I don't have access to a more recent one to check if they still do include this - as guidance in the form 'Careful users of English prefer...'. I think this is a useful phrase, although it may nonetheless support usages that are a little 'out of date' for some .

[Pabmusic]

...Ending a sentence with 'of'? What are you thinking of? I might offer alternatives for students to think about themselves, or to discuss with the remark that 'I would say ...', rather marking something wrong.

Nothing is intrinsically wrong with ending a sentence with a preposition. The 'rule' against it is an artificial one, dreamed up at a time when many scholars thought that English should conform to the rules of Latin. You can't and a Latin sentence with a preposition, so English should follow suit. (It's rather similar to the 'rule' against splitting an infintive.) It''s a good thing that so many of us don't agree.

What people ought to be taught is to be conscious of their style and to avoid piling up prepositions.

[jean]

'Careful users of English prefer...'. I think this is a useful phrase, although it may nonetheless support usages that are a little 'out of date' for some .

It may also suggest that people who have good reason for choosing the form they prefer are actually being merely careless.

I would not argue, for example, that slowly isn't the preferred form of the adverb these days, but what I've tried to show here is that the survival of slow as an adverb is not merely the result of carelessness.

When I was teaching advanced students, I would say things like "People may judge you harshly if you write this, even though there are good precedents for it."

The more advanced your students, the more fun you can have discussing the prejudices of the native speaker.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

What people ought to be taught is to be conscious of their style and to avoid piling up prepositions.

Form John Humphrys' "Lost for Words":-

'I shall probably not go as far as the little boy who, it is said, disliked a book about Australia that his mother was fond of reading to him at bedtime and finally demanded, "What have you brought that book I don't like being read to out of about Down Under up for?"'

Yes, I know; I've quoted it before, but it's a classic.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

On other points raised, particularly common sense and adaptability, there is a question about where we draw the line. Here are some comments on You Tube about the 1812 -

- i turned up the volume, stone room Xonar effects, stuff was falling of my desk..........

(good examples)

...........- ya know, it's gunna suck that eventually music like this WILL be forgotten one of these days. People in the future will be looking at OUR music as classical (which is obsured don't get me wrong) and the classic rock we listen to will be regared as "the classics". I doubt that with a strong fanbase, these types of symphonies and sonatas will ever die. LONG LIVE THE CLASSICS!!

Exactly.
But have you noticed how many of those who regard good English as "prejudice" write impeccable English themselves, thereby placing themselves on a higher plane than those of whom they claim to be tolerant?

[kernelbogey]

Form John Humphrys' "Lost for Words":-

'I shall probably not go as far as the little boy who, it is said, disliked a book about Australia that his mother was fond of reading to him at bedtime and finally demanded, "What have you brought that book I don't like being read to out of about Down Under up for?"' Yes, I know; I've quoted it before, but it's a classic.

I've also posted this before, but a second heads up is justifiable -

I lately lost a preposition;
It hid, I thought, beneath my chair,
And angrily I cried, "Perdition!
Up from out of in under there."
Correctness is my vade mecum,
And straggling phrases I abhor,
And yet I wondered, "What should he come
Up from out of in under there for?"

[kernelbogey]

Alps: BTW - speaking as one pedant to another - shouldn't it be John Humphreys's?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Alps: BTW - speaking as one pedant to another - shouldn't it be John Humphreys's?

Maybe, but there's no "e" in the name.

[french frank]

When I was teaching advanced students, I would say things like "People may judge you harshly if you write this, even though there are good precedents for it."

In Plain Words - advice for civil servants on the use of good English, Sir Ernest Gowers wrote (from memory, reworded): "It's better not to split infinitives in official letters because this 'rule' has such a strong hold on the popular mind that they'll consider you illiterate if you flout it." IOW, humour them . Ah! found the quote: he says that 'broad-minded grammarians have described it as a bad name and a bad rule'.

The only 'rule' to my mind is - write clear natural English. And, no, I don't think "To boldly go" is natural English, though it emphasises 'boldly' more than 'to go boldly' because of the unusual word order. There are other considerations besides iron rules - and again I ask: what 'authority' do these rules have if, down the centuries, they have been broken by our best writers?

[gurnemanz]

This is the point I have been making, but it's exactly what I believe is happening. The tolerance police are all-powerful

I have studied and taught languages for all my professional life and have acquired some understanding of how they work. I would not say that, as a consequence, I am necessarily better at expressing myself than someone who is ignorant of how language works any more than I, who have little idea how an internal combustion engine works, am a worse driver than an expert car mechanic. I have always been strict on enforcing an awareness of standard usage in my students. The paradox is that I am also "tolerant" in the sense referred to above, because I am aware that it is abuse of the standard that keeps languages dynamic and know that everyone has grammatical "competence" in terms of so-called deep structure. We are born with it hard-wired and I therefore know that I should accept that everyone is qualified to determine which way this non-linear deep language transforms itself through to the surface as a linear string of words via the syntax of a specific language such as English. Whereas elegance of style and economy of expression are clearly factors in judging linguistic performance, the ultimate criterion for judging an utterance is surely how precisely the meaning is communicated.

Most innovation in language must have started off as an abuse of current rules, frowned on by traditionalists and underlined in red by people like me. Shakespeare makes hardly any use of the continuous verb form - "I am eating" neither does the King James Bible, yet it has become a standard and characteristic feature of modern English which has established itself because it has proved useful in conveying nuances of meaning: "I play tennis" v "I'm playing tennis". It marches on and is nowadays extending its grip into usage such as "I'm liking it" which I would definitely tend to draw the line at. (sorry ...at which I would tend to draw the line.)

[JFLL]

There are other considerations besides iron rules - and again I ask: what 'authority' do these rules have if, down the centuries, they have been broken by our best writers?

I’d say that what we normally call ‘good English’ is an unwritten codification of what most reasonably educated people say and write in normal circumstances at a particular period. Writers are an exception, since they may be given licence to bend the rules for expressive effect. So the fact that a particular writer has used a certain expression doesn’t necessarily mean that it would pass for ‘good English’ in normal communication.

It’s very difficult, and perhaps fruitless, to lay down rules for all registers. I remember being affronted by a passage in a book on linguistics in which the author said that ‘Casals played the cello’ was grammatical, but ‘The cello played Casals’ was ungrammatical. I could imagine a context in which a critic might enthusiastically have written, e.g. ‘Casals was so much at home with the composer and with his instrument in this performance that at times it seemed that the cello played Casals.’ His expression might be called 'bold', but not 'ungrammatical', I think. Even Chomsky's famous example of ungrammaticality, 'Colourless green ideas sleep furiously', might not be out of place in a symbolist poem.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Depends if it's a black one!

How do you pronounce "soot", "soot" or "sutt"?

OK. Suit would rhyme with boot, coot, hoot, moot, shoot, toot; rather than foot, soot.
But "syooot". Never!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Most innovation in language must have started off as an abuse of current rules, frowned on by traditionalists and underlined in red by people like me.

Of course. But when language was largely spoken rather than written, and communication between different regions was more limited, this was inevitable. Now there is less excuse for changes brought about by sloppiness.