Language rant moved from OP

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Creative Cowboy

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So from trends that replace Oxford Word of the Year with emoji to social engineering that degrades communication to the level of mind boggling babel, whether that is the plan or not, language that normalizes written or verbal communication to the level of ambiguous symbols should not be championed by serious writers.

Words like gifting, which are plain nouns twisted into gerunds and tied into into verbiage pretzel-like, are unnecessary except in service to lower the efficacy of language used by the young and disseminated by dictionaries.

I now see a broader issue than just being concerned about readers unable to read for nuance and writers given serious acclaim for what would only pass as participation ribbons.


VIDEO: Orwellian Colleges Socially Engineering Students with Fake Pronouns

VIDEO: The Orwellian Destruction of Language is Here
 
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Once!

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Words like gifting, which are plain nouns twisted into gerunds and tied into into verbiage pretzel-like, are unnecessary ...

And still people use them. Frustrating, eh?

We can rant about this process of change, like Cnut failing to hold back the tide, or we can try to understand why people are inventing those words. What do these words do that other existing words don't? Why do teenagers insist on using like in, like, every sentence?

Then maybe we can learn something about human nature and not be sneering at the masses for getting it wrong.
 

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we can try to understand why people are inventing those words. What do these words do that other existing words don't?

To retard thinking. That is clear, not even questionable as the affect is apparent. It is an attack on elocution at the basic level. We're not even talking about critical thinking, but lowering the ability to express ourself through rewarding laziness. It's 2 + 2 = 5 in the language arts and there are people, a confused generation, who will not know any other way to express themselves beyond a lexicon of stuff, things, and kinda like. [See the video.]
 
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To retard thinking. That is clear, not even questionable as the affect is apparent. It is an attack on elocution at the basic level. We're not even talking about critical thinking, but lowering the ability to express ourself through rewarding laziness. It's 2 + 2 = 5 in the language arts and there are people, a confused generation, who will not know any other way to express themselves beyond a lexicon of stuff, things, and kinda like. [See the video.]

Your inability to comprehend a signal system is not a fault inherent in the system. Nor is dramatic change new; the nature of language is that it succumbs to evolution and changes.

Nor are complaints about the language used by younger generations as decadent, inferior or inadequate new; they are as old as complaints about the youth of today.

Consider, for instance, that the English verb To Be is in fact a cobbled together verb derived from two other verbs.

You are writing in a language that is a bastard child of several other languages. In many linguists argue that English is not so much a language as a creole. (They are wrong, but the theory remerges every generation or so).

English, in all its richness and fecund varieties will survive, in part because the language is flexible.
 

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Your inability to comprehend a signal system is not a fault inherent in the system. Nor is dramatic change new; the nature of language is that it succumbs to evolution and changes.

Nor are complaints about the language used by younger generations as decadent, inferior or inadequate new; they are as old as complaints about the youth of today.

Consider, for instance, that the English verb To Be is in fact a cobbled together verb derived from two other verbs.

You are writing in a language that is a bastard child of several other languages. In many linguists argue that English is not so much a language as a creole. (They are wrong, but the theory remerges every generation or so).

English, in all its richness and fecund varieties will survive, in part because the language is flexible.
I cannot respect you as a writer, after reading all the above you have written. I can only hope you do not teach English because your neoliberal excuses for a bastard language so flexible it has no grammar, no valid history, and will only survive because it is a linguistic cockroach displays a low opinion and low standard of practice for the craft.

I am not here to argue. I have said my piece. I have aired my opinion. I thought of someone in particular who has read this thread when I saw the video. It is a powerful video involving the "new English" language.
 
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Creative Cowboy

There's a certain irony in that you are fulminating about the sanctity of English in sentences that are non-standard English.

There's even more irony in that you are responding to someone who reads, fairly easily, Old English, Old Norse, and Middle English; languages that I'm fairly you certain you wouldn't understand, since you're equally ignorant that, for instance gifting is not new. Languages change. English has changed, and will continue to change. Learn to cope, or embrace Old Church Slavonic, since it's not going to change.

Much of what you are railing against is based on ignorance. Take, for instance, your objection to "gifting."

ˈgifting n. and adj.

1619 J. Sempill Sacrilege Sacredly Handled App. 4 Was Abraham so idle in gifting? Jacob so superstitious in vowing?
1671 R. McWard True Non-conformist 163 Our Lords most gracious gifting.
1796 T. Townshend Poems 32 Where once thy gifting hand did weave Garlands of glory for the poet's head.
1875 W. D. Whitney Life & Growth of Lang. xiv. 302 A gifting of man, at his birth, not with capacities alone (s.v. OED).

Using gifting this way is not new. It's not even rare. It's a practice inherent in English grammar, in the way the language works. (Grammar is not a collection of rules made up by antiquated half-witted pedants; grammar is inherent in the bones of a language. Grammar changes slowly, and rarely, but from within the language itself, not by fiat.

People who try to stop language change, or rail against the evolution of English, often do so out of ignorance. For example, you complain about the use of gifting.

Gifting is itself derived from using a noun (gift, or gifu in OE) as a verb; to gift. We nominalize our verbs and verbalize our nouns and adjectives in English, and create gerunds, adjectivals, and participles at will. We always have, since Old English first united various forms of Saxon.

There's also a certain irony that you're complaining about ignorant louts like me, and using the word retard to do it, as in To retard thinking. You are using retard in a non-standard way. It means to slow; what you're implying is to "dumb down." That isn't what it means, though it is often used that way in ignorance. You are in fact engaging in the very practice you are railing against.

Finally, I don't much care what you think of my ability to write. It's pretty clear that you're not part of my readership.

But if you ever respond so discourteously to another member of this site, you will find yourself unwelcome on Absolute Write.
 
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ElaineA

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*raises hand* Which modern country speaks official Latin, again? I mean, pure language, right? Unchanged over centuries...?

Because...dead?

I admit to being slow on embracing emoji, simply because I didn't know what most of them were trying to convey. (Now, they're labeled so I'm all in.) I find a malleable language charming, though. Trying to figure out how, exactly, Chaucer or Shakespeare were insulting people is quite fun for a puzzle-loving person like me. I certainly don't find it a debasement of language over time.

And to be fair, in researching my novel I found there was a lot of the same in Latin when I had to investigate the, er, bawdy language of Pompeii's graffiti. Seems there were a lot of shortcuts taken, and in trying to apply standardized language norms, things become confusing. One person's sexual act is another person's being sexually acted upon. :Shrug: Only they know.
 

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*raises hand* Which modern country speaks official Latin, again? I mean, pure language, right? Unchanged over centuries...?

Because...dead?

Well, yes . . . and no. First, it's complicated. There's "Classical Latin," the Latin most people learn in school. Then there's Medieval Latin, which has multiple forms and is downright squirrelly because of the influences of the local "vulgar languages" and became Vulgar Latin. But then there's Church Latin (aka Ecclesiastical Latin), the language used to this day by the Vatican, and which contains officially approved vocabulary and idioms for concepts and objects that are very much of this century.

I had a dissertation committee member who wrote notes and emails in Latin, and sometimes still emails me in Latin. He uses Latin fluently, with charm and grace, conversationally even. Kind of like this guy, who is going to be cultivating the "Living Latin" approach at Cornell.
 
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Kind of like this guy, who is going to be cultivating the "Living Latin" approach at Cornell.

This is so interesting! Partial immersion. Makes complete sense, of course, and easier to do in other languages (study abroad, travel). But bringing more immersive learning in a nearly "dead" language (I should have put quotes around it before) takes some creative thinking to imagine the best way to do it. Kudos to Cornell and Prof. Gallagher!
 

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*has flashback to h.s. Latin classes*

*runs out of thread screaming, trailing crumbs*
 

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*has flashback to h.s. Latin classes*

*runs out of thread screaming, trailing crumbs*

:D my sympathies.

I think teaching languages with the idea of using them is the important goal, even if using them means reading and writing, mostly.

I also think if we want to teach "dead" languages, or languages that we mostly expect our students to learn in terms of mastering reading, we need to spend more effort on what we use as texts.

I know that narrative lust, the desire to discover what happens next, was a powerful motivator in terms of my own language learning, and I say that as someone with some particular difficulties related to language. I wanted to read more (or in some cases, hear more) and that encouraged me to work and to retain what I learned.

Back in the day, the way that Latin and Greek were taught to young children during the English sixteenth century and a bit beyond that, was "double translation." That is, the child read and parsed (looked up and labeled the part of speech for each word and construction) the text in Latin, and translated it as best they could into English. Then they'd go over it with their teacher, and discuss their parsing and translation.

And then the teacher would assign them to put it back into Latin (or Greek) and go over it again, in terms of what the original said, and why that version or the student's was "better."

This of course ended up also teaching students about prosody and rhetoric and literary figures and the mechanics of poetry.

Here's Roger Ascham talking about it; Ascham was an Elizabethan scholar and academic, one-time tutor to Queen Elizabeth I, and later a member of her court administration. He wrote a book about archery, and one about pedagogy, called The Scholemaster. The book was published in 1570, after Ascham's death in 1568.

The waie is this. After the three Concordances learned, let the master read vnto hym the Epistles of Cicero, gathered togither and chosen out by Sturmius, for the capacitie of children.

First, let him teach the childe, cherefullie and plainlie, the cause, and matter of the letter: then, let him construe it into Englishe, so oft, as the childe may easilie carie awaie the vnderstanding of it: Lastlie, parse it ouer perfitlie. This done thus, let the childe, by and by, both construe and parse it ouer againe: so, that it may appeare, that the childe douteth in nothing, that his master taught him before. After this, the childe must take a paper booke, and sitting in some place, where no man shall prompe him, by him self, let him translate into Englishe his former lesson. Then shewing it to his master, let the master take from him his latin booke, and pausing an houre, at the least, than let the childe translate his owne Englishe into latin againe, in an other paper booke. When the childe bringeth it, turned into latin, the master must compare it with Tullies booke, and laie them both togither: and where the childe doth well, either in chosing, or true placing of Tullies wordes, let the master praise him, and saie here ye do well. For I assure you, there is no such whetstone, to sharpen a good witte and encourage a will to learninge, as is praise.

But if the childe misse, either in forgetting a worde, or in chaunging a good with a worse, or misordering the sentence, I would not haue the master, either froune, or chide with him, if the childe haue done his diligence, and vsed no trewandship therein. For I know by good experience, that a childe shall take more profit of two fautes, ientlie warned of, then of foure thinges, rightly hitt. For than, the master shall haue good occasion to saie vnto him. N. Tullie would haue vsed such a worde, not this: Tullie would haue placed this word here, not there: would haue vsed this case, this number, this person, this degree, this gender: he would haue vsed this moode, this tens, this simple, rather than this compound: this aduerbe here, not there: he would haue ended the sentence with this verbe, not with that nowne or participle, etc.

In these fewe lines, I haue wrapped vp, the most tedious part of Grammer: and also the ground of almost all the Rewles, that are so busilie taught by the Master, and so hardlie learned by the Scholer, in all common Scholes: which after this sort, the master shall teach without all error, and the scholer shall learne without great paine: the master being led by so sure a guide, and the scholer being brought into so plaine and easie a waie. And therefore, we do not contemne Rewles, but we gladlie teach Rewles: and teach them, more plainlie, sensiblie, and orderlie, than they be commonlie taught in common Scholes. For whan the Master shall compare Tullies booke with his Scholers translation, let the Master, at the first, lead and teach his Scholer, to ioyne the Rewles of his Grammer booke, with the examples of his present lesson, vntill the Scholer, by him selfe, be hable to fetch out of his Grammer, euerie Rewle, for euerie Example: So, as the Grammer booke be euer in the Scholers hand, and also vsed of him, as a Dictionarie, for euerie present vse. This is a liuely and perfite waie of teaching of Rewles: where the common waie, vsed in common Scholes, to read the Grammer alone by it selfe, is tedious for the Master, hard for the Scholer, colde and vncumfortable for them bothe.

Let your Scholer be neuer afraide, to aske you any dout, but vse discretlie the best allurements ye can, to encorage him to the same: lest, his ouermoch fearinge of you, driue him to seeke some misorderlie shifte: as, to seeke to be helped by some other booke, or to be prompted by some other Scholer, and so goe aboute to begile you moch, and him selfe more.

I've used double translation with Latin and with other dead languages; it's a lot of work, but it really is effective. It also works for "living" languages like German, and you can in fact learn basic modern German using it not only with genre fiction and Kant, but you can use it with dubbed TV shows, like OS Star Trek.
 

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Why didn't his methodology stick, I wonder. Thousands upon thousands of students would have avoided martial punishment through the centuries. Praise and positive reinforcement is a good way to teach pretty much everything.

(Also, w/r to the subject of the thread, I'm amused English is capitalized and latin is not.)
 

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Why didn't his methodology stick, I wonder. Thousands upon thousands of students would have avoided martial punishment through the centuries. Praise and positive reinforcement is a good way to teach pretty much everything.

(Also, w/r to the subject of the thread, I'm amused English is capitalized and latin is not.)

I don't know why it didn't stick; maybe it did in Europe? It's something that's still studied, in terms of pedagogy (you learn about double translation if you're taking classes about how to teach language, for instance) and if you're at all exposed to Elizabethan literature as an undergrad English major, or if you're a graduate student in English, you'll definitely read at least chunks of Ascham, including his bit on double translation (later he complains that Henry VIII read Malory, and has a diatribe about decadent "Italianate Englishmen").

I read Ascham on double translation as an undergrad, and decided to try it the following summer, when I first took Latin. It works for me.

And yes, rewarding what you want to happen works much better in terms of teaching (people, dogs, horses . . . ) than punishing the negative behavior.

I freely confess that the decision of what to capitalize (which may have been made by the printer, based on what letters he had available at a given moment in setting the type) is odd and fascinting; it's not always based on context in terms of meaning; sometimes I think it's random.
 
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