Language, Timothy!

[Fatmomma99]

There seems to be a plethora of threads atm about teachers (particularly ones of English/media, etc) who can't spell or use the correct grammar rules and/or pronunciation.
Have others noted this?

FYI, I'm not a teacher, but work with lots of them. Not meaning to vent, but my DH studied philosophy at university. I don't think I'm dumb, but I understand not one word of what he studied. He was into Wittgenstien (which I can't even spell!) (and I TOTALLY don't understand him or what he stood for) but one of his "things" (which DH [and bloody DD] quote at me all the time is "meaning is use".

And my DH has this big "thing" which is all his philosophy bollocks about how language changes and evolves and that is just how it IS.

Deep in my heart, I'm a bit of a grammar Nazi, although I make mistakes all the time, and probably have in this post. But I do GET what he means, particularly now I'm on MN and so many people post threads through devices which auto-correct for them. There are SO many threads where people come back and post "oops! Meant to say ...."

So my AIBU is:(and sorry for the 3 paragraphs of waffle) Do we - shouldn't we - just let spelling and grammar "go". Because what is important about communication is that (a) we send out our "messages" in whatever form and (b) that those messages are "heard" and "understood " and (c) (if we are lucky) we get a message back.

So all those threads which are hijacked by some random outraged person saying (well, not actually saying, but actually saying!) "I'm going to ignore this thread about your dying mother [or whatever], because your device auto corrected a word and you used an apostrophe in the possessive when it should have been in the plural, so you are flamed and have a "
are just fucking crap, and we should stop them immediately!

OOO. Just noticed this thread is WAY longer than it was in my head. Sorry!

I've noticed it gives some people a bit of a power trip to correct others when they have nothing left to respond

I think there is a difference between teaching grammar and being so wedded to the rules that you are prepared to ignore a poster's obvious suffering in order to point out that they have misused a word. People who do the latter would be dicks whether there were rules or not, whereas those who believe that grammar enhances effective communication are usually able to appreciate that 'effective' can just mean someone conveying the power of their feelings, regardless of whether they do so with perfect syntax.

I'm in the same place as you really. I like precision in spelling, grammar and the use of the English language. And I do understand that we corrupt and expand our language every day. Five hundred years ago 'gotten' would have been commonplace but now it is an Americanism. Should we be speaking like Chaucer?
I have this horrible feeling that I'm turning into the sort of person who insists on standards for the sake of it but am also aware that we teach foreign languages with more precision than English.

I suspect this thread will be clicked on a lot (until it drops off the front page) but commented on only rarely!

I'm with your DH OP. I think there's a lot of snobbery around language use, dialect, idioms, slang etc. (my book-learnin' tells me it's all bound up with patriarchy and cultural hegemony etc etc)

Totally agree op and would with ephemaraldfairy about patriarchy etc as couid do with the men getting a good kicking. Dh bring a knob etc but no idea what she means.

So hate the twats on here that correct spelling and grammar. Sad bastards.

I've just posted on the other thread.
I'm an English teacher and a grammar pedant.

I teach in Asia and the vast majority of my students have learnt English as a second language, usually to a pretty high standard.

However many of them, and to some extent my colleagues, speak "text book" English, a bit formal and stilted. One of my Y9 students in particular will only speak in full sentences, it's one of my aims to get him speaking a bit more fluently as he just sounds a bit odd (though perfectly correct!) One of the other English teachers in my dept is an older semi-retired guy, speaks excellent English from a 1970s text book (has never been to the UK). He asks me if something is correct- it is, but explain it is quite an old-fashioned way of saying something.

The way a language changes and evolves fascinates me.
I've just read "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" with my students, a lot of very archaic vocabulary in there, that today's students would not be familiar with.

But it will be a cold day in hell before I let a student get away with getting your/you're wrong.

Language is only about communication. Wittgenstein basically argued that we cannot agree on definitions. If I say table, then we all know what a table means, but if we were all asked to describe the table in more detail, we would have many disagreements. If we cannot agree what a table is, then how can we agree what truth, for example, is. Therefore philosophy is bunk, let's go down the pub.
However, language use is important in understanding meaning - the famous one - pandas eat, shoots and leaves being different from pandas eat shoots and leaves.
Fundamentally if the poor language hinders understanding it is wrong, if it doesn't then ignore.

I do think that language becomes different through usage and that is fine. However, lack of paragraphs, full stops, sentences and basic spelling means that some posts are unintelligible and feel like an IQ test. We need to speak the same language to be understood; we need to write intelligibly to have others understand.

Grammar is important.

(my book-learnin' tells me it's all bound up with patriarchy and cultural hegemony etc etc) Please explain oh wise one.

Language does evolve with usage, and in my opinion mostly becomes more beautiful for it. For instance, I dislike and don't use text speak, but I appreciate that it's actually pretty smart and was born of necessity.

So I approve of thoughtful adaptation of language.

What's unacceptable, especially in teachers who should be held to higher standards, is laziness. "Your" instead of "you're". "Of" instead of "have". "Thankyou" instead of "thank you". "Alot" instead of "a lot". It's without merit, and comes from a place of lazy ignorance. There's nothing good about it.

For language to evolve through thoughtful adaptation to the times is wonderful. For language to evolve through a sizeable minority consistently getting it wrong is unacceptable. That's not progressing and evolving. It's regressing and dumbing down, giving up.

Sushi - I'm not sure that's a distinction that can really be made. Much of language development is through misunderstanding and mis-use. A simple example is the word "pea" which was originally a misparsing of "pease", similar to today using a "gra" for a single blade of grass. And today's suffix "-ly" in words such as "quickly" is a contraction from what would once have been "quick-like"; would you prefer going back to the older correct version?

On the OPs question, I think people judge others on the language they use, that there is high-status language, and that a good education should teach how to use it. That doesn't mean that other usage is wrong necessarily, but just that it's not a good idea to use it in writing a job application.

My personal favourite:

Grammar- it's the difference between knowing your shit and knowing you're shit.

Woman without her man is a useless thing.
Or;
Woman, without her, man is a useless thing.

My own favourite, but obviously showing that it's punctuation which is so very important!

I loved your comments on the other thread fatowl!

As most actual linguists and grammarians are happy to acknowledge that language changes, and what was once derided becomes not only acceptable but commonplace, then so should we.

I do love those threads though, where Mammy Bear comes on all hee-hawing and slapping her own back only to be told that er, she's wrong. I was on 3 yesterday.

Threads don't get hijacked by someone correcting another person's grammar, but by all the self-righteous types who jump in to tell them off about it. They're as bad as each other. I swear, if I ever wanted to derail a thread I could do so very easily by finding an error somewhere and commenting on it, safe in the knowledge that the original point would become totally lost in the next three pages of people saying what a bastard I was.

It's about balance. We can teach the difference between "your" and "you're" while still accepting changes in the language.

Quite often, as has been demonstrated above, a lack of grammar, spelling or punctuation actually hinders communication and comprehension, so, tedious though it may be, I'm a 'stick to the rules where possible' person

I'd correct a poster in my head, but unless they were being a twunt , or it made their post nonsensical, never correct them on thread.

Does it really though Damsel?
Really? If I genuinely couldn't understand someone's message because of a mis-placed comma or grammar error, I'd be questioning my knowledge, not theirs.

I live in an area (not an English-speaking country) where there is quite a bit of poor/sloppy grammar which passes for dialect. We don't let our children use it, mainly because we have connections to other areas (and may well move to one of them one day) where it would be considered just that, poor/sloppy grammar. And it drives me to absolute despair when, on being corrected, one of the children comes out with 'but teacher XY says it like that' - in a way, not making sure of your standard grammar as a teacher is actively holding your pupils back. There is also a lot of extreme voicing of voiceless consonants (so saying b for p, g for k, for example) to the extent that I or other 'outsiders' can struggle to understand. Ditto - we correct the children when they take that up.

On the subject of MN threads - I think 'could of', 'anymore' etc are awful, I cringe to see them and, tbh, they influence my view of the poster; but I really don't think a thread where other subjects are under discussion is the appropriate place to correct, just as I would never correct an acquaintance here who used said bad grammar during a conversation in the street or the pub. It's my business to educate my kids, but not to educate other adults, especially unasked-for.

Sorry, that was to Costa, not Damsel!

quite often yes it does, not always, but often

You're going to have to show me some examples for me to believe that.

The 'have' and 'of' argument annoys me. To me this is a good way of showing language evolving and to me, it's not a bad thing. Saying that though, I can't stand 'wiv'

I agree though, so long as you can read it and understand it (to a limit, txt spk yuk) then the message is more important