thinking that illiteracy is now universally acceptable in everday life

[MarytheContrary]

"would of" "should of" "could of" - They/Their/They're - lose/loose - bought/brought - weighed/weighted

OP- I just wanted to come on the thread and say I totally agree with you. I don't care if there's another thread. There should be lots of outcry about this issue. I can see the demise of our beautiful English language, caused by the digital age, and it's not a pretty sight.

It makes me particularly sad when people write "ty" instead of thank you. I see people using abbreviations on Facebook (and emails from teens) such as "nm" for never mind, "np" for no problem and the other day on a selling site I saw "Hm" for how much.

So yes it seems that illiteracy is both encouraged and demonstrated widely and it makes me feel very sad because once this rich and ancient language has died, it can't be resuscitated.

No I think people who have literacy issues are becoming more accepted. Rightly so. If you have concerns about literacy standards in schools, fine , start a thread. If you want to take a pop at people on an online forum then yabu.

No I think people who have literacy issues are becoming more accepted. Rightly so

What bugs me is not the people who genuinely struggle, but the people who have learned how to use language in schools and just don't bother. It never ceases to amaze me how many school leavers and even graduates cannot write a decent letter. That's a problem. This is not about stigmatizing people with genuine difficulties.

I think people should be free to communicate however they wish.

Just as they should be free to draw their own conclusions about how other people communicate.

Mix words, up, ignore grammar and spelling all you want, just don't complain when you can't get that job you're after.

Yes, you are allowed to make mistakes and yes, others are allowed to judge you and employ others instead of you.

So yes it seems that illiteracy is both encouraged and demonstrated widely and it makes me feel very sad because once this rich and ancient language has died, it can't be resuscitated.

It won't die. It just changes. There was a programme on Radio 4 recently (Word of Mouth?) talking about the evolution of language. e.g. the demise of 'shall' and the arrival of 'the footballer's present tense' (look it up). You can't stop it, nor should you try to.

Plus the 'ancient' language you talk about would have been unintelligible to you in genuinely ancient times - two thousand years ago, for instance.

You should instead be celebrating the fact that because of the digital age, more people then ever before are able to communicate with each other in a variety of ways. Look at the peasants on the farms who couldn't read not so long ago. Now most people can read and write and contact each other meaningfully.

What the OP is talking about is NOT illiteracy.

Derek was on the other thread, mouthing off. Seems to think that whoever shouts loudest wins the game.

Meanwhile the rest of us look on (mostly) silently and draw our own conclusions.

I don't usually get drawn into these arguments along the lines of "I demand my human right to look an eejit on the internet" but two threads in two days is too much for me!

Of course the language won't die!

I love our language. I love how it changes and adapts, and I love that many non-standard forms are as old as the hills, used in writers who will continue to be read long after the pedants bleating 'but Shakespeare, that's wrong' have ceased to exist.

missbattleaxe
Fair enough but I hate to see people getting picked apart on here for it, it's so rude!
I agree that graduates having poor spelling or grammar is a worry.

I wouldn't correct an adult, but I would correct a child. A good grasp of language is an asset.
I think it's lazy to use text speak. I agree that language evolves, but I don't think "Pacific" will ever mean clearly defined.
Some of my best friends have difficulties such as dyslexia and they are some of the clearest written communicators I know.

I love our language too, Jeanne. That's why I try to write properly. I really don't understand the logic of "It's a forum. Why the f* does it matter?" because it's not a thing that I switch on or switch off, it is ingrained.

Generally, if someone can't be bothered to write properly then I don't bother reading. There's plenty else to read instead.

What's 'proper' about it, though?

It's ingrained for you, and that's a good reason to do it, but for plenty of people it isn't. Nor is it always about 'bothering'.

No one has a gun to your head forcing you to read posts, so I don't see why it bothers you. I don't read posts where people talk about pus, because I find them tedious and revolting. We're all different.

I have a classification system of skills which tells me if they are in important or not.

"Would this be useful in the apocalypse" (doesn't really matter what kind)

Cooking
A trade
Gardening
Sewing
Etc etcetc

Knowing the difference between should of and should have....yeah not so much

Apocalypse scenario: you are standing with your family at the gates of an armed compound. Inside are food, weapons, people, security. Outside marauding bands of bandits/zombies. A man emerges and asks you what skills you can bring to the community, all adults over the age of 18 must have a useful skill.

I don't think the ability to tell him he spelt "compound" wrong is going to get you in

FWIW while it's true that language evolves, I think it's still perfectly reasonable and valid to make qualitative judgements about linguistic developments.

In my view the average quality, nuance and subtlety of prose writing from the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries far outstrips its modern successors. The evolution of the English language may be inevitable but IMO it's not necessarily for the better.

I think you could argue that what's happening to English in the internet age is comparable to what happened to Latin in the Middle Ages. Having spread all over the world as the lingua franca of an empire, it carried on being used as such after the collapse of that empire but eventually mutated into local variations, dialects and pidgins before finally being supplanted - arguably - by English, the language of a new expanding empire from the Tudors onwards.

Now the English and American empires are in decline, and our language lives on worldwide as the language of business - but like medieval Latin, it's now disintegrating into local variants such as Spanglish.

Again, whether you think this is a good thing or not is up to you. Personally I think it's a shame that the Internet age seems to be truncating the range of vocabulary and subtlety of sentence structure that used to be evident in English prose writing.

In my view the average quality, nuance and subtlety of prose writing from the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries far outstrips its modern successors. The evolution of the English language may be inevitable but IMO it's not necessarily for the better.

Well, yes, but it would, wouldn't it?! Far fewer people were literate.

But then, I am a fan of medieval Latin, and think it's gorgeous. Medieval Latin didn't disintegrate. It continued to be used alongside the vernaculars to which it had earlier given rise.

What's 'proper' about it, though?

We've got to have some rules or I might as well type jncrm.fjlfm klxdsm vfjk.jhbx;uivh

I kind of agree, although I wouldnt say it's so much acceptable but so widespread it goes unnoticed.

Also, texting and social media has changed the rules of written English. People spell phonetically either because they can't spell or can't be arsed to spell correctly.

I showed DH a Facebook selling page with "Chester Draws". He didn't get it. "Do people really SPELL like that?!"

Hmm. I'm not sure that's a terribly convincing argument!

I'd say typing gibberish is not improper (I feel like a Victorian maiden aunt writing that), just shit communication.

Pantone I have useful skills and can manage to type properly. They are not mutually exclusive, you know.

Jeanne yes, medieval Latin carried on being used - to a point. I wouldn't say it's in heavy circulation nowadays though

It won't die. It just changes. There was a programme on Radio 4 recently (Word of Mouth?) talking about the evolution of language. e.g. the demise of 'shall' and the arrival of 'the footballer's present tense' (look it up). You can't stop it, nor should you try to.

Languages absolutely can die through evolution. History is littered with dead languages, once spoken by whole cultures, that fragmented into a slew of local variations and eventually just became several distinct languages. If in, say, 400 years' time English as a single language is no longer spoken but has been replaced by Onglish, Inglish Chinglish, Spanglish and Franglais, none of whose speakers can easily understand one another, in what sense is that not the 'death' of English?

I think it's easy to take refuge in relativism about how it's evolution and we can't help it, and so avoid making qualitative judgements about the evolution of language. Yes, language evolves. No, there is nothing a single individual can do about it. But does that mean one can't or shouldn't have a view about the desirability of that change?

When I worked in retail, we got so many applications, we had to narrow them down somehow. (Hundreds, there is no way we could read them all, these were the days before sophisticated scanning software!)
It was my task to scan for spelling mistakes and instantly bin them if I found one.
In the real world, it's important.
It may seem unfair, we may have let the best salesperson in the world slip through our fingers, but attention to detail is important.
If you can't be bothered to check your application, why would you bother to make an effort in our business?

I always remember SottishMummy fondly in cases like this. She said something along the lines of ...

I like it when posters
Start threads about
Grammar and spelling
It means I can spot
The dickhead very quickly.