NS spelling in advertising promotes poor spelling in youth

[...]

Lots of businesses create deliberately deviant spellings to offer "stand out quality". Take Kwiksave, Kwikfit, Krispy Kreme and my old favourite (sadly no longer with us) Mr Byrite. At some point, a creative in an advertising agency decided that Qu and C were just old-fashioned and that K was where it was happening. K was cool...sorry Kool. Is there something intrinsically more exciting about K than C, or is the act of mis-spelling something part of the rebellious appeal of a brand? Vodafone chooses to use f instead of ph and Toys'R'Us abbreviates too, but do we see them as edgy, unconventional brands? Maybe not.

But is it harmless fun, or is this trendy phonetic spelling something that sends out mixed messages to younger people? Is it leading to an acceptance of bad spelling? One teacher quoted in the BBC piece, Mark Rayner, seems to think so:

In terms of grammar we are fighting a battle on many fronts, from text speak, on the internet, even in emails now you find shortened words are creeping in. Pupils regularly write C for see and U for you. But one hopes schools can still teach the correct spelling and grammar.

[...]

Source: http://englishlangsfx.blogspot.com/2011/09/stoking-up-spelling-trubble.html

Twitter = promoting ability expression

Tweets, Tweeps and Twerps

Thursday, September 08, 2011

 

Any new technology that is used for communication is bound to lead to some concern about its impact on language use. In his book, A Better Pencil, the linguist Dennis Baron looks at how writing technologies such as the pencil, pen , typewriter and word processor developed and traces worries about these (then) new forms of communication. So it's not a great surprise to see that digital communication - text messaging, Facebook, MSN and Twitter being four recent examples - has spawned its own set of worries.

Twitter is often viewed as a fairly limited means of communication, forcing its users to transmit simple, terse 140-character messages to their followers, compressing and trimming language to create anodyne, bite-sized chunks, but in an article for The Guardian this week, the poet Carol Ann Duffy argues that texting and tweeting are brilliantly creative tools for helping people think more carefully about how they're communicating.

"The poem is a form of texting ... it's the original text," says Carol Ann Duffy. "It's a perfecting of a feeling in language – it's a way of saying more with less, just as texting is. We've got to realise that the Facebook generation is the future – and, oddly enough, poetry is the perfect form for them. It's a kind of time capsule – it allows feelings and ideas to travel big distances in a very condensed form."

It's an appealing argument and one that I think is very true. Writing creatively is not so much about writing as much as you can in as flowery and dense form as possible but finding the best ways to say what you want to say. Sometimes, the process of editing yourself down to fewer words, or finding a new combination of words, is exactly what you need to make yourself a clearer communicator. Poetry is often prized for its sparing use of telling words, and tweets can be like that too, honing the editing skills of their senders.
Inspired by this (if slightly confused: Duffy was talking more about texting than tweeting) The Guardian has launched its own Twitter poetry challenge which you can find here.

[...]

Source: http://englishlangsfx.blogspot.com/2011/09/tweets-tweeps-and-twerps.html

SE - poor grammar disrupts flow of discourse

By Barbara Gunn

Special to the Oak Ridger

Posted Jun 22, 2011 @ 07:24 PM

Is English, as we know it, dead?

    Yes, according to Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten.
"The end came quietly when a reader castigated the newspaper for having written that Sasha Obama was the youngest daughter of the president and first lady rather than the younger daughter. The letter writer called the first couple the 'Obama's.' This constituted an illiterate proofreading of an illiterate criticism of an illiteracy ..." and, Weingarten concluded, "English, already severely weakened, died of shame."

    Not so fast, Mr. Weingarten. Maybe the patient can be revived. Who cares, except maybe a few newspaper columnists, former teachers of grammar, and those few copy editors who are still employed? Others may have some lingering memories of the differences between contractions and plurals, agreement of subject and verb, misplaced modifiers, dangling participles, and even, ugh, a teacher who insisted on diagramming sentences and perhaps something called "parsing." Those teachers red-penciled every spelling, punctuation, and usage error when it was quite clear what you meant. Who needs that?

    Some probably thought "spell check" would save English. It might have saved Sarah Palin some backtracking had she checked "refudiate" and been able to choose "repudiate" or "refuse" or George W. Bush with "fundamentaries" or "educationalizing."

    A different type of error occurred when spell check failed to stop a newsletter of mine stating a publication was not available when it should have stated it was now available.

 Spell check allows some amusing errors. Who would want to spoil the fun of discovering "spade" female cats are for sale or that men now have a choice of treatments for "prostrate" cancer?

    Newspapers have had to cut back on expenses for copy editors, but one would think Oprah could afford the best. Yet, consider this sentence from one of her news releases: "The audience was made up of some of who the programs called its most loyal viewers." A copy editor might change "who" to "whom" but would probably reword the sentence to read: "The audience was made up of some of the program's most loyal viewers."

    There is another poorly written sentence in Dr. Phil's column in the November 2010 Oprah magazine: "Explain to your mother that you will continue to provide the highest-quality care you can afford her with." Rewritten, this would be "Explain to your mother that you will continue to provide her with the highest quality care you can afford."

    The Oprah examples are not only ungrammatical, they stop the flow of the passage, forcing the reader to pause and think, "How was that again?"
    Some more errors someone someplace should have corrected:

"The fact of the matter is..." (White House spokesman), a redundancy similar to Judge Judy's pet peeve, "Basically."

"For Michele and I..." (President Obama), a compound object of the preposition; thus, "for Michele and for me."

"Two pair of eyeglasses" (Vision World), pair is singular; "one pair, two pairs."

"Lots of tension between Simon and I" (Ellen DeGeneres), compound object of preposition; thus, "between Simon and me."

    Those of us who bemoan grammatical errors and awkward sentences may not save English, but maybe another group will: employers.

    An employer might overlook or not recognize some of the fine points of grammar that annoy columnists and teachers, but why take that chance?

Barbara Gunn is an Oak Ridge resident and frequent columnist.

Source: http://www.oakridger.com/columnists/x898078904/Can-English-be-resuscitated

Removing Grammar from School = Crime - Norman Tebbit

In 1985 Norman Tebbit suggested in all seriousness that the abandonment of traditional grammar-teaching in schools had contributed to the breakdown of law and order.

"If you allow standards to slip to the stage where good English is no better than bad English, [it] tends to cause people to have no standards at all, and once you lose standards there's no imperative to stay out of crime."

Standard English = Success

Kevin Myers: Omigod, this linguistic gibberish is, like, so gross

By Kevin Myers

Friday June 03 2011

There was a single, telling moment when Michelle Obama spoke to a group of inner-city London schoolgirls the other day: she said they must work hard to be different "from other girls".

She didn't say "than other girls", the common and lazy usage into which many people have slipped. She correctly used the preposition rather than the relative conjunction, which -- for example -- the comparative adverb "better" would have attracted: hence, "different from" and "better than".

And she did that because she understood the rules of grammar. Two generations after the civil rights movement, and slightly less after the professional emancipation of women, black American women like Michelle Obama and Condoleezza Rice show how it's done.

Success is terribly simple: it comes from hard work, hard work and more hard work. There is no easy route. And the very first step is the basic step, of learning to speak properly, using grammatically correct speech, constructed from sentences that can be parsed and analysed.

You can bet that the young Michelle and young Condoleezza were taught just that from the age of 11 onwards -- argot, repressed; slang, outlawed; patois, abolished; ghetto-talk, taboo. Speak sentences that President Lincoln could understand, and you cannot go far wrong.

Gentle reader, before the summer term ends, and schools close for another entire meteorological season, ride the Dundrum Luas or the Dun Laoghaire Dart in the mid-afternoon and listen to the "I'm like" babble of today's schoolgirls, for whom 'Sex and the City' is not a faintly mordant sexual satire with gay jokes and subversive word-games, but a social template, a blueprint, an aspiration, and a language role-model.

This is like using 'Dad's Army' as the basis for a military academy, or '30 Rock' as an example of how to run a TV station.

Who in Irish schools understands grammar any more? Does any teacher correct a pupil who says "different than"? Do teachers even have the temerity to stop their pupils speaking in the gruesome American lilt that is now almost the received-dialect of the old Protestant schools of Dublin?

The largely anglicised and hateful Dort accent of 20 years ago, which followed the line of the suburban railway track from Dun Laoghaire to Howth like hogweed, and which turned all "ar" sounds into "or" has gone. It has been replaced by this ghastly transatlantic mishmash of badly-learnt phrases, which is no less absurd than South Sea Isla-nders trying to copy Elvis.

The truth is that educated Americans simply don't talk like the television representations of them. Their conversations don't consist of an endless series of declarations of, "I'm like", followed by a brief facial imitation of some sort of mood or attitude. They mostly compose their sentences grammatically and carefully, a legacy of the Germanic-style high schools which make the US so very Teutonic in culture.

But of course, television -- the inspiration for the blatherings of the "I'm like" generation -- barely touches upon that mundane reality of the quotidian. Why should it? It's merely entertainment in the US; but tragically in Ireland, it has become the great cultural inspiration.

How did the old Protestant schools of Dublin become a factory for a pseudo-American language, as spoken so gruesomely by Jedward? Listen to the real speech of Condoleezza and Michelle. It does not follow the infuriating upward intonation of the phoney-interrogative, it is always measured and correctly constructed, and it is entirely without the conversational tropes of 'Friends' and 'Sex and the City', which are meant to be little in-jokes, not syntactical language-guides.

It is now the norm for the English-speaking world to adopt American words and usages: even Australians, quite unbearably, now say "guys" instead of "blokes", which was once one of the great talismanic terms of Strine. Equally, Irish rugby players never say "lads" any more: no, it's all "guys guys guys". And though I find it all hateful, I know such word-transferences are probably both inevitable and unstoppable.

However, what's happening in middle-class Irish schools is unique. An entire social class is doing more than picking up words: it is changing its complete speech patterns -- its melody, its emphases, its grammar and its narrative style -- to conform with what it perceives to be American. But it's not authentic American, but a bad copy of what was originally a parody anyway.

Look, if you do insist on learning from America, then let it be a model from the best of the US, and not from some grisly TV fant-asy: from Harvard, MIT, Yale, Cornell, William and Mary, Michigan State, Stan-ford, UCLA, Annapolis, West Point and Quantico. That USA is really worth copying.

You can be sure of one thing -- if Condoleezza or Michelle were head teachers in the middle-class schools of Dublin, they'd put a halt to the plague of linguistic gibberish in a single morning's assembly. It's not too late, even now: all that's required to reverse these revolting trends is the cultural self-confidence to defend Irish ways of speaking, and to ridicule the utterly ridiculous -- I'm like, Omigod, no WAY, shut up! that is so toadally gross.

- Kevin Myers

Irish Independent

Source: http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/kevin-myers/kevin-myers-omigod-this-linguistic-gibberish-is-like-so-gross-2665049.html

Teens ruining the english language? Please.

Many people have argued that the current generation (Gen Y) is ruining and degrading the English Language with texting and e-speak which deviates from the spelling and grammatical standards.

Of course, such notions are not true. in 1712, the great Jonathan Swift wrote that the English Language is beyond repair and suggested that there be an "Academie Anglaise" like the current "Academie Francaise" which would regulate and ultimately "save" the English Language.

300 years later and the language is not only surviving, but thriving.

"bogus grammatical rules"

A foolish consistency

Posted by Stan Carey on September 28, 2011

No doubt you’re familiar with the following line from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay on self-reliance: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”. In a comment to my recent post about hopefully, Marc Leavitt quoted it in relation to the strange persistence of outdated and unfounded rules of grammar and usage.

Most people know the kind of bogus grammar rules I mean: Don’t start a sentence with a coordinating conjunction; Don’t end a sentence with a preposition; Don’t split infinitives. Usage myths are less widely known but circulate perennially in writing circles and among those who enjoy collecting pet peeves. For example: you can’t say drive slow or different than; decimate can’t mean destroy most of; aggravate can’t mean irritate; and so on.

The last two – complaints about decimate and aggravate – fall prey to the etymological fallacy: that a word should or must mean what it meant originally or long ago, and maybe in another language altogether. The fallacy does not take account of linguistic change, and rests on the false idea that words cannot or should not change their meanings.

These restrictions have no basis in grammatical correctness, yet they have survived for generations, passed on from teacher to pupil or stickler to stickler-in-waiting. They have been called “classroom folklore” (Joseph M. Williams), “Miss Thistlebottom’s Hobgoblins” (Theodore M. Bernstein), and “zombie rules” (Arnold Zwicky).

We don’t have to like or use new words and usages. I don’t use literally to intensify figurative statements, because it weakens its literal sense – and what other word means literally so literally? But I don’t gnash my teeth over people using it loosely; people have been using literally non-literally, sometimes literarily, for literally centuries. Besides, it can be funny.

Growing up, I developed a temporary dislike for singular data, but it didn’t take much research and reflection (and yes, data) for me to realise that there’s nothing inherently wrong with it. So I’m fine with either form, depending on context. Notice that no one complains about singular agenda or stamina nowadays. But please, resist singular criteria for now.

Correctness is primarily a matter of convention, and conventions change. Consistency should be applied only as far as common sense carries it. If we want to do justice to words, it’s necessary sometimes to adapt to shifts in their meaning and usage, and to update our ideas of what’s acceptable, where, and why.

Source: http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/a-foolish-consistency

Language Change - Neologisms

Eponym - when a word is developed from a person's name. Eg. Nestle, Cadbury, Newton (measurement)

Commonisation - When a word is formed from the name of a product. Eg. eski, yo-yo, band-aid, kleenex

iTrends

Posted by David Crystal on September 21, 2011

Online English month continues with a guest post from writer, editor, lecturer, broadcaster and blogger David Crystal. Professor Crystal’s most recent book The Story of English in 100 Words is published on 6th October by Profile Books.

___________

It’s the penalty of linguistic success. You invent a name for your product, and it takes off. Everybody starts using it, and before you know it, it’s become a generic noun in the language. You may not like it, as (after all) it was the name you chose, but there’s very little you can do about it.

Dozens of words have been through this scenario. One of the first was escalator. Various designs for moving staircase were invented in the 19th century, but the rights to the name escalator were purchased by the Otis Elevator Company. It is first recorded in 1900, and within a few years it was being used figuratively. People talked of escalator clauses in contracts, for example. The verb to escalate appears in the 1920s, and escalation soon after. Otis tried hard to retain their control over the name, but in 1950 a court case concluded that the word had developed a generic meaning among the public, referring to any kind of ‘moving stairway’ and not just Otis’s original design. Otis lost.

Several trademarks have become generic, over the years, such as aspirin, butterscotch, heroin, hoover, thermos, yo-yo, and zipper. Fedex, lego, meccano, kleenex, portakabin, rollerblade, and hoover have also become lower-case in some of their uses. A few companies have fought a battle to retain the rights over their name. Xerox Corporation, for example, has generally succeeded in persuading people to say photocopy instead of xerox. But most realize that they can’t do much about controlling everyday usage.

Internet names are the latest to attract generic use. The popularity of the Slashdot website has generated a verb: to be slashdotted is to be overwhelmed with messages. Google has generated to google, meaning ‘to search for information on the Internet’, regardless of which search engine is being used. Google has tried to prevent this extension in meaning, so far with some success. Several dictionaries (including the Macmillan Dictionary) now define the verb with reference to its originator, such as (in the Oxford English Dictionary) ‘to use the Google search engine to find information on the Internet’. But whether this recognition has a long-term future, in the face of the steamroller of usage, remains to be seen.

Apple terms are going down the same road. The Mac App, first used in 1985, quickly generated apps in general. The idea of an application had been around for over twenty years, but shortening it to app was a novelty. It immediately caught on. And soon after, the idea of a killer app arrived. Will similar things happen to other Apple neologisms? We might think that their unusual graphic structure would militate against general use. The lower-case ‘i’ in iMac, iBook, iPod, iPad, iTunes, iPhone, iPhoto, iStore and so on, goes against the orthographic norms of the language. It’s certainly a complication, as anyone knows who has tried to write a sentence beginning with one of these names: the lower-case initial looks very odd. But it hasn’t stopped others using the prefix, as seen with iGoogle, iPlayer and a number of online sites, such as iCoke (Coca-Cola) and iSense (Adpepper Media). There are even TV shows and novels beginning with it, such as the iCarly series, with titles such as iAm Famous and iGo to Japan. i- looks as if it is going the same way as e-. The penalty of isuccess.

Source: http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/itrends

Language Change, Internet speak, neologisms

How the internet is changing language

16 August 2010 Last updated at 09:01 GMT

Zoe Kleinman

'To Google' has become a universally understood verb and many countries are developing their own internet slang. But is the web changing language and is everyone up to speed?

 

In April 2010 the informal online banter of the internet-savvy collided with the traditional and austere language of the court room.

Christopher Poole, founder of anarchic image message board 4Chan, had been called to testify during the trial of the man accused of hacking into US politician Sarah Palin's e-mail account.

During the questioning he was asked to define a catalogue of internet slang that would be familiar to many online, but which was seemingly lost on the lawyers.

At one point during the exchange, Mr Poole was asked to define "rickrolling".

"Rickroll is a meme or internet kind of trend that started on 4chan where users - it's basically a bait and switch. Users link you to a video of Rick Astley performing Never Gonna Give You Up," said Mr Poole.

"And the term "rickroll" - you said it tries to make people go to a site where they think it is going be one thing, but it is a video of Rick Astley, right?," asked the lawyer.

"Yes."

"He was some kind of singer?"

"Yes."

"It's a joke?"

"Yes."

The internet prank was just one of several terms including "lurker", "troll" and "caps" that Mr Poole was asked to explain to a seemingly baffled court.

But that is hardly a surprise, according to David Crystal, honorary professor of linguistics at the University of Bangor, who says that new colloquialisms spread like wildfire amongst groups on the net.

"The internet is an amazing medium for languages," he told BBC News.

"Language itself changes slowly but the internet has speeded up the process of those changes so you notice them more quickly."

People using word play to form groups and impress their peers is a fairly traditional activity, he added.

"It's like any badge of ability, if you go to a local skatepark you see kids whose expertise is making a skateboard do wonderful things.

"Online you show how brilliant you are by manipulating the language of the internet."

 

 

Super slang

 

One example of this is evident in Ukraine, where a written variation of the national tongue has sprung up on internet blogs and message boards called "padronkavskiy zhargon" - in which words are spelled out phonetically.

It is often used to voice disapproval or anger towards another commentator, says Svitlana Pyrkalo, a producer at the BBC World Service Ukrainian Service.

 

"Computer slang is developing pretty fast in Ukraine," she said.

The Mac and Linux communities even have their own word for people who prefer Microsoft Windows - віндузятники (vinduzyatnyky literally means "Windowers" but the "nyky" ending makes it derogatory).

"There are some original words with an unmistakably Ukrainian flavour," said Ms Pyrkalo.

The dreaded force-quit process of pressing 'Control, Alt, Delete' is known as Дуля (dulya).

"A dulya is an old-fashioned Ukrainian gesture using two fingers and a thumb - something similar to giving a finger in Anglo-Saxon cultures," she said.

"And you need three fingers to press the buttons. So it's like telling somebody (a computer in this case) to get lost."

 

 

Word play

For English speakers there are cult websites devoted to cult dialects - "LOLcat" - a phonetic and deliberately grammatically incorrect caption that accompanies a picture of a cat, and "Leetspeak" in which some letters are replaced by numbers which stem from programming code.

 

"There are about a dozen of these games cooked up by a crowd of geeks who, like anybody, play language games," said Professor Crystal.

"They are all clever little developments used by a very small number of people - thousands rather than millions. They are fashionable at the moment but will they be around in 50 years' time? I would be very surprised."

For him, the efforts of those fluent in online tongues is admirable.

"They might not be reading Shakespeare and Dickens but they are reading and cooking up these amazing little games - and showing that they are very creative. I'm quite impressed with these movements."

 

 

Txt spk

 

One language change that has definitely been overhyped is so-called text speak, a mixture of often vowel-free abbreviations and acronyms, says Prof Crystal.

"People say that text messaging is a new language and that people are filling texts with abbreviations - but when you actually analyse it you find they're not," he said.

In fact only 10% of the words in an average text are not written in full, he added.

They may be in the minority but acronyms seem to anger as many people as they delight.

Stephen Fry once blasted the acronym CCTV (closed circuit television) for being "such a bland, clumsy, rythmically null and phonically forgettable word, if you can call it a word".

But his inelegant group of letters is one of many acronyms to earn a place in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).

The secret of their success is their longevity.

"We need evidence that people are using a word over a period of time," said Fiona McPherson, senior editor in the new words group at the OED.

She says the group looks for evidence that a word has been in use for at least five years before it can earn its place in the dictionary.

Such evidence comes in the form of correspondence from the public and trawling through dated material to find out when a term first started appearing.

Hence TMI (Too Much Information) and WTF (you may wish to look that one up for yourself) are in, while OMG (Oh My God) has yet to be included in the quarterly dictionary updates.

"Some people get quite exercised and say, 'do these things belong in our language?'," said Ms McPherson.

"But maybe this has always happened. TTFN [ta ta for now] is from the ITMA (It's That Man Again) radio series in the 1940s."

 

 

Word thief

There is no doubt that technology has had a "significant impact" on language in the last 10 years, says Ms McPherson.

Some entirely new words like the verb 'to google', or look something up on a search engine, and the noun 'app', used to describe programmes for smartphones (not yet in the OED), have either been recently invented or come into popular use.

But the hijacking of existing words and phrases is more common.

Ms McPherson points out that the phrase "social networking" debuted in the OED in 1973. Its definition - "the use or establishment of social networks or connections" - has only comparatively recently been linked to internet-based activities.

"These are words that have arisen out of the phenomenon rather than being technology words themselves," she added.

"Wireless in the 1950s meant a radio. It's very rare to talk about a radio now as a wireless, unless you're of a particular generation or trying to be ironic. The word has taken on a whole new significance."

For Prof Crystal it is still too early to fully evaluate the impact of technology on language.

"The whole phenomenon is very recent - the entire technology we're talking about is only 20 years old as far as the popular mind is concerned."

Sometimes the worst thing that can happen to a word is that it becomes too mainstream, he argues.

"Remember a few years ago, West Indians started talking about 'bling'. Then the white middle classes started talking about it and they stopped using it.

"That's typical of slang - it happens with internet slang as well."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10971949 Technology reporter, BBC News

Online English, Quotes

Online English: some interesting links

Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on September 19, 2011

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We’re into our second week of online English and I thought it might be useful to put a few of the more interesting comments, articles, thoughts on online English in a post for your perusal

2006: Of course, online English is closely tied into the subject of Global English, and David Crystal is the man to read in both cases. Clare Dudman has an interesting review of David Crystal’s thoughts in this post on her blog. The post is a few years old, but very interesting:

The internet, David Crystal says, is ideal for the linguistic addict. It is the latest of the major linguistic revolutions: the first was speech – about 100 000 years ago, the second was writing (separately evolved in different parts of the world 10 000 years ago) and the deaf sign language – no one knows when this evolved – maybe 500-600 years ago, but maybe much earlier.

2009: Laura Barton of the Guardian shared some of her favourite internet contributions to the language in this short article:

The meanings of well-known words (bookmark, surf, spam, web) have shifted dramatically, while our vocabularies have expanded to accommodate new ones. The lower-case is in ascendance, @ has flourished, the full stop has been reinterpreted as the “dot” and entire trends have been refreshed by the prefix “cyber”.

2010: Sometimes, online English is like a foreign language for other native speakers. Do you know what rickrolling means?:

Christopher Poole, founder of anarchic image message board 4Chan, had been called to testify during the trial of the man accused of hacking into US politician Sarah Palin’s e-mail account.
During the questioning he was asked to define a catalogue of internet slang that would be familiar to many online, but which was seemingly lost on the lawyers.

If you are one of those who needs internet terms translated, there’s a dictionary for you.
2011: Now that we’ve had so long to think about it, how is the internet really changing English? Is it serious?

“What people mention when they lament the ‘deterioration of language’ is people straying from supposed grammar rules,” Douglas Bigham, editor-in-chief of Popular Linguistics magazine, said. “The truth of the matter is that these supposed ‘rules’ were never really ‘rules’ to begin with.”

2011: We must also, of course, revisit this juicy question: Is the Internet Americanizing British English?

Take “I guess”, in the American sense of “I suppose”. One occasionally hears the phrase used that way in Britain, but always with the aura of a foreign import, like “sure”, to mean “yes”. But here’s the thing: go back to Chaucer, and you will find “I gesse” used exactly as the cousins now use it. You will, likewise, still hear “gotten” in parts of Lancashire and even, in some Dorset and Somerset villages, “fall” to mean autumn.

Perhaps by the time NELL has finished reading EVERYTHING, we’ll have an answer to all of our questions. My money is on 42.

Source: http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/online-english-some-interesting-links

David Crystal, Internet, Language Change

Internet and language change

Posted by Kati Sule on September 14, 2011

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This video is a good introduction to the topic of online english, our main focus this month here on the blog.
Professor David Crystal answers the question: How is the internet changing language today?

The video (4:07) was originally made for Global, Macmillan’s six-level course for adults, written by Lindsay Clandfield.

Source: http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/internet-and-language-change

Mad Men, Language Change, Prescriptivism

Mad Men In a Good Place: How Did People Sound in 1963?

John McWhorter

 

Last Sunday’s third episode of this season’s Mad Men was one of the best in the series on many levels, which was why for me, a frequent little problem with the show stood out more than ever. Namely, the show’s depiction of how people speak is less accurate than the loving exactitude with attire, cocktails, product labels, and the like.

 

The most glaring example in this episode was what seems to have gone down as a memorable line from Peggy Olson, erstwhile secretary who is slowly climbing the corporate ladder. “I’m in a good place right now,” she says, which is dramatically compelling – it makes Peggy seem “cool,” a proto-feminist on her way to our modern reality, in contrast to what a dowdy little twinkie she seemed to be when we first met her. But would that woman use that expression in 1963?

Not that the expression is as new as many may think. Locutions have a way of going further back than intuition would suggest, just as it is something of a surprise to find out that the first McDonald’s opened way back in 1948 (or the first Wendy’s in 1969). I, for one, first heard “I’m in a good place” from a person of a rather New Age-y frame of mind in September 1994, and that certainly wasn’t the month it originated.

However, would a secretary from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, in a frilly collar have said “I’m in a good place right now” 31 years before that? Note, the issue is not a literal usage concerning physical location – some might think of the quotation from James 2, “And if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say ‘You sit here in a good place,’ while you say to the poor man ‘You sit over there’ ...”. Catholic Peggy may well have known that passage. However, its modern usage is metaphorical, having to do with spirit and development. It wasn’t something Marlo Thomas’ Ann-Marie on That Girl would have said, even when she was in a good place.

More generally, however, the writers at Mad Men seem to have an idea that in the early sixties, people spoke more “properly” than they do now. And they did, in formal and public settings. Until the late sixties, there was a sense that language was to be cossetted and dressed up in public in the same way that one wore deodorant. Think of the old gesture of clearing your throat before Making a Speech, the speech having been carefully written out and practiced, as opposed to today when we prefer looser “talks.”

Crucially, this sense included how people were depicted as speaking in movies. Even when the characters were speaking casually (i.e. most of the time), there was a sense that as a public performance, a film was to show people using language more “properly” than they actually would. Standards were looser for comics, of course. But, for instance, Letter to Three Wives has Linda Darnell growing up poor in a shabby flat. Yet while her mother speaks working-class American, Darnell has the flawless elocution of a dramatics student.

Sure, people can tilt their speech “upward” in line with social aspiration – but traces almost always remain, especially when people relax or are excited. The Darnell character in real life, hoping to get out of the tenements, would likely not have sounded just like her mother (just as Peggy Olson doesn’t sound like hers). However, she wouldn’t have sounded exactly like someone out of My Man Godfrey either. Speech habits – especially accent – are learned early and deeply ingrained. To speak as an adult with no trace of how you spoke at ten is as tough as learning a foreign language with no accent after the age of about 16.

The Mad Men characters are often like Linda Darnells in this regard – especially, for some reason, the younger ones. One senses that the creators see people talking like that in the movies of the period and suppose that this reflected messy old real life. But in reality, how people spoke casually was as unlike written language as it is now, and not just among stevedores. For example, in 1950 a linguist (in the classic Leave Your Language Alone) quoted a newspaper ad for “grammar lessons”:

How many of these frequent errors in English do YOU make? Do YOU say KEW-pon for KOO-pon, ad-ver-TISE-ment for ad-VER-tise-ment, or AD-ult for ad-ULT? Almost everybody makes these blunders in English: between you and I, it’s me, those kind of books.

So: the idea that there is something especially “slovenly” about how people talk “these days” is one that people had in 1963 as well (and long, long, long before). Which means that folks, just-folks, when going about on an informal basis did not sound like Disney announcers and Joan Crawfords (on the latter, her movie voice was sharply distinct from her casual one).

In Sunday’s Mad Men episode, therefore, when Jennifer Crane gets up and takes her husband over the Drapers’ table saying “I want to” see how they are, crisply pronouncing want separately from to, it’s false. That woman, even with her poise and aggressive social aspirations, would have said wanna just as we all do when we are not reading from text or laying down an answering mcahine message. The want to would have been all the more unlikely from someone who had had a drink or two (especially the stiff ones still ordinary on Mad Men as opposed to today’s Chardonnay).

Vincent Kartheiser’s Pete Campbell talks this way constantly, the idea being to convey that he is a high-WASP scion. However, people are people and especially, boys have always been boys. Would a real Pete Campbell, even knocking back highballs as is his wont, really casually talk like a Hardy Boy with the crisp, measured diction?

Relevant here would be how a similarly minded American aristocrat spoke in that same year of 1963. In recordings of John F. Kennedy speaking off-the-cuff with Robert McNamara in October of that year, not long after Pete and his wife did that nifty dance routine at that party, we hear someone talking the way, basically, we talk. Listen here.

Remember that the ah’s in words like “rah-ther” are his famous Boston accent, which one can still hear cabdrivers there using; it’s not Kennedy sounding British. And beyond that listen to how ordinary, unmeasured, Kennedy sounded – nothing of the want-t-to sort. He says “Yeah,” not “Yes,” and “...without makin’ a formal statement about it” rather than making.

I certainly understand that Mad Men is a confection, and on a certain level enjoy the characters’ aristocratic tones as an artifice just as we all enjoy the too-perfect costumes and saturated color. However, an artifice it is: when we read of producer Matthew Weiner and his crew attending to actors “getting the language right,” the “right” in question is not the same kind of “right” as concerns the toys and fabrics and magazine fonts.

Often, it’s “right” in the way that we like to think ordinary people spoke 50 years ago – sometimes including expressions unknown to them, but so deft that we can’t help putting them in their mouths.

Source: http://www.tnr.com/blog/john-mcwhorter/mad-men-good-place-how-did-people-sound-1963

Mad Men, Prescriptivism

Did We Speak More “Properly” 50 Years Ago?

Posted on August 7, 2011 by trawicks

Like countless others, I’m a fan of Mad Men. One of the things I find fascinating about the show is the choice its creators made about the speech of the characters. The series almost completely eschews regional dialects (it takes place in New York, yet there are hardly any New York accents*), instead going for a slightly fanciful array of “period dialects.”

I recently stumbled on an excellent old John Mcwhorter article that unpackages the curious speech habits of the series’ dramatis personae. I was particularly struck by this assertion:

More generally, however, the writers at Mad Men seem to have an idea that in the early sixties, people spoke more “properly” than they do now. And they did, in formal and public settings. Until the late sixties, there was a sense that language was to be cossetted and dressed up in public in the same way that one wore deodorant.

Did people indeed once have a more “formal” register than they do now? This is a difficult question to answer in America. If we were having this conversation about the other side of the pond, it would be a no brainer: given how different British attitudes were toward speech a mere fifty years ago, it’s no surprise that the public school student of 2011 doesn’t talk like the public school student of 1961.

But in America? I would hazard to guess that people of my grandparents’ generation weren’t any more likely to take elocution lessons than I was. So why would there be more of a distinction between formal and informal registers in the early 60′s than there is now?

I doubt that we ever, as Americans, abandoned the “formal register.” I certainly speak with more crisply pronounced consonants at a job interview than I do hanging out in a car with my brother. The details of what this register entails may differ from one generation to the next, but I don’t think the phenomenon is going away.

However, I do think this type of “elevated” speech is used differently now than it was in the 1950s. Particularly when it comes to media: until the mid-twentieth Century, “realistic” film was usually more heightened, formal, and idealized. What the market forces were that dictated this I’ve never quite understood. But television seemed to usher in a new era of narrative media, one where the focus is on characters who are normal, average and recognizable rather than those who are dashing, glamorous and speak like aristocratic 19th-Century New Englanders.

While watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents, a show from the 1950′s, I often notice this change in action. The older generation of actors largely speak with artificial “mid-Atlantic accents”, while younger actors (such as Robert Morse and John Cassavetes) speak in startlingly informal registers. It’s an interesting example of how rapidly attitudes were changing at the time.

Of course, there’s always the simple fact of language change. Each generation weakens some aspects of the previous generation’s speech. What, then, makes older dialects “formal” sounding?

*At times, Mad Men seems almost willfully anachronistic in this regard.  There’s something bizarre about watching the very Californian-sounding Elisabeth Moss sit down to dinner with her Brooklyn-accented family.  But I have to admit I don’t mind this.  It somehow fits with one of the larger themes of this series, the way that Americans try to make themselves into individualistic, transient, non-regional supermen.

Source: http://dialectblog.com/2011/08/07/did-we-speak-more-properly/

+1 - google's version of facebook's 'like'

+1’tastic

When a number becomes a word

July 31, 2011|By Ben Zimmer

Spelling, online shopping, prestige

Spelling mistakes 'cost millions' in lost online sales

Comments (622)

By Sean Coughlan BBC News education correspondent

14 July 2011 Last updated at 01:09 GMT

 

An online entrepreneur says that poor spelling is costing the UK millions of pounds in lost revenue for internet businesses.

Charles Duncombe says an analysis of website figures shows a single spelling mistake can cut online sales in half.

Mr Duncombe says when recruiting staff he has been "shocked at the poor quality of written English".
Sales figures suggest misspellings put off consumers who could have concerns about a website's credibility, he says.

The concerns were echoed by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), whose head of education and skills warned that too many employers were having to invest in remedial literacy lessons for their staff.
Written word

Mr Duncombe, who runs travel, mobile phones and clothing websites, says that poor spelling is a serious problem for the online economy.

 

"Often these cutting-edge companies depend upon old-fashioned skills," says Mr Duncombe.

And he says that the struggle to recruit enough staff who can spell means that this sector of the economy is not as efficient as it might be.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics published last month showed internet sales in the UK running at £527m per week.

"I know that industry bemoaning the education system is nothing new but it is becoming more and more of a problem with more companies going online.

"This is because when you sell or communicate on the internet, 99% of the time it is done by the written word."

Mr Duncombe says that it is possible to identify the specific impact of a spelling mistake on sales.
He says he measured the revenue per visitor to the tightsplease.co.uk website and found that the revenue was twice as high after an error was corrected.

"If you project this across the whole of internet retail, then millions of pounds worth of business is probably being lost each week due to simple spelling mistakes," says Mr Duncombe, director of the Just Say Please group.

Spelling is important to the credibility of a website, he says. When there are underlying concerns about fraud and safety, then getting the basics right is essential.

"You get about six seconds to capture the attention on a website."

When recruiting school and university leavers, Mr Duncombe says too many applications have contained spelling mistakes or poor grammar.

"Some people even used text speak in their cover letter," he says.

Even among those who appeared to be able to spell, he says that a written test, without access to a computer spellchecker, revealed further problems with spelling.

William Dutton, director of the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, says that in some informal parts of the internet, such as Facebook, there is greater tolerance towards spelling and grammar.

"However, there are other aspects, such as a home page or commercial offering that are not among friends and which raise concerns over trust and credibility," said Professor Dutton.

"In these instances, when a consumer might be wary of spam or phishing efforts, a misspelt word could be a killer issue."

James Fothergill, the CBI's head of education and skills, said: "Our recent research shows that 42% of employers are not satisfied with the basic reading and writing skills of school and college leavers and almost half have had to invest in remedial training to get their staff's skills up to scratch.

"This situation is a real concern and the government must make the improvement of basic literacy and numeracy skills of all school and college leavers a top priority."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14130854

Grammar and Prestige - Ernst and Young

It’s lost its apostrophe! ‘It’s’ or ‘Its’?

Posted by Michael Rundell on July 21, 2011

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A new report on the potential of solar energy, by leading business consultants Ernst & Young,  tells us (p.11) that ‘increased efficiency of manufacturing and improvements in non poly silicon costs has lead to cost reductions overall’  Aaargh: the old lead vs. led problem: they sound the same (in some meanings, at least) but the past tense and participle of the verb ‘to lead’ is led.  But worse than this is the Executive Summary which the report opens with, where we read that:

Due to it’s relative simplicity as a passive asset, solar has been observed as an entry point for large corporates.

This should of course say ‘due to its relative simplicity …’.  Maybe I’m just being pedantic, but for me the authority of the report was somewhat diminished by these basic errors. Sure, there are plenty of texts where mistakes like this don’t really matter, but it’s reasonable to expect that a serious report, from an organisation whose motto is ‘Quality In Everything We Do’, should get these things right.

Having said that, it isn’t surprising that this is one of the commonest of all punctuation errors in English. The problem lies in the fact that we use apostrophes for two different functions: either to show either possession (a genitive), or to indicate the omission of one or more letters – but this simple ‘rule’ doesn’t apply in the case of the pronoun it. (Apostrophes are sometimes also used to form plurals, as in ‘the word committee contains two m’s, two t’s, and two e’s', or ‘in the 1960′s’,  but these uses are – or should be – very rare.) So we can say My sister’s baby (possession: the baby that belongs to my sister), or My sister’s a baby (omission: my sister IS a baby), or My sister’s had a baby (omission again: my sister HAS had a baby).

When attached to a noun (or to someone’s name) ‘S can have all these uses. But confusingly, this doesn’t happen when we’re using the word it. In this case, the ‘S can only be used to indicate omission (for IT IS or IT HAS: It’s been a hard day’s night), but not to show possession. To show possession, we use its without an apostrophe: It’s lost its handle. Why? There is no logic in this – but it’s a mistake to expect language to be logical. Indeed the OED reports that its was (as we would expect) formed from IT and the possessive or genitive ‘S

and [was] at first commonly written it’s, a spelling retained by some to the beginning of the 19th c.

So the form its is relatively modern and (says the OED) ‘does not appear in any of the works of Shakespeare published in his lifetime’.

I hope that clears things up, but perhaps all this is another argument for a proposal made in one of our earlier postings: that apostrophes should be abolished altogether, on the grounds that they cause more harm than good.

Source: http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/its-lost-its-apostrophe-its-or-its

Intensive pronoun 'myself'

In English

An intensive pronoun is a pronoun used to add emphasis to a statement; for example, "I did it myself." While English intensive pronouns use the same form as reflexive pronouns, an intensive pronoun is different from a reflexive, because the pronoun can be removed without altering the meaning of the sentence. An intensive noun works with the antecedent, the word the pronoun replaces. For example, compare "I will do it myself", where "myself" is intensive and can be removed without changing the meaning, to "I nominated myself", where "myself" fills the necessary role of direct object.example:He himself is to blame.(Himself is used to emphasize he);)


Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_pronoun

The English Subjunctive

S is for Subjunctive

12 06 2011

 

“Damn the subjunctive!”  Mark Twain is alleged to have said.  “It brings all our writers to shame”. It’s not clear what Twain’s particular beef was – whether misuse, overuse or underuse.   But my question is this: is there a subjunctive?  Or is it simply a mythical beast?

Of course, anyone who has struggled with French or Spanish or Latin has struggled with the subjunctive. It is, after all, the iconic grammar McNugget. Here, for example, is Alice Kaplan (1993) on the subject:

The subjunctive has a schoolyard reputation for extreme formality since it’s the last verb form people learning the grammar sequence – second year.  I remember my feelings of expertise when I could rattle off my tongue, ‘Il va falloir que je m’en aille’ (I’m going to have to go now), and glide out of the room.  The subjunctive is really something else; realm of doubt, desire, fear and trembling before language  ( p. 146).

But is there a subjunctive in English? Conventional wisdom says that there is, but it’s a mere relic of its former self.  Carter & McCarthy (2006), for instance, have this to say: “The subjunctive mood is a non-factual mood and is very rare in English… The subjunctive occurs only in very formal style.  It involves the base form of the verb, with no inflections” (p. 307).  Which makes me wonder: if it is uninflected, is it eligible for a label at all – or is it simply a hangover from attempts to describe English grammar in classicist terms?
Crystal (2003) hardly deigns to acknowledge it:

In modern English, the examples which come nearest to the subjunctive occur in ‘hypothetical’ constructions of the type if she were going (cf. if she was going), in certain formulae (e.g. So be it!),  and in some clauses introduced by that (especially in American English, e.g. I insist that he go to town) (p. 442).

Just how rare is it? Mindt (2000) has the stats:

Subjunctives are most frequent in fictional texts (c. 0.2 cases per 1,000 words), less frequent in spoken conversations (c. 0.1 cases per 1,000 words), and extremely rare in expository prose (c. 0.02 cases per 1000 words).
Between 70% and 80% of all subjunctives are cases of were. Subjunctives represented by the base form be are very rare. (p.197)

By way of comparison, here (from the same source) are the stats – per 1000 words – for progressive forms and imperatives, compared with the subjunctive – which, remember, is represented predominantly by hypothetical were:

	progressive forms	imperatives	subjunctive
fiction	4.8	2	0.2
spoken conversation	5.2	2.8	0.1
expository prose	2.2	0.8	0.02

In an earlier, corpus-based study, Charles Fries (1940) found that the subjunctive was used in fewer than 20% of the contexts in which it might be expected, and, even in American English, there was a preference for constructions with should: I insist that he should go, rather than I insist that he go. Fries concluded (70 years ago!) that “in general the subjunctive has tended to disappear from use” (p. 106).

All of which reminds me of a scene from the award-winning French film Entre Les Murs. Here’s how it is recounted in the English translation of the book (Bégaudeau 2009):

“And what is the imperfect of the subjunctive?”
They didn’t know.  I explained.  I wrote il faut que j’aille, and then il fallait que j’allasse. They all laughed.
“Oh lala, old-timey.”
“All right, it’s true that these days people don’t care much about the imperfect of the subjunctive.  You’ll come across it in books, and even then not very often. In spoken language, no one uses it.  Except very snobby people” (p. 172).

So, has the subjunctive in English suffered a similar fate? Not entirely. It still occurs in some coursebooks. Here, for example, is a panel form a U.S. published advanced text (Finnie, 2003 – click to enlarge):



When, if ever, did you last teach the subjunctive?

References:
Bégaudeau, F. 2009. The Class. NY: Seven Stories Press.
Carter, R.  & McCarthy, M.  2006. Cambridge Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Crystal, D.  2003.  A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (5th edition). Oxford: Blackwell.
Finnie, R. 2003. Grammar Booster 4. Boston, MA: Heinle ELT.
Fries, C. 1940. American English Grammar.  Tokyo: Maruzen.
Kaplan, A. 1993. French Lessons. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mindt, D. 2000. An Empirical Grammar of the English Verb System. Berlin: Cornelsen

Source: http://scottthornbury.wordpress.com/2011/06/12/s-is-for-subjunctive/

Spelling aids

Twenty Spelling Mnemonics

By Richard Nordquist, About.com Guide   May 27, 2011

As kids we learned to rely on little memory prompts: ROY G BIV (for the sequence of colors in a rainbow), HOMES (for the names of the five Great Lakes), Every Good Boy Does Fine (for the notes on the lines of the treble clef).

But mnemonics, as they're called, aren't just for children. In an article titled "Stalking the Wild Mnemos: Research That's Easy to Remember," educational psychologist Joel R. Levin concluded that "sufficient research evidence now exists to suggest that even skilled learners can become more skilled through mnemonic strategy acquisition and implementation" (1996).

While we may not admit it, some of us still fall back on mnemonics to recall the spellings of tricky words--such as those in our list of the 200 Most Commonly Misspelled Words in English.

The most effective devices tend to be the ones we make up ourselves (and the sillier they are, the better). But some classic mnemonics can't be beat. So here, with thanks to my students and colleagues for their contributions, are 20 of the most popular spelling mnemonics.

1. Gumbo lost an e in an argument.
2. Never believe a lie.
3. Dara checked the calendar every day.
4. Eileen found her e's in the cemetery.
5. Emma faced a dilemma.
6. It's hard to embarrass really righteous and serious students.
7. A new environment will iron me out.
8. Goofy Greg loved to exaggerate.
9. That liar looks familiar.
10. Generally, a general is your best ally.
11. Mom ate immediately.
12. An island is land surrounded by water.
13. I alone felt Eli's loneliness.
14. Miss Pell never misspells.
15. It's necessary to remember the cesspool in the middle.
16. Please keep quiet about my diet.
17. It's better to give than receive.
18. Rhythm helps your two hips move.
19. There's a rat in separate.
20. It's truly hot in July.

Source: http://grammar.about.com/b/2011/05/27/twenty-spelling-mnemonics.htm

The Unraveling of 'dude'

“Dude:” Thoughts on an American Word

Posted on April 4, 2011 by trawicks

I am skeptical about claims that American English is “colonizing” the other Englishes. But I will concede one point: the word dude is entirely our doing.

Dude, in America, is a word that lies somewhere between British mate and bloke. Like mate, it can be used in a vaguely affectionate second-person: “Don’t worry about it, dude.” And as in bloke, it can be used in descriptive third-person sentences: “That dude is stressed out.”

In America, when we think of dude we tend to associate it with the dialects of California. In particular, the word seems ubiquitous in several sub-cultures: the California drug culture (“Far out, dude.”), the California surfer culture (“That was a gnarly wave, dude!”), and the crunchy/environmentalist set (“The earth is a living thing, dude.”).  All stereotypes, but with a certain amount of truth to them.

Nowadays, of course, dude is heard throughout America. And I’ve heard enough younger Brits, Canadians and Australians use it that I’m guessing it is starting to plant itself elsewhere.

Like a lot of words in American English dialects, though, dude apparently derives from African American Vernacular English (AAVE), the dialect spoken by African Americans throughout the United States. As per the wonderful Online Etymology Dictionary:

dude: 1883, “fastidious man,” New York City slang of unknown origin. The vogue word of 1883, originally used in reference to the devotees of the “aesthetic” craze, later applied to city slickers, especially Easterners vacationing in the West (dude ranch first recorded 1921). Application to any male is recorded by 1966, U.S., originally in Black English.

It seems, then, that dude entered the lexicon of Black English sometime in the early-to-mid 20th Century, where it morphed into a general term for “man.” Then, like many African American terms, it slowly filtered into the broader spectrum of American English dialects.

Here is what’s interesting, though. Dude is currently used in both African American Vernacular English and “white” dialects like General American. But it’s used somewhat differently in these two contexts.

Among AAVE speakers, I have noticed that “dude” is used far more commonly in the third person. For example, an AAVE speaker might say:

“What’s wrong with that dude?”

But the sentence …

“What’s wrong with you, dude?”

… doesn’t sound right in AAVE. In California or other kinds of Englishes, on the other hand, this question would sound perfectly normal.  This is my own perception, of course, but I’ve noticed that African Americans (who speak AAVE) rarely refer to the people they are directly speaking to as “dude.”

Of course, AAVE has long been known to “disassociate” itself from certain words when they enter “white” English. Terms like hip, jive, and cat (referring to “man”) are all African Americanisms that were completely rejected by the AAVE-speaking community after they found popularity in other American Englishes.  So it appears that the “affectionate” usage of dude may have gone the same route.

Opening this discussion up to the floor, I’m curious if anybody can give me more info about the spread of dude to international dialects. When a Brit or Australian or Irishmen uses dude while talking to an American, is that because the word has actually spread to those countries? Or are these people just trying to “fit in?”

Source: http://dialectblog.com/2011/04/04/dude/