The English Language

[honez 79]

I always considered "cark" an Australian slang term, as supported by the following link:

 

http://www.hostelscentral.com/hostels-article-110.html

 

DWB 

I can back DWB up on this one. To "cark it" is definitely an Australian colloquialism for kicking the bucket.

[Godot 149]

Do any Deathlisters share my irritation at poor grammar here and elsewhere? What are your biggest niggles? One of mine is the use of in tandem (favoured by football commentators who think it means side-by-side when in fact it means one behind the other).

 

Having been pulled up once for incorrect use of "begging the question" and as a crap speller I'm not promoting myself as head grammarian. I'm happy to learn. I just think it still matters.

 

[Topics merged - ff]

Edited April 27, 2006 by football_fan

[Windsor 2,233]

Do any Deathlisters share my irritation at poor grammar here and elsewhere?

 

No

[maryportfuncity 10,646]

Godot, I too have been pulled off...I mean pulled up for 'Begging the question.' Since I'd only done it to be ironic I thought the puller a mite pedantic. Fer F**k's sake, a little leeway regarding grammar should be allowed hereabouts. It's summat we northern types would appreciate. We're not asking owt else of yers.

[The Four Horsemen 26]

Here endeth the promotional slogan for the Carlisle Education Authority..........

[maryportfuncity 10,646]

Carlisle, we used to dream about gannin' to school in Carlisle. Them lot got dinners and had roofs on the buildings. I were taught in a burnt out stolen car, parked on an old slag heap near a septic tank and every night our dad used to lash us w't belt........

 

 

Aye well, you get the idea.

[Octopus of Odstock 2,195]

Do any Deathlisters share my irritation at poor grammar here and elsewhere? What are your biggest niggles? One of mine is the use of in tandem (favoured by football commentators who think it means side-by-side when in fact it means one behind the other).

 

 

"A Big Ask" (or something similar) always gets me irritated when said by sporting commentators. On here, I tend to let the shocking grammar, punctuation & spelling go. Bruno Brimley's posts wouldn't look right if they were grammatically perfect, somehow.

[Tuber Mirum 125]

Godot, I too have been pulled off...I mean pulled up for 'Begging the question.' Since I'd only done it to be ironic I thought the puller a mite pedantic. Fer F**k's sake, a little leeway regarding grammar should be allowed hereabouts. It's summat we northern types would appreciate. We're not asking owt else of yers.

Try telling that to Josco, our resident Northern pedant.

 

Back in the good old days, we had a similar thread. Started by none other than the lost LPIII, with the purpose of having a go at the grammar of The Grim Reaper himself, believe it or not.

 

(Whilst searching for that thread, I came upon the interestingly-named "Does anyone actually like Windsor?" thread. Sadly now dead and on the scrapheap under a pile of old cast-iron bathtubs. I'd forgotten about that one. )

[Godot 149]

Do any Deathlisters share my irritation at poor grammar here and elsewhere?

 

No

 

Why am I not surprised by this reply from one of today's college boys, for whom grammar is the old lady who lives with grandad?

 

Leeway is one thing - many of us spell badly and no-one is going to mind BB's compositions which remind me of Eric Morcambe's comment on his piano playing to Andre Previn: "I hit all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order."

 

But there is too much lazy posting where letters are not capped properly, where apostrophes are ignored and where Chav slang is tolerated, often - which surprises me most - by people who confess they are at college or university. These are the same people, I guess, who go out in to the world and promote that ugly management speak that is even creeping in to schools. It's a sign of a crumbling society. The Deathlist should resist it.

[Brinsworth House Baiter 12]

Do any Deathlisters share my irritation at poor grammar here and elsewhere?

 

No

 

Why am I not surprised by this reply from one of today's college boys, for whom grammar is the old lady who lives with grandad?

 

Leeway is one thing - many of us spell badly and no-one is going to mind BB's compositions which remind me of Eric Morcambe's comment on his piano playing to Andre Previn: "I hit all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order."

 

But there is too much lazy posting where letters are not capped properly, where apostrophes are ignored and where Chav slang is tolerated, often - which surprises me most - by people who confess they are at college or university. These are the same people, I guess, who go out in to the world and promote that ugly management speak that is even creeping in to schools. It's a sign of a crumbling society. The Deathlist should resist it.

 

I agree. Whilst grammatical pedantry can become very tiresome, for me one of the things I like about Death List over other forums is that it isn't littered with text and 'Chav slang'.

 

Like Godot said, the odd apostrophe and bit of cap control doesn't hurt, does it? And he makes a good point about bad standards creeping into schools. I pull my hair out over some of my step-daughter's spelling and do my best to show them the correct way, hopefully without alienating myself too much. It's where some schools are encouraging phonetic spelling and simply not correcting basic grammatical errors that's it's all falling down. The endearment value of homemade birthday cards with 'congradyoulashuns' written in them does tend to wear off a little when the child handing it to you is eight...or am I setting standards too high?

 

I look at their homework, see it's festooned with basic spelling mistakes and advise they seek help from a dictionary, but they look at me as if I'm from a different planet. So, I back away and wait for said homework to return to the house and look forward to seeing it covered in red ink. That'll teach 'em. Except it doesn't, for when I see that homework in their book again, the only red ink is the 'excellent work' scrawled at the bottom. What chance do we, as parents, have of trying to correct them, when the teachers can't be arsed?

 

Another bugbear is when they bring home letters from the school. It's sport to Mrs. BHB and I, pulling them to pieces for spelling and grammar mistakes. Surely, as a school for Christ's sake, it is their basic duty to employ someone in the office who, even if they can't spell, knows how to run a F*****g spellcheck after typing each letter?

 

I despair, I really do, for future generations (behold, I am now turning into my own father before your very eyes!) if it isn't addressed. I have nightmares about my great grandchildren's children being monosyllabic, grunting savages because we, the last generation who could help didn't.

 

Godot is right, the Death List should resist! A call to arms! Find a hooded Chav today and whack him over the head with a split infinitive. Grab a teacher and assault them with a reflexive pronoun. Seek out children and bestow upon them the might and wonder that is a full stop.

 

Between us, we could make this world a better place.

[DevonDeathTrip 2,358]

\gsdg ardh Aw4 j smgxft eWT geg blarumhmph!

[Magere Hein 1,400]

[...]I despair, I really do, for future generations (behold, I am now turning into my own father before your very eyes!) if it isn't addressed. I have nightmares about my great grandchildren's children being monosyllabic, grunting savages because we, the last generation who could help didn't.

 

Godot is right, the Death List should resist! A call to arms! Find a hooded Chav today and whack him over the head with a split infinitive. Grab a teacher and assault them with a reflexive pronoun. Seek out children and bestow upon them the might and wonder that is a full stop.

 

Between us, we could make this world a better place.

I additionally suggest an improvement to the dreaded Parent-Teacher Conference: take a cane with you and use it on the pupil, the teacher, or both, depending on whom you suspect to be the cause of disappointing school results.

 

regards,

Hein

[Guest L. P. Wilkins MA (Oxon)]

\gsdg ardh Aw4 j smgxft eWT geg blarumhmph!

 

I couldn't have put that better myself.

[Banshees Scream 110]

[...]I despair, I really do, for future generations (behold, I am now turning into my own father before your very eyes!) if it isn't addressed. I have nightmares about my great grandchildren's children being monosyllabic, grunting savages because we, the last generation who could help didn't.

 

Godot is right, the Death List should resist! A call to arms! Find a hooded Chav today and whack him over the head with a split infinitive. Grab a teacher and assault them with a reflexive pronoun. Seek out children and bestow upon them the might and wonder that is a full stop.

 

Between us, we could make this world a better place.

I additionally suggest an improvement to the dreaded Parent-Teacher Conference: take a cane with you and use it on the pupil, the teacher, or both, depending on whom you suspect to be the cause of disappointing school results.

 

regards,

Hein

 

Surprisingly many teachers just don't put enough effort into teaching the students. You may not only have a child who is a academic failure but a teacher who can't teach academics period.

[pulphack 6]

i have a certain ambivalence about grmmar (sic). a lot of the terrible grammar and spelling here on the list is, i suspect, perpetuated by those of us who are typing furiously between actually doing some work and frankly can't be arsed to go back and change it because we need to press on (ooh, look at them go for me now!). the lack of capitals is, in my case, for much the same reason. if i'm doing work that is to be submitted, then i spend a whole lot more time on it, and go over and over it. have i got the time or inclination here? 'course not. make of that what you will.

 

of course, late night typing is when pissed, and when is THAT ever right?

 

but instead of everyone trying to be professor of posh grammar and trip each other up, let's consider a few points...

 

consistency of spelling and the rules of grammar are established in a language to enable it to be comprehensible in speech and - particularly - when written down. can we agree on that? therefore it is important that accepted spellings and accepted rules of grammar are used to make such points as we wish to make easily comprehensible.

 

however... what if you want to break those rules of grammar for a specific rerason, either humourous or to introduce ambiguity? i've seen people on here jumped on for that. very silly. the rules are elastic enough to enable such games, and if you make them too rigid, or stick to one accepted version, then you take a lot of the joy out of language. and you're also not taking into account that language is mutable and in constant flux (brownie point for whoever remembers me droning on about that elsewhere). incidentally, 'flux and mutability' (or was it the ther way round?) was a really dull david sylvian lp i once owned. but i digress. as long as there is clarity, then there should be room for some degree of flexibility. when i take writing classes, the first thing i try to make them see is clarity (geddit?).

 

having said that, everything about students and kids said above is TRUE! i've had the misfortune to be teaching a media studies as class as a stand-in, and these kids are 18-20. i've had four pieces of work all term, three of which were handwritten and full of spelling mistakes, and the fourth was even worse: typewritten, on a PC, without any use of spell or grammar check. in fact, at least two words were spelt three different ways each! this charmless little blonde bimbo (who wants to be a professional cheerleader - honestly!) also said to me 'i undertsand the media 'coz i got a website, but what i can't stand is all these old geezers using long words just to look clever'. (i think she was having a pop at me) and she expects to pass her exam in june... dream on, love...

 

and maybe teachers don't always put in the the effort, but after taking that class, and thinking about the poor sods who do that all day every day, i don't entirely blame them.

[Magere Hein 1,400]

but instead of everyone trying to be professor of posh grammar and trip each other up, let's consider a few points...

And good points they are.

 

Badly written messages irritate me. When they irritate me enough, I quit reading them. The worst one can do is write long messages without paragraph breaks.

 

Nevertheless I've long ago quit making comments about other people's writing skills online, be it on a Web forum or in a Newgsgroup. This is an ephemeral medium for entertainment rather than for formal information. Flaming someone for bad writing doesn't improve entertainment value. Besides: there's a law that prescribes that a language flame contains at least one language error itself.

 

That said: I always try to write using correct grammar, spelling and presentation. That is for getting my message across, but perhaps even more as a courtesy to my readers. Then again: maybe I'm just an anal-retentive.

 

regards,

Hein

[TLC 9]

That said: I always try to write using correct grammar, spelling and presentation. That is for getting my message across, but perhaps even more as a courtesy to my readers.

I agree with this sentiment completely, mistakes happen of course but it's hard enough trying to tell if people are being sarcastic, serious etc. via written word, never mind if you have to work out what's being said first.

 

That's most of the reason I started using smilies; I tried to resist but it does help with communicating if there is no voice to hear or face to see, especially when a lot of this forum's chat is sarcastic, dry or morbid in nature. Not that I'm complaining!

 

Besides, I have a tendency to mumble when I'm not concentrating and my handwriting is appalling, so forums at least give me the chance to communicate legibly for a change, if not coherently.

 

One day the Gods of Microsoft will invent a Sensechecker , perhaps underlining offending sentences or paragraphs with a wavy brown line.

[Tuber Mirum 125]

Good points from everyone (excepting Windsor of course ).

 

If I may I'd like to add one more thing which I don't think has been said:

 

Writing with proper grammar and punctuation is actually no harder than writing badly. Once one has made the effort to learn what is right, it comes automatically and doing anything else is unnaturallly difficult. Apart from the odd slip once in a while of course.

 

The same goes for typing. Once you get in the habit of it, it's no effort to hit shift once in a while, and with practise it becomes automatic.

 

In fact I find it a bit odd that Mr Pulphack can type faster without capitalising. For me it would involve extra effort to consciously leave out the capitals.

[Captain Oates 21]

(behold, I am now turning into my own father before your very eyes!)

So it isn't me after all!

 

a lot of the terrible grammar and spelling here on the list is, i suspect, perpetuated by those of us who are typing furiously

My computer keyboard has a couple of conveniently positioned (well, perhaps too close to the caps lock) shift keys which enable me to capitalise letters whenever I decide to do so, without interfering with any other function, vital or otherwise.

A little time spent finding these and learning to use them would be repay the writer in even greater clarity in written communication.

 

P.S. I notice that Spuddy has beaten me to it in publishing this point. Although I am not an expert or even a professional typist I also would find it harder to type without capitals.

 

of course, late night typing is when pissed, and when is THAT ever right?

 

everyone trying to be professor of posh grammar and trip each other up

There is certainly sport to be had, particularly in combination with elastic and joyful exploitation of language rules, but essentially I go along with Hein's sentiments here.

 

and these kids are 18-20

So they were 9-11 when we were promised "Education! Education! Education!" They are just a little too old to have been objects of Bliar's new regime. I wonder if things will improve in the next few years? Hmmm....

[Handrejka 1,904]

and maybe teachers don't always put in the the effort, but after taking that class, and thinking about the poor sods who do that all day every day, i don't entirely blame them.

 

Try doing it in a different languge. I've taught English overseas and German and French over here. The English as additional language pupils made far fewer spelling mistakes than their English cotemporaries, their grammar was of similar standard.

 

I can tolerate mistakes on-line. I know I make typos too, but I hate it when people make mistakes at work or in official letters.

 

I gave up teaching and I now work in international banking and the spelling of my coleagues is frightening. Sweeden for Sweden, Boks for Box, Portyugal for Portugal and Bangcock for guess where are some of the gems I've seen. "Don't forget cake's for tomorrows cake sale" is the only one that has made me scream though

[Magere Hein 1,400]

I can tolerate mistakes on-line. I know I make typos too, but I hate it when people make mistakes at work or in official letters.

Several years ago I worked for a small Dutch company and at one time it was hiring new programming staff. I was given the task of selecting applicants for an interview. Since writing skills are important in that line of work, I binned all letters containing language errors. From about a hundred letters exactly eight remained.

 

In the same company I worked with a man from London. His written English was so bad that he asked me to correct his letters to customers.

 

regards,

Hein

[Handrejka 1,904]

I can tolerate mistakes on-line. I know I make typos too, but I hate it when people make mistakes at work or in official letters.

Several years ago I worked for a small Dutch company and at one time it was hiring new programming staff. I was given the task of selecting a applicants for an interview. Since writing skills are important in that line of work, I binned all letters containing language errors. From about a hundred letters exactly eight remained.

 

In the same company I worked with a man from London. His written English was so bad that he asked me to correct his letters to customers.

 

regards,

Hein

 

 

That really doesn't surprise me.

[Tuber Mirum 125]

I can tell you now, it's not gonna have a happy ending.

I've met Joan just a few weeks ago, in Rouen, France. Nice girl, but she got rather upset when I asked her for a light.

I guess there was a lot at stake.

Well done, eventually.

 

regards,

Hein

Not bad eh? Only took me 10 months to get it.

 

PS: This thread makes good reading. It makes me nostalgic in a way. Whatever happened to Honez and LPIII?

[Magere Hein 1,400]

Not bad eh? Only took me 10 months to get it.

 

regards,

Hein

[pulphack 6]

wow, the first little debate wot i have ever sparked. i feel proud. and i agree completely about the idea that those whose second or other language is english write it down a whole lot better than those who are natives. anything i've ever had from a 'foreign' source (either personal correspondance or assignments) has been far more easily comprehensible than the rubbish received from the likes of ms junior cheerleader.

 

just to clear up the lower case thing. i ALWAYS hit the bloody caps lock key, and being left handed have never got the hang of the shift key on the right. when working, i end up having to go back and retype whole sentences tha HAVE SUDDENLY GONE LIKE THIS when i either hit the 'a' or went for the shift on the left. when working, it doesn't matter - wacking this out quickly, it does.

 

i also suspect it might be the ee cummings thing that has made it sheer affectation on my part.