Bustin' caps in the asses of Newbs, Newbies and other un-Australianisms

[silentC]

Well, I blame it on TV of course. I grew up with the BBC courtesy of the ABC. There were occasional injections of American pronunciation into my world through TV programmes like Sesame Street and the movies, but mostly my childhood was to a British soundtrack. Contrast that with kids growing up through the late 70's to now. Schools also seem to have removed the focus on spelling, grammar and pronunciation and pay more attention to conveying meaning. Maybe I am of the last generation that will care about it.

[fenderbelly]

Sorry but geek speak will NEVER be cool. I mean, if someone learns all the words (not hard when most of them are in Wikipedia) does that suddenly make them awesome? No, it does not. It makes them try-hard losers. They remind me of the computer shop guy from the Simpsons.

SilentC, your credibility has just gone down..Watching the Simpsons.

Cheers Fred

[Rossluck]

SilentC, your credibility has just gone down..Watching the Simpsons.

Cheers Fred

Why? Is there something else on the damn thing these days?

I've said it before in this forum. Language is a dynamic process out of the control of the individual. When people are pedantic about language they are indicating a recognition of the widening of the generation gap.

The poor ol' yanks cop it every time. The only crime they've committed is to develop a culture interesting enough that the rest of the world likes to play around with it.

Anyway, Carl and I are gonna smack the SOBs in the mouth ....

[silentC]

SilentC, your credibility has just gone down..Watching the Simpsons.

Cheers Fred

I'm flattered you thought I ever had any

[silentC]

When people are pedantic about language ...

Pedantic is such a pejorative term. You might seem to be pedantic about language if you insist that a sentence shouldn't start with a conjunction, or that you should avoid split infinitives. However, if you take my pet hate, "would of" does not actually make any sense as a phrase, does it? Do you say "I of been to the shops"? So I can see the sense in persisting with that, although it appears to be a waste of time if this forum is any indication of the broader community.

[Zed]

its been a while since I've had a rant so here goes :

Get over yourselves!!!Holy crap!!! (that's aussie innit?) the purpose of language is to communicate an idea or concept in the most expedient manner possible, preferably with as few syllables as necessary to allow troglodytes to understand the concept being communicated.

with the advent of computer technology and well before that with the advent of mass market and universal comminuiication devices such as TV and the phone the partitioninig of the english language has all but collapsed. we all now speak and understand each other in similar manners. only the local dialects and vernacular's remain the same or still digress due to the imbred-edness of the individual gruntee. the further from a cinema or broadband connection you get the more prevalent this becomes - dont beleive me ? go visit the local pub in some squallid outback village after 20;00 hrs local time...

next you 'll be whinging about spelling mistakes!

[silentC]

to allow troglodytes to understand the concept being communicated.

So tell me, Zeddy, how slang and jargon helps in this pursuit?

The way I see it, most of the gibberish that kids go on with today is created to exclude the uninitiated (as it was when I was a kid), not to improve communication. The possible exception is work environments in which acronyms and abbreviations that are well understood in that environment can shorten communications - but these are not expected to be understood by the general population.

Most of this rubbish starts out life as gang-speak where a small group invents a silly new word or adulteration of an existing one, and it spreads from there like a virus.

If you think this is a good thing, you ought to read Ben Elton's latest book

[prozac]

Preservation of a language is vital to the culture of a people. There would probably be more than a few here who speak more than one language. They manage to do this without confusing the use of words from one spoken language with those of the other spoken language. Why is it then that the rest of us cannot seem to differentiate the American language as being just another language with different words to our Queens English, and not mix the two up?

This week I saw an ad in the paper for a commercial property by real estate firm CBRE who pride themselves on thinking that they are the top rung on the real estate ladder. There it was leaping off the page in large bold print "Do the MATH". They won't win any advertising awards with that slogan.

Just to keep things equal, why is it that many English when talking of stress say "pressurised"? Isn't this something you do to a vessel or container, perhaps an aeroplane? Surely it is "pressured".

[silentC]

There it was leaping off the page in large bold print "Do the MATH".

Yes isn't it ironic that the yanks can't do the mathematics right on the plurality of that word.

[prozac]

Yes isn't it ironic that the yanks can't do the mathematics right on the plurality of that word.

This is a large Australian commercial real estate company!

[Rossluck]

But underlying this pedantic scrutiny of language and purist insistence on maintaining "proper" Oxford English is a desire for power. Those with the best educations, and those associated with the highly educated can bathe in the glory of their superiority over the masses. By way of resistance, the younger generations develop new words and phrases. These in turn are subsumed (i.e., used by pollies to grab the young vote and accepted into dictionaries and so on), and then the rebels seek new words and so on. It's a dynamic process.

There's a language expert on ABC Radio every week named Roly Sussex. Lovely fellow. Probably knows more about language than anyone in Australia. He speaks a range of languages including Latin, and hasn't got a snobby, pedantic bone in his body. He recognises the dynamic process and insists that he's just an observer.

http://www.arts.uq.edu.au/slccs/inde...age=18094&pid=

[silentC]

underlying this pedantic scrutiny of language and purist insistence on maintaining "proper" Oxford English is a desire for power

I really don't think that is what drives 99% of the people who complain about misuse of language. It's certainly not so in my case, can't think of what power I could possibly hope to aspire to, especially in this town where if you talk like a snob you are not going to fit in with most circles.

The flip side of your argument is that we should just let people speak and spell however they want and not correct them, so where does that take us? The dictionary makers would give up within 6 months of trying to document the language, so how are you going to create a curriculum to educate people across the country in a common language that they'll all be able to understand? Sounds like a return to the dark ages of regional dialects where one tribe can barely understand the next to me. Isn't that how a lot of wars start?

How will new English speakers ever hope to learn to communicate in a language that has no rules and that changes at the whim of teenagers?

[Rossluck]

The flip side of your argument is that we should just let people speak and spell however they want and not correct them, so where does that take us?

Let people? They want? Not correct them?

Look at your use of language and tell me you're not unconsiously weilding the power of your intellect. It brings us to here and now, and it will take us to there and then. It's a process.

[silentC]

You might see it as wielding power, I just see it as using the language I have learnt to try to get across what I'd like you to understand. We all use language every day. If you want to break it down to that level, how are you going to express anything if language cannot be trusted?

You have to accept that we have a school system whose job it is to not just 'let' people do what they want. It's their job to 'correct them' if they are doing it 'wrong'. They have the right to force you to come to school up to a certain age and to allow you to progress through the system based on your performance. They are the 'we' that I am talking about. Not 'we' as in the intellectual elite (of which I assure you I am not a part).

[Rossluck]

You might see it as wielding power, I just see it as using the language I have learnt to try to get across what I'd like you to understand. We all use language every day. If you want to break it down to that level, how are you going to express anything if language cannot be trusted?

You have to accept that we have a school system whose job it is to not just 'let' people do what they want. It's their job to 'correct them' if they are doing it 'wrong'. They have the right to force you to come to school up to a certain age and to allow you to progress through the system based on your performance. They are the 'we' that I am talking about. Not 'we' as in the intellectual elite (of which I assure you I am not a part).

Sorry about the delay. We've got big storms heading towards us here in Brisbane and I had to check outside.

I didn't mean to attack you personally, Silent. I'm a little annoyed at the Yank bashing in this thread which is a bit rude given that we have American guests, but you weren't a part of that (I mean there are 300 million of them, and we are 20 million )

I like language as much as you do, and I'm very well educated. But I just refuse to worry about how other people use it. Wild Dingo is an example of language out of control, but I absolutely love his writing and I think he's a star. These differences are what makes the world interesting.

You're right. The education system does function as some sort of guidance, but in the end the system is just part of the dynamic process. People will only take from it what they want or need. Anyway, you keep on writing the way you write, because it's stylistically eloquent.