Making the Curmudge cringe.....

squid · Post by **squid** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 2:38 pm

"The King's English" by Kingsley Amis is a terrific book that's full of these little dilemmas. For anyone with even a passing interest in the English language, it's also a surprisingly good read.

shamustwin · Post by **shamustwin** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 3:52 pm

I've rigged many things.

janglerocker · Post by **janglerocker** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 4:07 pm

Now when I hear something like "What could be stupider?" I can't believe that's a real word !! "What could be more stupid" is correct in my book. Am I right or wrong....or just stupider than most.

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 4:21 pm

You're right. And they're just dumber.

lyle_from_minneapolis · Tue Sep 18, 2007 4:59 pm

MORE dumber.

johnallg · Post by **johnallg** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 5:17 pm

I always cringe when I hear "libary" or "Febuary". To me it is a sign of being stupider, you know, more dumber.

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 5:42 pm

On the classroom assignment printouts in the lobby of my building at the university, there's a bunch of classes on "Wendesday"...

Our website also has lots of misspellings and grammatical faux pas. Education only goes so far where right-brained artistes reside...

elysrand · Post by **elysrand** » Tue Sep 18, 2007 7:10 pm

And "realtor" does not have the three syllables upon which my wife seems to insist. (She says [ree-luh-tore] until someone takes exception, whereupon she self-corrects)

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 12:14 am

Come on, Elys, a ree-luh-tore sells ree-luh-state.

Now apologize to your wife at once.

henry5 · Post by **henry5** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 12:45 am

Pronunciation-wise my pet hate is "aks" instead of "ask". Or is that a real word nowadays?

wayang · Post by **wayang** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 12:52 am

I'm glad you axed, Shaun...

If one person can say it to another person and have it be understood, it's a real word. In this particular case, it's not a real English word, which may have been what you were driving at.

henry5 · Post by **henry5** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 3:20 am

It was indeed Dane. I have no problem with the natural evolution of language, but for some reason that just bugs the hell out of me....

henry5 · Post by **henry5** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 3:21 am

....which is appalling English in itself. In fact I think I better stop posting now...

jingle_jangle · Post by **jingle_jangle** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 7:45 am

The "natural" evolution of language can take a positive or negative direction.

My own experience with Portuguese shows a lovely Latin-based language, at its zenith during the Renaissance, and struggling to keep pace with ever-accelerating communications trends. The result is a nasty-sounding pastiche of classical sentence structure and grammar, and pictorial, colorful words, peppered with "adapted" and "borrowed" words, mostly from English. There are also "function" words, which name things formally by describing their function.

In English, we have "blender" (some people say "Osterizer"). In Portuguese, it's "liquificador" (literally, "thing that makes [stuff] liquid"). In English, we have "vacuum". In Portuguese, it's "aspirador" ("sucker"). Words of this type are derived from Portuguese, processed back into the same language.

But it's words like "computador" (computer) that sound all wrong to me, and there are more of them every day as life and language accelerate, and it's a downward trend.

Then there's the borrowed and *********** names. For some odd reason, Brazilians love the sound of the name, "Nelson", though its origins are in English. I think they see it as masculine, American, and sophisticated, besides being phonetic and fitting well with the sound and cadence of Portuguese.

But, much like the name for a French region has been adopted and *********** into an American female name (Brittany>Britney), the Brazilians have morphed "Nelson" into "Nilson", "Nilsson" (should make Harry happy), "Enilson" and many variations, "Emilson" a.m.v., "Ednilson" a.m.v., "Edmilson" a.m.v., and so on, almost ad infinitum. I was there one year during local elections, and counted over forty variations of "Nelson" plastered in sticker form on one large beer cooler in one small town.

To validate words like "aks" and pronunciations like "nukular" doesn't benefit anyone.

Yet, I would be fascinated at the thought of experiencing the English language 100 years hence. Just as science has progressed at an ever-quickening pace this last half-century alone, so will language. Some will be better, some worse to our ears and brains. And I wonder: "Like, how much of it would I be able to comprehend, you know?"

ted_williams · Post by **ted_williams** » Wed Sep 19, 2007 8:11 am

What about using qualifiers on the word "unique"? If the definition of unique is "one of a kind", how can something be "really unique" or "more unique"?