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He doesn't mention my pet peeve: the use of "So" to start a story or a talk, or to start every (spoken) paragraph. Other than that, the article was groovy, man. And get off my lawn.
I don't know why it rubs me so wrongly. Perhaps because (IMO) it's totally unnecessary and adds nothing except perhaps an air of pretentiousness.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
" Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I submit that, given the obvious disdain the author has for the speech of ordinary people and what he considers "low" culture, "snob" is an entirely appropriate term.
I don't like snobs or seeming-snobs any more than you do, and I agree with you about the speech of "ordinary people", but your comment was still against HN's rules and intended spirit.
He doesn't mention my pet peeve: the use of "So" to start a story or a talk, or to start every (spoken) paragraph. Other than that, the article was groovy, man. And get off my lawn.
I see this mostly online and strongly agree. I don't know why it rubs me so wrongly. Perhaps because (IMO) it's totally unnecessary and adds nothing except perhaps an air of pretentiousness.
It feels that it becomes an increasingly minority position, and what's left in the discussion is at best intelligentsia's coping mechanisms making use of isolated facts of history. Yes, there were always "lowbrow" language and culture, but what matters is the context of the whole stylistic gradient functioning. Of course there has been some legitimacy in these changes initially, when compared strictly to the oppressive, conformist "bourgeois" "high modern" culture of let's say 1850-1950. History moves in random directions, so who knows.
The worst one today is people adding "uhhh" to the end of every sentence. "What did you do-wuuuh?" "Where should we go-wuuuh?" "Can't you see-yuhhh?" It grates on you even worse than vocal fry and like inserting like into like everything you like say.
Loads of languages around the word have a sentence-final particle that doesn’t mean anything on its own but serves as a vocative particle, creates a bond between speaker and listener, softens the assertion for politeness sake, etc. Some varieties of UK English already used innit? that way. It’s pretty normal human linguistic behavior.
Perversely, the inhabitants of Birmingham (UK) favour "issit" for that purpose.
He doesn't mention my pet peeve: the use of "So" to start a story or a talk, or to start every (spoken) paragraph. Other than that, the article was groovy, man. And get off my lawn.
I see this mostly online and strongly agree. I don't know why it rubs me so wrongly. Perhaps because (IMO) it's totally unnecessary and adds nothing except perhaps an air of pretentiousness.
He doesn't mention my pet peeve: the use of "So" to start a story or a talk, or to start every (spoken) paragraph. Other than that, the article was groovy, man. And get off my lawn.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Loads of languages around the word have a sentence-final particle that doesn’t mean anything on its own but serves as a vocative particle, creates a bond between speaker and listener, softens the assertion for politeness sake, etc. Some varieties of UK English already used innit? that way. It’s pretty normal human linguistic behavior.
In Ireland people add "like" to the end of a sentence like. Quite a different way to use "like" than what this article talks about.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Loads of languages around the word have a sentence-final particle that doesn’t mean anything on its own but serves as a vocative particle, creates a bond between speaker and listener, softens the assertion for politeness sake, etc. Some varieties of UK English already used innit? that way. It’s pretty normal human linguistic behavior.
Yeah, Malay has "la" which gets tacked onto a sentence or phrase following rules that are intuitive but I doubt I could write down. My mum could use a single "la" as an entire sentence and we knew exactly what she meant, rarely something good.
I am against institutional language standards that exist in some languages, because using the language freely how you want is a part of basic freedom. That being said, speaking with some level of control lets us exchange thoughts in a more organized way, and not just the same bag of soundbites all the time. It also shows, as a small thing, that we value striving for some improvement. It feels that it becomes an incre…
Isn't the of concept of low brow a strictly oppressive one? It only serves to further strip power from those outside the dominant group.
When the lowbrow group become dominant then their style and norms become the standard of highbrow.