Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar • Hacker News Board

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#101

Post by bluepeter » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 5:37 PM UTC

FpUser wrote: post #93

bluepeter wrote: post #22

British aristocracy has been pronouncing their own surnames wrong for centuries on purpose. Cholmondeley is "Chumley" Featherstonehaugh is "Fanshaw." If you read it phonetically you mark yourself as an outsider. The misstake is the membership card. (Heck, even in Portland we locals hear about misprouncing Couch St probably every year in local press as some bar for membership to our own locals only vibe.)

Here in Toronto area city of Vaughan pronounced as (/vɔːn/ or /vɑːn/) like in "dawn" or "gone" Imaging me fresh from USSR asking someone how do I get to ... and getting blank stare

That's great. What's also amusing is how you felt it necessary to provide the diacritical pronunciation guide for "Vaughan"... because I think to most native English speakers we can't imagine any other pronunciation!

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#102

Post by otterley » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 5:37 PM UTC

vardalab wrote: post #59

stackghost wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The people who rule us can't be this mid, otherwise the very concept of meritocracy is bunk. It is bunk. Nobody who has even a modicum of critical thinking ability thinks that Donald Trump or Elon Musk are geniuses. Luck and circumstance are an immense part of success.

Exactly. Look at just the most recent conflict in Middle East. You think they would have freaking gamed out potential scenarios using AI or whatnot? Looks like nobody gamed out anything. It's all just seat of the pants.

The military has performed countless simulations and “what-if” exercises and thoroughly documented each one. They knew a war with Iran without boots on the ground doesn’t end with a decisive victory. Trump chose to ignore them and press ahead anyway.

You can’t really understand Trump’s decisions unless you understand that despite all evidence to the contrary, Trump himself truly believes he is the smartest person in the room, regardless of who else is in it; and he will not suffer anyone who dares to contradict him.

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#103

Post by ASalazarMX » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 5:40 PM UTC

kristjansson wrote: post #9

triceratops wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before smartphones/autocorrect/dictation it was worse. Ima call bullshit on this. Read the published letters of some historical figures.

Activation energy of a letter vs. an email. If you have to handwrite it and it takes ~days to arrive, you write fewer communiques and put more into the ones you do, but a lot goes unsaid. You see it start to change with the telegraph on down to where we are today.

> You see it start to change with the telegraph on down to where we are today.

Telegrams were paid by the word, and were all uppercase by design, they're not an evolution of language. It took more effort to adapt your message to a telegram than to write a proper sentence.

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#104

Post by mattmanser » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

teachrdan wrote: post #30

bluepeter wrote: post #22

British aristocracy has been pronouncing their own surnames wrong for centuries on purpose. Cholmondeley is "Chumley" Featherstonehaugh is "Fanshaw." If you read it phonetically you mark yourself as an outsider. The misstake is the membership card. (Heck, even in Portland we locals hear about misprouncing Couch St probably every year in local press as some bar for membership to our own locals only vibe.)

There's also the British penchant for deliberately mispronouncing French words. I have heard "renaissance" pronounced "reh-NAY-sance", "fillet" pronounced "fill-it", "valet" as "val-it" and so on. I think it's a national point of pride to pronounce the words of their neighbor incorrectly.

So this isn't the British being deliberate obtuse, foreigners pronounce English words wrong all the time and we don't accuse them of doing it on purpose. They do it because that's how they would pronounce those words in their language.

Fillet/valet are mis-pronounced because of mallet, pallet, etc. Renaissance? Nail, snail, tail, etc.

It really is that simple, we're just pronouncing them as if they were an English word.

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#105

Post by IshKebab » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

davemp wrote: post #88

lab14 wrote: post #20

to me, the goal of written text is to put an idea or a concept in the mind of another person. _capitalization_ is one of those "arbitrary rules" that add absolutely nothing to this process unless you're using an obscure acronym. in my mind, it's one of those ancient rules that are completely obsolete in the modern world. its only purpose is to allow others to say "i am better than you because i use this ancient rule…

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_... Ignorance of why something exists is not a good enough reason to destroy it.

Yes... though I think Chesterton's fence definitely belongs in the "technically correct advice that actually does more harm than good" bucket, like "premature optimisation", "if it works don't fix it", the Unix philosophy and so on.

This doesn't apply to capitalisation, but generally especially in computing if there's something that looks useless you should remove it. If it breaks the fault lies with whomever left something useless there without a note to explain it.

The current project I'm working on has about 3 copies of every component because nobody bothers to clear up after themselves - dead code isn't doing any harm and it's better to leave it in case it's needed right?

Well sure, if you want me to work about 3x slower than I otherwise could. Not an exaggeration.

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#106

Post by DangitBobby » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 5:45 PM UTC

snikeris wrote: post #50

ryandrake wrote: post #15

I think a more likely reason, that for some reason, a lot of people don't want to talk about, is that these "Global Elite" aren't really that smart, creative, or articulate. That they've gotten to where they are despite, not because of their communication skills. They're not being "typical unconventional / quirky entrepreneurs." They're simply C students who knew the right people.

Taking the time to craft a well-formed message requires a degree of empathy. The golden rule suggests that we write messages in a way that dignifies the recipient. The Global Elite may lack these traits and sensibilities.

Same reason we all still wear suits I guess.

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#107

Post by next_xibalba » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 5:45 PM UTC

redwood wrote: post #21

It's just that this is how everyone types when typing quickly in a text message on their phone. Not much to see here

Yeah, I think this is the real answer here, not the elaborate social signaling/insider conspiracy takes. These are people who are communicating non-stop and are mostly are boomers who did not grow up on keyboards.

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#108

Post by nobody9999 » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 5:47 PM UTC

djeastm wrote: post #94

jpfromlondon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is at least as guilty of mispronouncing non-english words it's just natural drift. As to fillet and valet, they joined english before the contemporary french pronunciation, and are much closer to the middle-french.

>America is at least as guilty of mispronouncing non-english words it's just natural drift. See also: Cairo, IL or Versailles, KY...

Or Wilkes-Barre, PA

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#109

Post by rexpop » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

k33n wrote: post #97

moralestapia wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's just how busy people type. Lmao. If you think these people are busy, I have news for you.

Their schedules are usually quite full, but their work doesn't really resemble an average person's.

Their schedules are full of leisure, and they can't be arsed to extend even the oz of courteous effort that proper punctuation and grammar require.

And their class all recognize it. Possibly it's a class marker.

Here, I have to carefully articulate my point because I am desperately trying to convince you not to carry water for the Epstein a class.

Re: Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar

#110

Post by radpanda » Wed, Mar 11, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

bluepeter wrote: post #22

British aristocracy has been pronouncing their own surnames wrong for centuries on purpose. Cholmondeley is "Chumley" Featherstonehaugh is "Fanshaw." If you read it phonetically you mark yourself as an outsider. The misstake is the membership card. (Heck, even in Portland we locals hear about misprouncing Couch St probably every year in local press as some bar for membership to our own locals only vibe.)

I don't really see that as the same thing as what the article was pointing out. Those are shibboleths that only an insider would know. You have to get the pronunciation of Cholmondeley or Couch "right" to pass for an insider.

The random misspellings, missing spaces, sloppy grammar, etc in the examples in the article seem different to me. Misspelling "en route" as "enriewu" doesn't show, "look, I know the secret country club spelling for en route". It simply shows that you don't have to care about your mistakes. You write something that approximates what you mean, and you're too important to spend time revising. The mistake could be "enrout" or "n route" or on any other word. But you're not going to be a try-hard who edits and frets over their messages, you're blessing someone with 10 seconds of your attention and they're lucky to receive your correspondence, typos and all.