141–150 of 735 posts
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"You" is still around so we do still have second-person pronouns.
Used "incorrectly" in place of thee, thou, and thy in familiar speech.
This definitely falls deep into the pedantry zone. Lots of modern English uſage was once wrong and has become normalized. The language doeſn't have an Académie calling the ſhots. It inevitably evolves, warts and all.
No one seems to understand Wikipedia operates as a system of lords and serfs, where a powerful few pull this crap all the time . Most relevant example I can think of is when Mac OS X was renamed and stylized to "macOS" someone went and systematically did a find and replace all instances of "OS X" to macOS even in situations where it made absolutely no sense as the article was explicitly talking about prior versions.…
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I would leave the argument but tweak the example given to support: it "adds nothing to the language" that we have many more or less perfectly synonymous terms, such as purse/handbag, pop/soda, and so on.
They're regional though. "Purse" and "handbag" don't have the same meaning in the UK, and "pop" and "soda" are rare in their US meaning. In this case "compose" and "comprise" do have different meanings. "Compose" has the sense of "put together" whereas "comprise" is closer to "contain". You'd never say "contained of" unless you were going for a really archaic sentence construction. I think it's less clear that "compr…
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> That's true for many, many other words. Well, yes, but other words aren’t wrong and irritating to many readers. The point is that the usage in question has several disadvantages, but zero redeeming features. > "To comprise" and "to be comprised of" contain the same word, but not in the same sense. That’s not the point. “To shoot” and “to be shot” contain the same word, but mean opposite things, but that’s a well un…
Those are just autantonyms, and English has plenty already. First you dust the cake, then you dust the table. The castle is impregnable. And if you add more collocial words, wicked now is good, but also means bad. When a song is cool, you mean it's hot. People tend to not object to that.
This leaves a bad taste in my mouth because of our history in Germany. There was a bunch of institutes for the "Erhaltung der deutschen Sprache" which were all founded under the umbrella of a quasi-propaganda organization that officially was just a society/club. [1] They created their own "purified" dictionary with a "clean language" that was trying to find replacements for foreign words, and strengthen the nationali…
As a counter example, High Arabic has been meticulously preserved, and Arab speakers take pride in that fact, regardless of the many spoken dialects that exist.
This definitely falls deep into the pedantry zone. Lots of modern English uſage was once wrong and has become normalized. The language doeſn't have an Académie calling the ſhots. It inevitably evolves, warts and all.
Get back to me when you can type the traditional ct ligature. ;D
This leaves a bad taste in my mouth because of our history in Germany. There was a bunch of institutes for the "Erhaltung der deutschen Sprache" which were all founded under the umbrella of a quasi-propaganda organization that officially was just a society/club. [1] They created their own "purified" dictionary with a "clean language" that was trying to find replacements for foreign words, and strengthen the nationali…
I wonder if this was maybe Orwell inspiration?
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> If we can’t say that “comprised of” is objectively wrong, then what _can_ we say about English? I haven't read John McWhorter's "Words on the Move", but he addresses this question there, and this review has a summary: https://byfaithweunderstand.com/2017/06/15/review-john-mcwho... - Isolated cases of 'incorrect' usage can be considered 'incorrect'. - Widespread usage that's different would be better described as a…
You would think it would be relatively uncontroversial to anyone who's read an older text full of "thous" and "yes" that sometimes the way English is used changes over time. That said, I think McWhorter's observation that much fulminating over language usage is sublimated classism is an astute one.
It's fine in general, but it can't really apply here. This is some people imagining a difference that doesn't exist and then enforcing it on other people whose identities are unknown. Social class has no role to play in the process, except that this is the same behavior that, in other contexts, hardens class boundaries.
In other words, my analysis would be that people are motivated to engage in this behavior without knowing why, and the ultimate reason is to enforce class boundaries, but here they're just going with their instincts even though there isn't a class boundary to enforce.
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If it became common usage, yes? If most people make "a habitual mistake", then by whose authority of it a mistake? > Sure, but why should people who can’t use the language properly (*) be an uncontested force in that evolution? How do you think English and all other modern languages formed? If some authority were able to stop people who can't use a language properly from evolving it, the people on the British isles w…
The most fun is reading threads about cars or racing, where people say "break" when they mean "brake". Should we accept "break" to mean deceleration, or as a noun for the equipment to slow down a vehicle, then?
Thing is, it's going to happen either way. The actual choices are being "the old man yelling at clouds" vs moving on.
This leaves a bad taste in my mouth because of our history in Germany. There was a bunch of institutes for the "Erhaltung der deutschen Sprache" which were all founded under the umbrella of a quasi-propaganda organization that officially was just a society/club. [1] They created their own "purified" dictionary with a "clean language" that was trying to find replacements for foreign words, and strengthen the nationali…
Just because there was an incident involving an extremist group, does not make the whole thing wrong or incorrect. As a counter example, High Arabic has been meticulously preserved, and Arab speakers take pride in that fact, regardless of the many spoken dialects that exist.