Re: CHAT behove etc (was: Natlag: Middle English impersonal verbs)

Hey, Ray... it was a joke!  More below of compendious, non-jocular matter.

----- Original Message -----
From: "R A Brown" <ray@...>

> Sally Caves wrote:
>> Whaddya mean, Ray?  You Brits have dropped it?  :)  Thanks, luv.  But
>> that's totally informal.
>
> I do *NOT* mean the graffiti of those who spray walls with things like
> "Kev luvs Shaz"!!!
Ouch, you're yelling at me!  :)  And I asked you politely not to. :) (You
left out that final request of mine, Ray.)   No reason to act as though I've
offended you.  What you say below is exactly what I was after.  From now on,
I will not kid you, ever ever ever ever, the way I kid Adam or Mark.

On a side note, I think that slang spellings, which abound on brick walls
and are all over the Internet (U R writting a speach I cant understand) are
part of the whole experience of using English.  Not "standard" English,
obviously, but something to muse about.  Urban Black dialect being a
fascinating study of spelling and grammar.

> I mean people like Charles E. Sprague who in the in 1888 in his "Handbook
> of Volapük" (published in London & Chicago) wrote:
> {quote}
> Upon the recommendation of the American Philological Association and the
> London Philological Society, I have dropped the final e. misleading and
> unhistorical, from words such as "infinitiv", "feminin" etc.
> {/quote}
>
> You will find in the Handbook the sensible spellings "nominativ",
> "accusativ", "genitiv", "dativ", "passiv".
And look how successful that reform was.   No, really, it's worth asking why
these reforms were rejected.  Noah Webster seems to have been more
successful with his dictionary of American English than Sprague.  Probably
*because* he wrote a dictionary.  Hence "color" instead of "colour."  And
many Americans have adopted the I think British spelling "catalog" and
dumped "catalogue."  Analog, too.  Partly because it is visible in the
media.  And because we are so international now, and read emails from our
British friends and articles written in the UK, so many of my students are
writing "amongst" instead of "among."  It just has more force.  And
"theatre" instead of "theater."  I always joke about it, with little pinky
raised in the air:  "You are geawing to the THEE-uh-TREH, ah you?"  They are
also writing "glamour" instead of "glamor."  It looks... more "glamorous."
It's the one word I don't correct them for.  Because I agree.  Mysterious
word, beautiful etymology, shades of magic, Chaucer spells it that way
often.

Now here's my point:

Individuals who write pamphlets don't usually get the results they want.  It
has to be set up by influential committees, like the 18th century
prescriptive grammarians and lexicographers, or those who publish widely
disseminated textbooks to little scholastical panions on "How to Write
English Good."  Or it has to be broadly used in the media, and adopted--this
is crucial-- from actual usage.  Actual usage by prominent groups is what
best determines acceptable language.  The media, now, are writing "He laid
on the bed."  This isn't a prescription; it's a collapsing of lie/lay that
will eventually be accepted, and used widely by just about everyone except
me, who corrects it furiously.   I'll say that within the next decade it
will be in the dictionaries.  And it's an archaism, too, that the
Grammarians inveighed against, and is coming back in full force in America.
Is it in England?

> His writing was clearly _not_ totally informal. And IIRC Charles Sprague
> was not alone in making that reform.
It's the highly visible informal stuff that lasts.  Not prescriptions
published in a pamphlet a few people read.

>> No serious Mercan spelling reform could do much better than we have.
>
> Well, one of your fellow countrymen, at least, in the late 19th century
> not merely advocating the reform but actually put it into practice. I am
> just a little surprised that such a sensible reform did not catch on -
> that's all.
And that's an interesting question.  I've already opined why it didn't catch
on.

> FWIW I have on more than one occasion - the last being quite recent - gone
> on record as saying that I think the American leveling out of -or & -our
> to just plain -or, and the writing of -re & -er uniformly as -er are
> sensible reforms. Indeed, the change of -our --> -or was also underway
> here, until the Merkans adopted it wholesale and conservation reaction,
> alas, then set in here.
Exactly.  Also, what came first?  jail or gaol?

> Apart from 'thru', I consider the other Merkans reforms to be sensible.
> Though why the same sensible principle has not been applied to leveling
> out the completely arbitrary -cede ~ -ceed spellings of all those words
> derived from Latin -cedere verbs still puzzles me.
> I am not criticizing American spellings -
I never said you were.  I said, in so many words, "hold on!  We can't keep
up with youse guys!"  It was meant to be funny.  All kidding aside, it's a
misnomer to think that American spelling and speech is not subject to huge
amounts of criticism within America by the "elite" who insist on a Received
Standard.  It's an American received standard.  Almost everyone of any
education I've talked to about this is incensed by lie/lay mistakes, use of
British spellings (considered affected), and the abbreviations (catalog,
lite).  They would absolutely writhe at the thought of "primitiv."  There
are some exceptions, but in my opinion these broad-minded people are in the
minority.

> that would be quite contrary to the line I have consistently taken both on
> this list and on other lists.
I so wish, Ray, that you would drop this line of aggrieved (or perhaps just
emphatic)  defensiveness.  We all understand and appreciate your egalitarian
and generous heart--for causes, not necessarily for individuals such as
minxy little yours-truly, who jests sometimes somewhat sharply, but never, I
think, unkindly.

 I was merely expressing surprise that American reform had not
> encompassed one or two other similar modest reforms which were proposed
> (and, in the case I mentioned, put into practice) as long ago as the 19th
> century.
Yes yes.  And I hope I've shown you why these modest reforms have fallen on
deaf ears over here.  Being an American educator, I am attuned to the voice
of America and its middle class resistance to changes in language.

Respectfully,
Sally

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