Re: Bostonites. *ZAP*

Brian Betty wrote: [the pretentious using words like misusification]

On  3/21/99, Tom Wier wrote: "But how can you tell what his motives are?
Surely, you'd have to know him pretty well to be able to say, for sure,
that someone is just trying to be pretensious. Even then, I don't think you
could ever be truly sure about it. And are all uses of the word, without
exception, "wrong" and therefore "ignorant"? I could easily imagine using
such a word, as when _The Onion_ did a parody on Don King's numerous
linguistic foibles."

So _The Onion_'s  parody of Don King's speech would count as 'proper
usage?' I suspect most people would judge a deliberate parody of someone's
speech to indicate at least mild derision of it. And if anyone is
pretentious, it is Don King. QED for that example, anyway. I used
'faxilate' to make fun of the pretentious attempts of others to
'intelligentify' (another annoying word I have heard) their speech - they
want to sound important, so they 'use' big words. Except they are just
making them up. It raises more than just -my- hackles when people say
things like 'we've got to be proactive.' I know many people who hear that
trite phrase and wince. It means NOTHING.

"This kinda begs the question, though.  How do you know what a "grammatical
error" is?  Can you point to any objective measure of such a thing?  The
past tense of "help" used to be "holp": are we all now speaking
"ungrammatically"?"

I still think we are taking this comment of mine way, way too seriously. I
have already confessed that I care little for grammatical errors, it is
word construction that makes me mad. And I judge by ear, and I already
confessed that in the future, people probably will think I was a prig. To
answer your question: well, then, why don't we just all abandon all speech
standards. We'll just talk how we like. Coherency doesn't matter at all.
We'll take no pride in our speech, we'll just babble.

All cultures have a privileged form of speech, patterns and word choices
that are considered more elegant than others. All persons participate in
influencing these preferred speech patterns, and I have a right to have
preferences. If there were no preferred forms of speech, there would be no
languages. Prejudice is built in. That said, there are flexibilities in
preferred speech patterns. I have no problem with most of the recent fads
of speech. I just hate people making words longer to make them sound
smarter. I am highly suspicious of attempts to convince the world that
there are 'no linguistic bases for speech preferences.' Well, there are no
scientific bases for cultures, but as humans we need cultural patterns to
function. Deaf persons in Honduras make up their own linguistic rules and
play by them; no-one who speaks can do so without rules. To pretend that
persons have no prejudices against certain speech-patterns or word uses is
not a mature position to take. You can disagree with my dislikes, but then
you are merely stating that YOUR rules are better than mine.

"Here's a question for you:  is "to stupidly make grammatical errors"
ungrammatical to you? Isn't that a classic case of "splitting infinitives"?"

Splitting infinitives is a rule that never existed in English. It was
invented by a bunch of Latinophiles and Francophiles who neglected to pay
attention to the fact that 1. English is not a Romance language and 2. in
French and Latin, you cannot split infinitives because they are a single
word, as in Old English (the suffix -an: aksan 'to ask'). As soon as the
new infinitive form in English was invented, infinitives were split. And I
am not a linguistic or cultural conservative, as I mentioned above. I have
no problem with neologisms, new grammar patterns, or the like.

And I already noted that I wasn't concerned about people's 'misuse' of
English except when errors occur  when a person is self-aggrandising.
People trying to look educated by making words longer. And I have a
distaste for the misuse of the possessive and plural 's (the grocer's S:
'sausage's sold here.')

"Where do such rules come from?  Some guy writing a grammar book in
Southern England several hundred years ago, that's where. Certainly not
from a survey of the linguistic habits of all English speakers."

Some rules, yes. But to say that all the rules used to teach Standard
English are useless and should be tossed because some dead white guy
invented them is a buncha bantha-fodder. I am not opposed to people being
taught Standard English in the schools of their respective countries, and I
think that is not the discussion I was aiming to have anyway. But I'm more
than happy to have that conversation.

And I hope this wasn't taken too harshly; I am just being honest, not
trying to piss anyone off.

(8-o)
BB

Who has been away for a week, and so is only now getting his email.
*********
"You know what I blame this on the breakdown of? Society!!"
        - Moe, "The Simpsons"

Everyone thinks I'm psychotic, except for my friends deep inside the earth.

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