Grammar nazis and mastering crap

[SMOGZINN]

Grammar nazis reside in parents' basements, have nowhere to go in life because they tried to master in useless stuff like arts and language

If you think language is useless try living without it!

 

[Red Squirrel]

If you think language is useless try living without it!

Well I meant, as a degree not language in general. You don't go anywhere in life with JUST a language degree. It might be part of multiple degrees if you want to say, be a teacher, but on it's own, it is pretty useless.

 

[SMOGZINN]

Lets do some english vs math

Math: 2+2=4

English: 2+2=4, unless you are talking about eggs, then its 2+2=5, if its milk its 2+2=6.

Can we not think outside the box? Or do yall have to puke up what yall have been told your whole life?

Its not about grasping the language, its about why does the language have to be so complicated?

Language is complicated because we have so many complicated things to say.

There is no easy way to describe how a sunrise makes me feel, for that I need a very flexible language.

There is no simple way to explain how to build an illudium Q-36 explosive space modulator, for that you need a very concise language.

To be able to do both I need a very complex language.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

it's not about being a master. it's about communicating effectively and avoiding looking like a moron.

if you cant string together a readable sentence, the likelihood of any of your other skills/opinions being worth a damn are pretty low.

 

[sixone]

it's not about being a master. it's about communicating effectively and avoiding looking like a moron.

if you cant string together a readable sentence, the likelihood of any of your other skills/opinions being worth a damn are pretty low.

Exactly! And I want people to show off their skills or lack thereof, so that I know what I'm dealing with.

 

[Jeeebus]

it's not about being a master. it's about communicating effectively and avoiding looking like a moron.

if you cant string together a readable sentence, the likelihood of any of your other skills/opinions being worth a damn are pretty low.

Can't.

 

[Aikouka]

I've found that most people don't even care about more complex errors. From what I've seen, people tend to only speak out against grammar mistakes when they're simple or to avoid propagating improper phrases. For example, proper use of an apostrophe (i.e. "its" vs. "it's") was a pretty common error.

One error that I try to correct when I hear it in a conversation is, "I could care less." It's really just one of those errors that occurs because people miss part of the word and propagate it like that (i.e. "could" instead of "couldn't"), and no one ever thinks to look at it logically. I recall telling a friend that he kept saying it wrong, and at first, he actually argued with me over it. Last time we talked about it, he said that he sees it wrong all over, and can't stand hearing it used incorrectly. My work is done!

We've had plenty of threads on incorrect sayings though, so I don't know if we need to get too deep into that subject.

 

[SphinxnihpS]

I always wondered why most people assumed the name of the band (godawful band) was Live and not Live, or why some people think it's okay to spell okay, OK, or why some really snobby people say stuff like, awl ewe guise our itty yachts.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Your a idiot.

 

[SphinxnihpS]

Your a idiot.

Aye Nev, whore say die was ant.

 

[destrekor]

>english
>complicated
HAHAHAHA
everyone abroad learns English because it's the easiest language on Earth and it's very flexible.
Spelling should be fixed but apart from that it's cool.
As a matter of fact, only native speakers of English do stupid errors like its/it's their/they're. It's a good auxiliary language but it's difficult for natives, go figure.

There are actually a lot of people who know English but it's not their native language, and they will often get it sounding essentially perfect... yet they also quite often misspeak in various ways: perhaps a word is in the wrong place in a sentence, or they used the wrong tense (typically also in the wrong part of a sentence).

That's one of the things that makes English somewhat difficult to learn for most other people in the world - a lot of languages actually allow some shifting word order, some more than others, because the words themselves change enough to dictate meaning. English words don't change spelling nearly as often, so word order is critical and that can trip people up with tenses and participles.

Hell, the word participle I never even knew until I studied Russian.


Fact is: most native speakers, of ANY language, will typically make more mistakes than someone who learned it as a second or third or whatever language. "Foreign" speakers are more likely to learn the language with textbook accuracy, and while they too will make mistakes in the early years, they are far more likely to come closer to achieving a perfect grasp of the language.
Most native speakers just don't learn it in a strict fashion, rather, they learn it through repetition and having it beat into their heads. They don't learn the formalities, the details of the structure and varied components. Past participles, future imperfect and future perfect, the case system (which is a doozy in of itself! yikes), those are concepts one rarely learns all the ins and outs of; as I stated earlier, I myself did not become familiar with those concepts until I was learning a foreign language. I was essentially "learning" English while they tried to teach me Russian. It made it that much more difficult to grasp "okay, how do I say it in this language... when I don't even know the equivalent structural component in an English sentence?"

 

[SphinxnihpS]

There are actually a lot of people who know English but it's not their native language, and they will often get it sounding essentially perfect... yet they also quite often misspeak in various ways: perhaps a word is in the wrong place in a sentence, or they used the wrong tense (typically also in the wrong part of a sentence).

That's one of the things that makes English somewhat difficult to learn for most other people in the world - a lot of languages actually allow some shifting word order, some more than others, because the words themselves change enough to dictate meaning. English words don't change spelling nearly as often, so word order is critical and that can trip people up with tenses and participles.

Hell, the word participle I never even knew until I studied Russian.


Fact is: most native speakers, of ANY language, will typically make more mistakes than someone who learned it as a second or third or whatever language. "Foreign" speakers are more likely to learn the language with textbook accuracy, and while they too will make mistakes in the early years, they are far more likely to come closer to achieving a perfect grasp of the language.
Most native speakers just don't learn it in a strict fashion, rather, they learn it through repetition and having it beat into their heads. They don't learn the formalities, the details of the structure and varied components. Past participles, future imperfect and future perfect, the case system (which is a doozy in of itself! yikes), those are concepts one rarely learns all the ins and outs of; as I stated earlier, I myself did not become familiar with those concepts until I was learning a foreign language. I was essentially "learning" English while they tried to teach me Russian. It made it that much more difficult to grasp "okay, how do I say it in this language... when I don't even know the equivalent structural component in an English sentence?"

You're making SphinxnihpS' genitives shrivel, and SphinxnihpS is now speaking in the Royal We as a result.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Aye Nev, whore say die was ant.

Using near-homonyms isn't bad grammar, it's incorrect usage.

 

[Schfifty Five]

Who is forcing it on you today? You've been an adult for a while now, plenty of time for you to pick any language you want.

He may be an adult by definition of legal age, but he has the brain and thinking skills of a fucking 5 year old.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

Can't.

That is a sentence fragment. You fail too.

 

[SphinxnihpS]

Using near-homonyms isn't bad grammar, it's incorrect usage.

The usage is wrong when aye do it like this.

Da gram ore is at roaches when its dun lake these thou.

 

[Aikouka]

why some people think it's okay to spell okay, OK

Given that most people in the United States attribute "okay" to originating from "O.K.", it actually makes more sense. "Okay" actually ends up merely being a written pronunciation.

For more detail on the etymology that I'm referring to, read the fourth paragraph of this linked section:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okay#Boston_abbreviation_fad

 

[Meghan54]

English - AKA the language of business.

Even more significant than the language of business, I think you'll find English is considered more the universal language of science. Why? Because of the wide span of its lexicon and the many nuances within the language, which gives English the advantage of precision that isn't found in most other languages.

True, you can surely find specific and narrow examples of other languages having more precision/descriptive properties, but overall English is vastly superior as a language for precisely describing anything. (As an example of English not matching another language in descriptive precision, what's commonly known as the Inuit language has over 30 ways to describe snow. How many ways can English describe snow and its characteristics?)


And as for the OP's bleating about having to take English as a subject all the way through high school, I don't know about the OP, but when I was in school, by the time we got to 8th grade, English classes were no longer centered around the mechanics of the language; instead the classes were focusing on literature, film, etc., the actual use of the language throughout history. It was assumed that by the time the student was a teenager, the mechanics of English had been taught and learned and it was time to broaden the horizons by examining the use of English as a descriptive language.

Of course, this may not apply to the OP, someone who appears to have had to suffer through all those remedial classes on English grammar and mechanics, even throughout high school. I do pity that experience.

 

[feralkid]

I always wondered why most people assumed the name of the band (godawful band) was Live and not Live, or why some people think it's okay to spell okay, OK, or why some really snobby people say stuff like, awl ewe guise our itty yachts.

Free clue: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ok

 

[JulesMaximus]

Why would anyone willing live in Texas?

Hmm, I feel a parody thread coming on...

 

[olds]

 

[sdifox]

>english
>complicated
HAHAHAHA
everyone abroad learns English because it's the easiest language on Earth and it's very flexible.
Spelling should be fixed but apart from that it's cool.
As a matter of fact, only native speakers of English do stupid errors like its/it's their/they're. It's a good auxiliary language but it's difficult for natives, go figure.

English is not the easiest language to learn, it is just the most common second language people around the planet learn. I would say Spanish is far easier than English.

Because English is a fusion of many languages of distinct ancestry, it is a mess.

 

[SparkyJJO]

English is not the easiest language to learn, it is just the most common second language people around the planet learn. I would say Spanish is far easier than English.

Because English is a fusion of many languages of distinct ancestry, it is a mess.

Spanish is full of its own weirdness too. But then, every language has its strange rules and exceptions.

I find English far easier than Spanish, but that's what I was raised with. I'm sure it goes both ways. Even so, I don't think it really matters. No one is asking everyone to be masters at the language, but most of the errors that people make these days are out of sheer laziness, not language difficulty.

 

[sdifox]

Spanish is full of its own weirdness too. But then, every language has its strange rules and exceptions.

I find English far easier than Spanish, but that's what I was raised with. I'm sure it goes both ways. Even so, I don't think it really matters. No one is asking everyone to be masters at the language, but most of the errors that people make these days are out of sheer laziness, not language difficulty.

English is my second language and Spanish my third. There are far less weird thing happening in Spanish compared to English. Hell, with Spanish you can sound out the words exactly how they are spelled and you would be right 99.999% of the time!

Actually if I count Taiwanese, then English would be third and Spanish fourth. Really suck at French so I won't count it even though I had 3 years of it.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Even more significant than the language of business, I think you'll find English is considered more the universal language of science. Why? Because of the wide span of its lexicon and the many nuances within the language, which gives English the advantage of precision that isn't found in most other languages.

True, you can surely find specific and narrow examples of other languages having more precision/descriptive properties, but overall English is vastly superior as a language for precisely describing anything. (As an example of English not matching another language in descriptive precision, what's commonly known as the Inuit language has over 30 ways to describe snow. How many ways can English describe snow and its characteristics?)

Yeah, and a lot of scientific and technical terms in other languages are just modified versions of the English word. In some cases they already had their own word for something, but replaced it with an English-based word. My dad (born in Italy) said that there is a unique Italian word for anthrax, but the Italianized English word "antrace" is used now.