Obligatory Grammar Rant

[flOvermind]

I would imagine that there may be among our readers some older Germans or Italians, whose regional languages used to be very different, who have had a similar experience. Maybe modern Norwegians still have similar problems with bokmal and nynorsk.

I'm not an older German, but a young Austrian, so I feel qualified to comment on that as well

In Austria, there are tons of dialects, some only slightly different, some very different to each other, and most of them very different to standard German. In Austria, the "official" language is "Austrian German", which is only slightly different from standard German as spoken in Germany (certainly less different than e.g. American and British English). That's the language taught at school, students have to write their esseys using that language and so on. Also, all written communication, TV programs and so on are in stardard German.

But in "real life", everyone just speaks the local dialect. That includes formal occasions like business meetings, and also teachers at school. Pretty much everyone understands everyone else's dialect, except in extreme cases (e.g. I would have problems understanding people living near the Swiss border). But most Germans (especially from northern Germany) will generally have problems understanding most Austrians when talking among themselves.

When I have contact with someone who doesn't understand my dialect, I am able to speak in a kind of "weaker" dialect without much effort, so everyone can understand me. To a German, it will still sound like I'm talking in Austrian dialect, but it will be comprehensible. To another Austrian, it will just sound funny

Do I have problems because of that? In practice, not really. If I really want and the situation calls for it, I can speak standard German. But it's hard. Don't get me wrong: In written text, my standard German is at native-speaker level. I just don't get much oral practice, so I'm not really able to speak it without accent (at least freely, reading written text aloud is easier). But that's not a problem in practice. After all, I'm not able to speak English with an accent either, but I'm still able to communicate with English native speakers

[mohsart]

A bit OT, but still maybe of some interest, on a job I had some years ago there were two people from the south of Sweden, actually from the same city, and they were friends from when they were quite young, they went to the same schools etc.
The interesting part is that I had no problems understanding what one of them said while on the phone but face to face I had to ask him 3-4 times to repeat and most of the time I still didn't understand; while the other person I could understand perfectly well face to face, but on the phone I was just as lost as with the other dude face to face.

/Mats

[kirkmc]

A bit OT, but still maybe of some interest, on a job I had some years ago there were two people from the south of Sweden, actually from the same city, and they were friends from when they were quite young, they went to the same schools etc.
The interesting part is that I had no problems understanding what one of them said while on the phone but face to face I had to ask him 3-4 times to repeat and most of the time I still didn't understand; while the other person I could understand perfectly well face to face, but on the phone I was just as lost as with the other dude face to face.

/Mats

Was that because of grammar, dialect, or accent?

I lived in Norway for a year (more than 20 years ago), and I found quite interesting one TV show they had where someone was filmed saying a couple of sentences, and two teams tried to figure out what town they were from, just from their accent. And they got it right, very often (one of the two teams). They talked about very detailed phonetic elements, and narrowed them down, with a map on screen, showing which areas these types of pronunciation were from. It was fascinating.

[Harleqin]

I think that it is interesting how every thread that starts with a few simple complaints about spelling and grammar evolves into a long discussion about dialects and the evolution of language.

English is a comparatively ambiguous language. I believe that the abundance of opportunity for puns is a sign of that, as well as the fact that newspaper headlines are often unintellegible because of lack of context. Written English does not really benefit from allowing colloquial abbreviations to be used. Yes, language does evolve, but that is a slow process. Most mistakes by far are just mistakes and should be corrected, not made into canon.

The main problem of bad spelling and grammar is that it becomes arduous to read the text. Each mistake means that the reader has to backtrack, resolve the conflict of meaning, and correct it.

Let us take a look at one of the recent, rather well written posts in this thread:

Some people in this thread have hinted at it but in my opinion the bottom line is communication. How many non-native speakers of English we have in this forum?

Stop. Has anyone asked that question before, so that this is now a reference to that question, or has the writer simply forgotten a "do"? I think it is the latter.

I suspect it is a significant percentage. Several have admitted here that their command of written English is better than their spoken English. Is it not considerate, then, to attempt to write in a standard form so as make oneself clearly understood.

Stop. Why is there a full stop at the end of this sentence, when it seemed to be worded as a question? Have I read something wrong? No, I think it should simply be a question mark.

I have no problems with spoken dialects. Nor do I have problems with trying to preserve those dialects in written form. But for successful communications it is essential to have an accepted "correct grammar".

Stop. When a sentence starts with "but for", it usually means something like "except for" (the other meaning of "but" can usually be discerned when it is positioned at the start of a subordinate clause). However, that would almost invert the meaning of what has been said before. Most likely, the writer meant this as a subordinate clause. (Separating subordinate clauses from their main clauses by full stops is a bad habit, by the way. Subordinate clauses cannot stand for themselves.)

In that little snippet, there were three points at which I had to backtrack and think about conflicting meanings. Let us put it back together:

Some people in this thread have hinted at it, but in my opinion the bottom line is communication. How many non-native speakers of English do we have in this forum? I suspect it is a significant percentage. Several have admitted here that their command of written English is better than their spoken English. Is it not considerate, then, to attempt to write in a standard form so as make oneself clearly understood? I have no problems with spoken dialects, nor do I have problems with trying to preserve those dialects in written form. For successful communication, however, it is essential to have an accepted "correct grammar".

Quoted for truth.

[Sverre]

Maybe modern Norwegians still have similar problems with bokmal and nynorsk.

Bokmål and nynorsk are written language standards, not spoken language standards, and their distribution does not correlate well with any specific variation in dialect. Students have to learn both, but one can generally get by using only one's favored form, for example university exams must be given in both nynorsk and bokmål (if they are given in Norwegian at all, so having English-only exams saves money because you remove translation costs)

Most Norwegian-speakers can understand each other with little effort, possibly because Norwegians adjust their dialect to a little closer to the regional standard when speaking with strangers. I believe teachers usually use their own dialect when teaching and this does not seem to cause many problems. The only teacher I recall having trouble understanding spoke with a Danish accent, and Danish is famously unintelligible to Norwegians, even though the written language is practically identical.

[usagi]

I like what EdLee said. Here's my take:

x I work for a [company who] use email and write a lot of letters.
x I work for a [company who] uses email and write a lot of letters.
x I work for a [company who] use email and writes a lot of letters.
x I work for a [company that use] email and write a lot of letters.
x I work for a company [that uses email and write] a lot of letters.
ok --> I work for a company that uses email and writes a lot of letters.
x I work for a company [which use email] and write a lot of letters.
x I work for a company which [uses email and write] a lot of letters.
ok --> I work for a company which uses email and writes a lot of letters.
50% --> I work for a company that uses email and I write a lot of letters. (should separate the two verbs and/or subjects into different sentences)
50% --> I work for a company which uses email and I write a lot of letters. (same as above)
ok --> I work for a company; I use email and write a lot of letters.[/quote]

JMO

-

[jts]

To robinz:

However, I strongly resist people who insist that split infinitives are some kind of crime against language, and even more so those that say the same about beginning and ending sentences with prepositions.

"Crime" is too strong, but moving a preposition to its proper place normally makes the sentence neater and clearer. In simple sentences the advantages are a matter of taste; a sentence that expresses a complicated idea or is itself complicated, on the other hand, will normally be much less confusing.

"Who did you give the present to?" .... "To whom did you give the present?" Matter of taste.

"I saw the man who I wrote a very long letter concerning the state of the German export sector to."... "I saw the man to whom I wrote a very long letter concerning the state of the German export sector." The first sentence strikes me as something I might need to read twice (and also, awkward); the second sentence is clear (and also, succinct).

I'm also not a huge fan of pleonasms, so the fact that this habit heightens the awkwardness of pleonastic prepositions, which normally have to come at the end of sentences ("Where are my gloves at?"), warms my heart.

Split infinitives, as far as I am aware, were only ever regarded as somehow "bad" simply because it wasn't done in Latin...

I encourage people to avoid split infinitives for four reasons. (i) Everyone has a different level of tolerance for split infinitives... there are some contexts where almost all native speakers think the split infinitive sounds jarring, and some native speakers who find split infinitives jarring in almost all contexts. So, like salt, use sparingly. (ii) Most people use too many adverbs, so anything that encourages someone to think twice about why they need an adverb is fine by me. (iii) Likewise, most people use too many auxiliary verbs, so any rule that encourages people to ask themselves whether they really need to use the infinitive is fine by me. (iv) In complicated sentences, when you separate the verb from the "to" which makes it infinitive, you can easily make a sentence difficult to read or even ambiguous. --- Classically educated English speakers didn't arbitrarily apply every aspect of Latin grammar to their native tongue; they simply were more attuned to the style problems that Latin grammar makes impossible.

- one other that particularly bugs me is Americans saying "I could care less" when they mean "I couldn't care less".

As John Fairbairn points out, this expression is petrified sarcasm. Over time, as with many expressions that were once biting and forceful, people have started to use it without any ironic intent, but that's no more objectionable than, say, someone who has never read the Iliad and nonetheless uses "Achilles' heel" as a synonym for "weakness"

And a final grammar-specific one to add to the list - people who say "less" when they mean "fewer".

I think this really does fall under the rubric of "changes in usage" rather than "mistakes". I also hold a candle for further/farther and where/whither/whence, but since no one else observes these distinctions, what's the point? I try to make a distinction between rules that make communication easier and patterns in my own preferences. If I woke up tomorrow and suddenly everyone used "orange" and "clementine" interchangeably, I would be bewildered, but it would be fairly useless to go around correcting people.

To amnal:

It's an example of paronymy..

Well, because, as you say next, the momentarily strictly refers to the length of time you will be with the person - not the length of time until you are with them. I don't know which is historically the correct usage, but I don't like it anyway, since I do read it as meaning 'not with you for very long'.

Right. And I'm saying your position is like someone saying "You shouldn't say that broccoli is healthy; that makes it sound like the vegetable doesn't have a disease, or something. You should say 'eating broccoli causes health.'" You're being over-literal. Any speaker of English should be comfortable with a little paronymy now and then.

Follow out the logic of the position that we should exclusively use "momentarily" to mean "for a very short time." In that case, "I can't be with you momentarily" would be an acceptable substitute for "I'll be with you very soon". Not even the most arch prescriptivists would understand you if you tried to use the former interchangeably with the later.

I don't entirely understand what you mean here, but it does seem like a false argument. There is no rule or convention that sentences meaning the same thing must be equally usable.

Inequally useful would be one thing, but I maintain that the sentence "I can't be with you momentarily" is useless. Most speakers of English would read that sentence to mean "It will be quite a long time until I can be with you"; some wouldn't understand it at all. But if your account of what "momentarily" means is true, then this sentence should have a specific and quite different meaning.

[Solomon]

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

[EdLee]

Was that because of grammar, dialect, or accent?

Or phone technologies? With certain phone connections, some sounds are very difficult (or impossible?) to distinguish:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A8245910

[robinz]

To jts:

You're certainly right that split infinitives do often sound awkward - more often than not the meaning will come across more clearly if you don't use one. I was merely making the point that - to my ears, at least, and I think also to that of many other native English speakers - there are also many instances where a split infinitive sounds perfectly natural. (What about the famous Star Trek motto "to boldly go..."? You could easily make it "to go boldy...", I guess, and I'm not saying that's worse - but it doesn't sound clearly better to me either. To insist on one being wrong because of some fairly antiquated rule of grammar just strikes me as pedantic.)

re. less/fewer, I think you're right. I am just a dinosaur on this one, and should let it go. But it still bugs me when I hear it

Actually, it bugs me a lot more to see it written down. I think there is a big difference here between written and spoken English - I'll accept a lot of things in spoken language that would look very weird indeed to me if written down in a formal (or even semi-formal, such as posts on this forum) context. I suspect that I'm not alone in this, and that something similar holds in every language.

And as for "I could care less" - as has already been discussed on this thread, I was guilty of condemning something I knew little about, and have since done a little bit of research online about it. It seems that your (and John's) interpretation is correct. I have already apologised for my mistake and intemperate language, and am happy to do so again

[topazg]

I fink dis thread is wikkid.

Seriously, some really interesting discussions. Never has a desire to find ways to subtly mispel or misuse apostrophe's been so strong, but I've still thoroughly enjoyed it

[Gresil]

I have no problems with spoken dialects. Nor do I have problems with trying to preserve those dialects in written form. But for successful communications it is essential to have an accepted "correct grammar".

Stop. When a sentence starts with "but for", it usually means something like "except for" (the other meaning of "but" can usually be discerned when it is positioned at the start of a subordinate clause). However, that would almost invert the meaning of what has been said before. Most likely, the writer meant this as a subordinate clause. (Separating subordinate clauses from their main clauses by full stops is a bad habit, by the way. Subordinate clauses cannot stand for themselves.)

My experience says that when a sentence starts with "but for" it usually means just what it's intended to mean in the sentence you quote; it is when it gets used in the meaning it has in traditional book language that I have to

backtrack, resolve the conflict of meaning, and correct it

and I do believe I'm in the majority here. I'm likely also in the majority in being able to take a sentence-beginning "but" in stride without batting an eye; in fact, writing, I often find it a nuisance to have to take the circuitous way of expressing something that would be easiest accomplished by just beginning a sentence with "but".

[mohsart]

Was that because of grammar, dialect, or accent?

Since they were childhood friends who grew up together in the same part of the city (Malmö), I'd guess accent.
It was not grammar for sure, even short centences like "Wanna go for lunch?" or "Did you find the bug yet?" made me go "Say what?"
It could be that they (for some reason) tried to speak more clearly in certain circumstances.

/Mats

[cyclops]

... so as make oneself clearly understood. ....

Stop. Shouldn't it be: "so as to make oneself clearly understood." ??
I liked your German approach.

further rant: I dislike abbreviations like OT ( mohsart ) for "Off Topic". For me as non native english reader it takes minutes to guess the meaning.

And then: Me, dutch, too stupid to understand the "1 across", "Leewaard" and "Jamaica" jokes.

[lorill]

I understood Jamaica => => "d'ya mak'he" => "Did you make her ?"
I didn't get the others.