Life In 19x19

DrStraw wrote:Actually, it looks more like a punctuation error. I see no spelling error.

I edited out the spelling error. Seems I missed a punctuation error. Point is, at least I try. Some people don't, and they will face public ridiculing.

GoCat wrote:

DrStraw wrote:

Araban wrote:Actually I think this practice is done on sites like stackoverflow, and it's not too odd of an idea .

"Actually, I think this practice is done on sites like stackoverflow and it's not too odd of an idea."

"Actually, I think this practice is done on sites like stackoverflow, and it's not too odd of an idea."

Are all three versions correct? *scratches head*

GoCat wrote:

DrStraw wrote:

Araban wrote:Actually I think this practice is done on sites like stackoverflow, and it's not too odd of an idea .

"Actually, I think this practice is done on sites like stackoverflow and it's not too odd of an idea."

"Actually, I think this practice is done on sites like stackoverflow, and it's not too odd of an idea."

I'd prefer: "I think this practice is done on sites like stackoverflow; it's not too odd of an idea."

topazg wrote:I'd prefer: "I think this practice is done on sites like stackoverflow; it's not too odd of an idea."

Get rid of the passive voice and simplify:
I think sites like stackoverflow commonly use this practice.

Helel wrote:It is a living language defined by the way it is used! There is no such thing as right or wrong usage.

Agree with the first part; disagree with the second. Because language is continually evolving, one can certainly argue that "right/wrong' usage is really a continuum. New phrases and words emerge; new usages appear; linguistic styles change.

butt some time's gramer and speling is just SImply ronge!

Having said that, the idea of a grammar police is just silly.

Yes, languages evolve. However, you do not need to force this evolution. If too many people evolve a language at once, it diverges into dialects, and subgroups will form that cannot understand each other anymore. This defies the aim of a language to enable communication.

Evolution per se is neither good nor bad, but there are differences: there are changes that make the language more precise, more expressive, and there are changes that introduce ambiguities and provoke misunderstandings.

Spoken and written language are actually quite different. Spoken language contains many seemingly subtle hints to resolve ambiguities, like little pauses and modulation of the speech melody. Written language has different hints, namely the different spellings of homophonic words and punctuation. Without these hints, parsing of written text cannot be done in a single pass any more: you need to read the letters, guess the intended pronounciation, guess the meant words, guess the logical structure, and finally assemble the meaning (with possible backtracking at each step). Through grammar and spelling rules, these steps are standardized. A single misspelt word can quickly be reconciled in the context of the rest of the text, but if that context is also misspelt, it takes a lot of decrypting to read.

Since this topic is now about language, let me pose a question to all native English speakers (this comes from a debate on a Finnish forum, where no-one had the necessary authoritative knowledge to settle this):

"cojones" is originally Spanish, but widely used as a slang expression in English. Is it or is it not nowadays part of English?

Helel wrote:

Harleqin wrote:Yes, languages evolve. However, you do not need to force this evolution. If too many people evolve a language at once, it diverges into dialects, and subgroups will form that cannot understand each other anymore. This defies the aim of a language to enable communication.

Yes, possibly it would be much better if people were prevented from speaking in incomprehensible ways such as german.
Everything would be so much easier if everyone spoke the Queen's english.

There are already established, different languages. I am the last to tell people that their mother tongue is "out".

Harleqin wrote:Evolution per se is neither good nor bad, but there are differences: there are changes that make the language more precise, more expressive, and there are changes that introduce ambiguities and provoke misunderstandings.

You seem to think that ambiguites and vagueness necessarily are bad things. If you do then we disagree.

No, they are not necessarily bad things. However, if a language change necessarily leads to them, i.e., the language's expressiveness or precision are reduced, then that change is bad.

Harleqin wrote:Without these hints, parsing of written text cannot be done in a single pass any more: you need to read the letters, guess the intended pronounciation, guess the meant words, guess the logical structure, and finally assemble the meaning (with possible backtracking at each step). Through grammar and spelling rules, these steps are standardized. A single misspelt word can quickly be reconciled in the context of the rest of the text, but if that context is also misspelt, it takes a lot of decrypting to read.

I believe that everything basically is written in the context of the authors life.
Since the reader has a different context some decryption is always needed.
The added difficulties introduced by some nonstandard ways of expression are minor in comparison.

These are different levels of abstraction; the meta-context is not the topic here. As written before, "some" misspellings can be corrected, but the correlation between number of mistakes and reading time is not linear.

If the reader is able to parse a text in a single pass, it may in fact lead to the false conclusion
that what is read is also understood.

This is also a tangent, but while a badly written text is never in the danger of creating the illusion of understanding, it is also never in danger of creating understanding.

Your post seems to go into the direction of such claims as "Good is the new bad, and bad is the new good."

topazg wrote:

GoCat wrote:

DrStraw wrote:
"Actually, I think this practice is done on sites like stackoverflow and it's not too odd of an idea."

"Actually, I think this practice is done on sites like stackoverflow, and it's not too odd of an idea."

I'd prefer: "I think this practice is done on sites like stackoverflow; it's not too odd of an idea."

"I think this is done on sites like stackoverflow; it's not too odd an idea." You can do and you can practice, but I haven't heard of "doing a practice", and "too odd of an" is, I believe, an invalid extrapolation from "too much of an".

It is more like you point to the moon when I am talking about the dirty dishes.

Awsome! i have SIX votes, That mean's somone loves me (hopfully in a plutonic way)

tj86430 wrote:Since this topic is now about language, let me pose a question to all native English speakers (this comes from a debate on a Finnish forum, where no-one had the necessary authoritative knowledge to settle this):

"cojones" is originally Spanish, but widely used as a slang expression in English. Is it or is it not nowadays part of English?

It is used quite a lot in the newspapers - for instance http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2076268.ece

but on the other hand, my sister did not know the word a year ago.