At what point do we accept variation into standard English?

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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by Viktor77 »

Travis B. wrote:The question I have is why should written language follow speech? After all, it is useful to have a written language that does not change much, so that future generations can read stuff written now, while if we change how we write to closely follow how we speak, what is written not that long ago, all things considered, will become dated quickly, and soon enough most people will not be able to read it. Personally, I think the goal should be to have a written language that can survive the breakup of English itself as a spoken language. Latin was able to survive as a written and sacred language for almost two millenia. Should we not aim for the same with English?
I'm late to my own party. This thread took off faster than I thought. But anyway, one good reason is that less phonetic languages are correlated with higher rates of dislexia. This is a bit of a lofty claim and I can't back it up on my cellphone right now but the rates of dislexia in English and Danish are much higher than Spanish or Czech last I checked the national rates.

And no Sal I don't consider myself some sort of crusader for English, I'm just asking at what point do we recognize that our language changes?

Another point I wanted to address is I believe Vijay's and that is that "gonna, etc," are considered familiar which might be an explanation for why they are not recognized by authorities on grammar and I don't disagree but can't we argue all contractions are by definition familiar? Contractions are advised against in formal writing.
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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by linguoboy »

mèþru wrote:Many argue for Mandarin, but China and the US are extremely interdependent. While being spoken by more than English, even if you count L2 speakers, Mandarin is generally not understood outside of Chinese communities.
But that could change in a generation if there were enough pressure for change. After all, it wasn't that long ago that Standard Mandarin wasn't much understood outside of major Chinese cities in China.
Viktor77 wrote:And no Sal I don't consider myself some sort of crusader for English, I'm just asking at what point do we recognize that our language changes?
Who's "we", Kemosabe?
Viktor77 wrote:Another point I wanted to address is I believe Vijay's and that is that "gonna, etc," are considered familiar which might be an explanation for why they are not recognized by authorities on grammar and I don't disagree but can't we argue all contractions are by definition familiar? Contractions are advised against in formal writing.
By whom and which contractions?

This gets back to Sal's point about English linguistic conventions not being determined by a central authority.

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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

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linguoboy wrote:
Viktor77 wrote:And no Sal I don't consider myself some sort of crusader for English, I'm just asking at what point do we recognize that our language changes?
Who's "we", Kemosabe?
Viktor77 wrote:Another point I wanted to address is I believe Vijay's and that is that "gonna, etc," are considered familiar which might be an explanation for why they are not recognized by authorities on grammar and I don't disagree but can't we argue all contractions are by definition familiar? Contractions are advised against in formal writing.
By whom and which contractions?

This gets back to Sal's point about there not being a central authority for regulation of English,
Yes I overuse royal we, I'm aware. Everyone loves to point it out.

All contractions by authorities on professional writing such as academia. I've been consistently taught to avoid contractions in all formal writing from my first English classes in public school. I'm sure things are becoming more lax but I remember once using "should've" in an essay and getting an earful for it. So my personal experience is that contractions are generally informal and as long as the dichotomy remains why not accept new contractions understanding that we can avoid them in whatever discourse English users so chose.

And while we don't have an Académie française, we do have dictionaries and grammars and universities which generally monitor the use of English, otherwise it wouldn't be a big deal when a new "trendy" word is added to a major dictionary.
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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by Vijay »

I'm pretty sure there's a long history of a lot of contractions being used in English literature, including Shakespeare for example, which I think makes it pretty weird to brand it as necessarily "informal." (Yes, I realize people do this anyway, but...well, I guess it's one of those things like singular "they"; it's been in use for a very long time, way more than like 200 years, but some people for whatever reason think stuff Shakespeare used in world-renowned literature is somehow unsuitable for formal writing. A lot of linguistic prescriptivism makes no fucking sense).

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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by zompist »

"Formal writing" needs to be more precise here. If you mean academic papers or legal briefs... well, what percentage of the English-speaking population reads or cares about those?

If you mean reasonably careful writing... contractions like "isn't" are perfectly acceptable in journalism, in most nonfiction, in bureaucratic writing (e.g. the IRS), in literary fiction, in plays and movies, in business correspondence. "Gonna" is however only OK in reported speech.

BTW, you will find contractions in Shakespeare, but not generally the same contractions we use today. A quick search at Project Gutenberg finds no usage of "isn't" or "wasn't" or "won't". Instead of "it wasn't" he would have "'twas not", and so on.

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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by vokzhen »

Salmoneus wrote:Perhaps the most borderline case in your examples is "gonna", where the contraction does have a notable vowel change in some dialects (though for be it's mostly /goUnt@/, with the /t/ sometimes elided in rapid speech, and /goUNt@/ and /goUINt@/ both still found in non-marked, non-emphatic circumstances). But I think it's fair to say that's mostly "going" + "to" for most speakers still, in a way that isn't true of "will + not = won't".
This came up recently in a reddit thread and all the anecdotes were contrary to that, that children generally didn't make the gonna < going to connection until learning how to spell.

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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by kodé »

zompist wrote:If you mean reasonably careful writing... contractions like "isn't" are perfectly acceptable in journalism, in most nonfiction, in bureaucratic writing (e.g. the IRS), in literary fiction, in plays and movies, in business correspondence. "Gonna" is however only OK in reported speech.
This is true: there's a continuum of contractions. "should've" and "isn't" are present in virtually all spoken registers and most written registers; in fact, there are some situations where not using the contracted forms would be out of place. "gonna" and "wanna" are more informal, and only used in more casual written registers; however, most of the spoken registers IMD use these (i.e., not just fast or relaxed speech). Then down the continuum you get things like "Imma" for "I'm going to" or "Jeechet" for "Did you eat yet", which I only use in casual speech, and rarely see written outside of facebook or song lyrics.

At first glance, there seems to be a difference in how widespread these forms are: I'm not sure I've every encountered a dialect of English without "should've", but I've heard many without "Imma". But I'm not sure if this would bear out under further scrutiny.
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GrinningManiac wrote:Local pronunciation - /ˈtoʊ.stə/
Ah, so now I know where Towcester pastries originated! Cheers.

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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by Travis B. »

linguoboy wrote:
mèþru wrote:Many argue for Mandarin, but China and the US are extremely interdependent. While being spoken by more than English, even if you count L2 speakers, Mandarin is generally not understood outside of Chinese communities.
But that could change in a generation if there were enough pressure for change. After all, it wasn't that long ago that Standard Mandarin wasn't much understood outside of major Chinese cities in China.
Do you want Mandarin to replace English as lingua franca? It will if we surrender English's lingua franca status by breaking up the literary language along dialectal boundaries. However, otherwise it probably will not without Chinese global conquest and colonization. (That overseas Chinese communities have started using Mandarin is not very strong evidence for the view that people in the Anglosphere, Europe, India, and Africa will all start using Mandarin in the place of English.)
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by Salmoneus »

There's that "we" again.
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But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by Travis B. »

Salmoneus wrote:There's that "we" again.
It's a good thing you and Viktor aren't great friends. With your powers combined, the universe itself might tremble!
Umm what? Replace we with I in my post. Does it make any sense afterwards?
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by Viktor77 »

Travis B. wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:There's that "we" again.
It's a good thing you and Viktor aren't great friends. With your powers combined, the universe itself might tremble!
Umm what? Replace we with I in my post. Does it make any sense afterwards?
Sal appears to have a thing against what I learned as "royal we." Perhaps it's an American thing?
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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by mèþru »

You seem to misunderstand what "royal we" means. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_we
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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by Yng »

??

you mean in America you're taught to use the 'royal we'????? the term 'royal we' as far as I am aware is just when the queen (or occasionally someone else, like margaret thatcher) uses 'we' when they mean 'I'

what you two are doing is using 'we' in some sort of mysterious broad 'we are the world' sense, which is quite different from the royal 'we' and probably a near linguistic universal, rhetorically speaking
كان يا ما كان / يا صمت العشية / قمري هاجر في الصبح بعيدا / في العيون العسلية

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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by mèþru »

I have never heard any American use royal we in regular speech. I sometimes use the wrong pronoun without realising it, but it is not regular anywhere in the English speaking world, as far as I know.
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by Travis B. »

As mentioned, my use of we there is certainly not the "royal we". It seems Sal just does not like the pronoun we, period.
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by Salmoneus »

We have no problem with the pronoun 'we'. It's just that we think that certain uses of it are confused.

What both you and Viktor have been doing is making broad pronouncements about what "we" ought to do about things that "you" and "I" have absolutely no power or authority over.

It's like saying "unless we maintain nucleosynthesis in the sun, it will explode. Do you WANT the sun to explode? Then we need to keep that nucleosynthesis going!"

What is this "we"? It must be something incredibly powerful, incredibly big, to have such influence. And yet you and I and Viktor are deciding what it's going to do! Does this not seem an incongruous thing to you?

[This is why it's reminiscent of the royal we, even for Viktor. Because that's what the Queen is doing: asserting a unity between herself and the nation. Frankly it's a bit tendentious even when the queen does it, and she actually IS a head of state...]
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But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
as though her heart was brook: Why, why, why! Weh, O weh
I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by Travis B. »

In essence you are saying that one should not argue points that are not directly implementable by the people directly involved in the discussion as individuals. So things like government policy are out of the realm of discussion as, after all, you or I have practically no influence over them.
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by zompist »

Travis B. wrote:Do you want Mandarin to replace English as lingua franca? It will if we surrender English's lingua franca status by breaking up the literary language along dialectal boundaries.
Sal is picking on the "we" because it does not refer to any actual agent. There is no "we" that can "surrender English's lingua franca status". It sounds vaguely comic because it sounds like you are arguing to influence a Linguistic Congress that doesn't exist.

With less-spoken language, one could make a case that language policy makes a difference (though much less than the planners think it does). But English is too big a beast to control.

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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by Travis B. »

zompist wrote:
Travis B. wrote:Do you want Mandarin to replace English as lingua franca? It will if we surrender English's lingua franca status by breaking up the literary language along dialectal boundaries.
Sal is picking on the "we" because it does not refer to any actual agent. There is no "we" that can "surrender English's lingua franca status". It sounds vaguely comic because it sounds like you are arguing to influence a Linguistic Congress that doesn't exist.

With less-spoken language, one could make a case that language policy makes a difference (though much less than the planners think it does). But English is too big a beast to control.
The main thing is that with this logic, one greatly restricts the range of things one can talk about. One cannot say that a government should or should not do this or that. One cannot say that developers should or should not put something in a piece of software. One cannot even say the local school board should or should not do something. One is left with little one can talk about.
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by mèþru »

Actual usage can't be controlled, but I suspect that that is true of every language. Language policy can, however, standardise language in all things official. This would affect non-official language over time. Language policy in education can also instill a prescriptivist pedantry in the minds of children, ensuring minimal change. These moves could make English standardised in the country that adopts these measures.
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by linguoboy »

Travis B. wrote:The main thing is that with this logic, one greatly restricts the range of things one can talk about. One cannot say that a government should or should not do this or that. One cannot say that developers should or should not put something in a piece of software. One cannot even say the local school board should or should not do something. One is left with little one can talk about.
I'm not sure how not abusing "we" prevents you from saying any of these things (as attested by the fact that you just said them all without using "we" once).

Perhaps you don't perceive a difference between "What should we do to keep English a global lingua franca?" and "What should the government of the USA do to keep English a global lingua franca?", but I sure do.

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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by ---- »

No, Travis, the point is that the meaning of "we" is "me and others". Saying "we" should do something about so-and-so implies that "me" is in the people who "should do something about so-and-so" even though "me" is not a part of that group at all.

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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by Travis B. »

The thing is Sal's objection to we is based on that it is referring to individuals who are not present in the immediate conversation, as if one had power over them. Does that change if I were to say "I think the US government should take steps to preserve English as a global lingua franca"? One is still speaking as if one has control over something that one does not (because if one were not, why would it matter whether one thinks the US government should or should not do something in the first place).
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by zompist »

Travis B. wrote:The thing is Sal's objection to we is based on that it is referring to individuals who are not present in the immediate conversation, as if one had power over them. Does that change if I were to say "I think the US government should take steps to preserve English as a global lingua franca"? One is still speaking as if one has control over something that one does not (because if one were not, why would it matter whether one thinks the US government should or should not do something in the first place).
One is not understanding the objection. One is not saying that one cannot say things about government policy. One is saying that one is not making a distinction between things that can be changed by government action (say, whether Britain stays in the EU) and things that cannot (say, the sun's nuclear generation).

What do you think "the US government" could do to "preserve English as a global lingua franca"?

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Re: At what point do we accept variation into standard Engli

Post by Travis B. »

zompist wrote:What do you think "the US government" could do to "preserve English as a global lingua franca"?
That was an example sentence, not something I was actually asking.
Dibotahamdn duthma jallni agaynni ra hgitn lakrhmi.
Amuhawr jalla vowa vta hlakrhi hdm duthmi xaja.
Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro. Irdro.

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